Kharkiv counterattack— a political assessment
Russia’s defeat rooted in self-deception
I doubt they still teach dialectical materialism to Russian army officers, but if they’re looking for an example of the “transformation of quantity into quality”, what just happened in Kharkiv oblast is a textbook case.
The battlefield is still in flux, with strategic disinformation emanating from both sides, but certain facts can be taken as confirmed.
After launching a well-signalled counteroffensive in Kherson (31 August), on 6 September Ukrainian armed forces sprung a surprise offensive in Kharkiv that broke through the Russian front line at Balakliya, reached the strategically important town of Kupyansk, took it without a fight.
Then, under the threat of complete encirclement, the Russians were forced to into a major operational retreat, allowing Ukraine to liberate a claimed 2,500 square kilometers of territory in five days. A third, parallel offensive in the Donbas is also making gains.
Despite the involvement of US intelligence capabilities and foreign volunteers, this was a manoeuvre straight out of the Soviet textbook: breakthrough, turning movement, encirclement, exploitation.
And anyone who’s studied the dialectics of warfare will grasp its implications: for…
