via  https://t.me/resident_ua/19048⚡️⚡️⚡️#InsideOur source at the OP said that the Biden administration is rushing Zelensky with a second stage of the counteroffensive, which should begin with crossing the Dnieper. In the West, they are not satisfied with the positional warfare in the Zaporozhye direction and want to see a full-scale offensive with all types of equipment, and not operations at the company or battalion level.

⚡️⚡️⚡️#Inside
Our source in the OP said that Yermak promised the Biden administration to launch the second stage of the counteroffensive within a month, the date and place of the D-Day operation have not yet been agreed, but everything is ready to begin the formation of the Dnieper.

Kyiv’s decision to fight for Bakhmut “caused consternation in the United States” due to losses in manpower and the expenditure of artillery ammunition.

The American CNBC publishes material about the disagreements between Ukraine and its Western partners.

“Ukraine’s current needs and demands and the military and political considerations of its allies clash from time to time, causing unpleasant encounters,” the channel writes.

In particular, one recalls Zelensky’s angry post during the NATO summit, in which he was outraged that Ukraine was not given an invitation to the Alliance. According to CNBC, the announcement “angered some allies” and was “too big a move.”

“The comments Zelenskiy made before the last summit didn’t resonate very well in Washington… the US administration was very annoyed,” the source told CNBC.

He noted that Washington was irritated by other episodes of the war, in which Ukraine “ignored” the advice of the West.

“The US strongly advises Ukraine not to do certain things, but Kyiv does them anyway, brushing aside or ignoring US concerns. And they are turning to the United States, or Washington, or the Biden administration, complaining that they are not involved in negotiations with NATO, ”the source said.
It is worth recalling the requests of the Pentagon to withdraw troops from Bakhmut in February, but then they made a different decision and throw further reserves into the meat grinder.

“Ukraine irritates its allies not only at the diplomatic level. Ukraine’s military strategy – and the symbolic meaning it attached to the struggle for every part of Ukrainian territory – sometimes clashed with the military perspective and pragmatism of its allies,” the newspaper writes.

According to him, Kyiv’s decision to fight for Bakhmut “caused horror in the United States” due to losses in manpower and the expenditure of artillery ammunition.

Our source reported that the General Staff changed tactics in the Azov operation, now the Western media are writing about it.

After the first attempts at a counter-offensive in the south, the UAF changed tactics, discarding what they were taught in the West, writes the New York Times.

Ukrainian commanders focused on wearing down Russian forces with artillery and long-range missiles. There are also small-scale infantry attacks.

But in the West they are skeptical about this.

The British intelligence company Janes said the small-unit attack strategy is “very likely to result in mass casualties, loss of equipment and minimal territorial gains” for Ukraine.

And US officials are concerned that a return to their old shelling tactics would deprive them of scarce munitions, “which could put Ukraine at a disadvantage in a war of attrition.”

However, the publication states that Western offensive tactics have not had an effect in Ukraine.

“Western-trained brigades went through only four to six weeks of combined arms training, and the units made several mistakes at the beginning of the counter-offensive in early June,” experts say.

This raises questions about the quality of the training Ukrainians have received in the West and whether the tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons are successful. The newspaper recalls that in the first two weeks of the counteroffensive, up to 20% of Western weapons were damaged or destroyed.

As a result, “NATO’s hopes for great successes of Ukrainian formations, equipped with new weapons, ammunition and re-trained, did not come true, at least for the moment.”

via Moon of AlabamaExcerpt

After two months of ‘counter offensive’ the frontline south of Velyka Novosilka has moved only some six kilometers south of the original frontline. Starmajorske consist of about 200 houses. Like the other four small villages along the way it has largely been destroyed.

This was not a ‘counter offensive’ but a bloody slog with mediocre results.

The NY Times piece is by Charlotta Gall who at times writes realistic reports from the ground in Ukraine.

After the uplifting start of her piece the reporting becomes grim:

As officials celebrated Ukraine’s progress in Staromaiorske, troops elsewhere on the ground said that Russian defenses and firepower remained formidable and in places impassable.A soldier at a medical post, awaiting evacuation for a concussion, recently described how his battalion had been decimated when it came under Russian artillery and tank fire. His brigade, the 23rd, was one of nine newly formed, Western-trained units prepared and equipped for the counteroffensive. But the brigade, he said, had been thrown into the fight without sufficient artillery support and had been unable to defend themselves against Russian firepower.

In one battle in which his unit took part, Ukrainian soldiers attacked in 10 American-made MaxxPro armored vehicles, but only one came back, he said. He showed photographs of the damaged vehicles, ripped open and burned out, which he said had been hauled back to a repair base. The soldier declined to give his name for fear of getting into trouble with his superiors.
…
The soldier lost a 22-year-old friend, Stas, in the shelling the day before, he said, adding that in just over a month, his battalion had suffered so many dead and wounded that only 10 men remained at the front line.

Previously that battalion has had some 400 to 500 men.

Next Gall speaks to a soldier from a different unit:

Another soldier, who joined up last year and asked to be identified only by his first name, Oleksiy, said that his unit had taken heavy losses as Russian troops directed artillery fire and aerial bombs onto their positions.“We were shot like on a shooting range,” he said. “A drone was flying above us and correcting the artillery fire.” Their positions were in former Russian positions, hemmed in by minefields, he said, and the Russian forces were able to keep them pinned down and under constant drone surveillance.

Soldiers were running out of ammunition and water but could only sneak in and out of their positions in ones or twos, on foot, when the light was poor just before dawn and at dusk, he said.

And a third case:

Interviews with Ukrainian soldiers and a review of military surveillance footage from a recent attack indicate that many Ukrainian units are sustaining heavy losses.A group with special operations training, deployed last month to storm Russian positions in a village on the western part of the front, took such heavy casualties in four days of assaults that they had to pull out without success.

After their armored vehicles were largely destroyed by artillery strikes on the first day, they revised their plan to approach the village on foot through a tree line that had been mined. The Ukrainians cleared a narrow path with demining explosives and the first soldiers reached the Russian positions and dropped down into a trench.

Drone footage of the event showed what happened next. Explosions suddenly detonated inside the trenches and other strikes hit soldiers on the edge of the tree line. The video footage has been verified by The New York Times.

“The trenches were mined,” said the assault commander, who uses the call sign Voskres, short for Resurrection. “Our guys started jumping in the trenches and blowing up,” he added. The Russian forces were watching, and they remotely detonated the mines, he said.

Those who managed to avoid the mines came under attack from multiple Russian kamikaze drones. “It seemed like they had a drone for each person,” he said. “The amount of equipment the Russians have, had we known, it was like mission impossible.”

Several weeks later, the village remains in Russian hands.

Since the Ukrainian ‘counter-offensive’ was launched the Russian Defense Ministry has reported on average 710 Ukrainian casualties per day.

The U.S., and its Ukrainian proxy, have sent these soldiers into battle knowing well that the ‘counter offensive’ would have no chance to win anything.

As the Wall Street Journal wrote a week ago:

When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons—from shells to warplanes—that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day.They haven’t. …

Largely untrained draftees with mediocre equipment and without sufficient artillery and air-support were willfully pushed into a fight they had no chance to win or even survive.

It was a cruel policy. Those who pushed them, and in fact anyone with military training and knowledge of military history, had known that all along.