The pendulum has (already) swung

UKRAINE - In Brief 13 Jun 2022 by Dmytro Boyarchuk

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Over the recent weeks military experts and journalists have suddenly turned quite optimistic on developments at the front. Fights are still extremely tough, and casualties on Ukrainian side are very high. Nevertheless, all people following the military actions closely have become positive after months of a depressed mood. My private communication with colleagues at the front revealed that soldiers are also optimistic and even enthusiastic. “We’re winning. That’s for sure.” – said a colleague of mine, currently a serviceman in military intelligence, when I cautiously asked about his assessment of the situation. What makes them so positive? The front lines have not changed much for a month already. The Russians take some villages, then our forces retake them, and this process of pushing back and forth has repeated already for several weeks in a row without any breakthrough. Military experts claim that the war has become a positioned one, where none can reach any serious progress, and both sides are just pushing each other in the same place. Still, by mid-June we can already claim openly that the Russians have not managed to achieve any serious results in all their attempts, after changing tactics several times from the start of the aggression. In the first stage, the occupants tried to take us by surprise with a swift attack from all sides, hoping we would be shocked and unable to defend ourselves. All attempts to catch airports and deploy paratroopers near Kyiv have been neutralized. The blitzkrieg failed, and Russians have been kicked out of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Mykolayiv and Kharkiv. They even did not manage to approach Odessa, one of their main targets. In the seco...