Good morning. After the long winter months during which the frontlines in Ukraine remained largely frozen, one great question is hanging over the war: now that the conditions have changed, when will Kyiv order the counteroffensive that it views as crucial to driving the Russians out?
You will have seen that term, counteroffensive, in countless news stories over the last few weeks. But nobody knows exactly what it means. That is deliberate: Ukraine’s greatest success of the war so far came when it successfully fooled Moscow into thinking its September attack would come in the south, and not in the northern Kharkiv region. Surprises over timing and location are the most powerful tool at Ukraine’s disposal as it attempts to regain lost territory, break Russian supply lines, and bolster western support for the long war that likely lies ahead. But it is also extremely difficult to maintain.
There has been widespread anticipation that the attack could begin soon – but yesterday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy told the BBC and other European broadcasters that more time was still needed to prepare.
While the UK became the first western country to provide long-range cruise missiles yesterday to boost the counteroffensive’s prospects, an ongoing lack of vital weapons could certainly mean that it could be delayed for weeks – and yet some argue that Zelenskiy’s comments could be a ploy. Today’s newsletter, with the Guardian’s defence editor Dan Sabbagh, is about what shape a new push might take – and why Ukraine is desperate to manage expectations. Here are the headlines.
Five big stories
Pensions | The UK will have to bring forward the rise in the state pension age to 68 in the first couple of years of the next parliament, Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, has suggested. Stride said that “there is a point in time at which the nettle will have to be grasped”.
Labour | A female Labour MP has reported a shadow frontbench MP to the Metropolitan police, claiming he sexually assaulted her. The alleged incident is said to have taken place after a summer party in July 2021, but the MP decided to approach the Met in recent weeks.
Interest rates | The Bank of England raised interest rates by a quarter of a point to 4.5% as it forecast inflation would stay higher for longer than previously expected and the economy would perform more strongly. Read how the 12th successive increase in borrowing costs will affect you.
Torture | A detainee held at Guantánamo Bay has produced the most comprehensive account yet seen of the brutal torture techniques used by the CIA. Abu Zubaydah has created a series of 40 drawings that chronicle what he endured in CIA dark sites between 2002 and 2006 and at Guantánamo Bay.
Twitter | Twitter CEO, Elon Musk, has said that he has found a new chief executive for the platform. The billionaire did not reveal who would be taking the reins of the company but the Wall Street Journal reported that Linda Yaccarino, NBCUniversal’s head of advertising, is in talks to take up the role.
In depth: ‘Secrecy is essential to the success of what happens next’
After the stalemate of winter, Ukraine has talked openly about a planned counteroffensive for months. “We are preparing for it,” Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in April. “It will happen.” But yesterday, he suggested that despite endless speculation about the timing, his country’s forces were not yet ready. “With [what we already have] we can go forward, and, I think, be successful,” he said. “But we’d lose a lot of people. I think that’s unacceptable. So we need to wait. We still need a bit more time.”
Ukrainian commanders have also said that Kyiv lacks vital weapons for the new push – but there are also reasons to be sceptical. The Economist’s defence editor Shashank Joshi wrote on Twitter that “Of course this is what you’d say if the counter-offensive was about to begin,” appending a shrug emoji. And it is always useful for Ukraine to increase pressure for more western military hardware.
“Secrecy is very, very important,” Dan Sabbagh said. “It’s essential to the success of what happens next. In Russian, it’s called ‘maskirova’ – the military concept of operational security and secrecy, but also active deception about what to expect. So we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen or when.”
***
When could the Ukrainian counteroffensive happen?
The recent leak of Pentagon documents about the war mentioned a possible date of 30 April – now in the past, obviously; defence minister Oleksii Reznikov recently said that the military was “reaching the finishing line” in preparations. “While that could be misleading, it does seem to be likely in the spring, now the ground has hardened and that allows tanks to operate more flexibly,” Dan said.
On Sunday, Czech president Petr Pavel appeared to suggest that the attack could be delayed, telling Daniel Boffey: “Apparently, they still have a feeling that they do not have everything to successfully start an operation.” That sounds aligned with Zelensky’s interview. Pavel also said that he had urged Ukrainian PM Denys Shmyhal not to be “pushed into a faster pace before they are fully prepared” in a meeting last week.
While it is possible that the beginning of a major counteroffensive will be a “big bang and very obvious,” Dan said, “there’s also a possibility that it begins more gradually.” Senior officials told CNN last night that “shaping” operations, strikes on key targets like weapons depots and artillery systems, were already underway but could last for many days – or be used to sow confusion about Kyiv’s intentions. “Either way, as well as the battlefield dynamic, there is also a political dynamic that creates pressure to begin soon,” Dan said. “There is a lot of support riding on providing evidence of a path to Ukrainian victory.”
***
Where is it likely to be?
With a 900-mile frontline that divides occupied eastern territory roughly the size of Portugal from the rest of Ukraine, there are no shortage of possible sites for the attack. But there is a relatively brief list of options both viable enough and valuable enough to be plausible.
“The ‘route one’ option, and the most obvious strategic imperative, is to cut the “land bridge” to Crimea,” Dan said. That would severely hamper supply lines to Russian troops in the rest of Ukraine, which could only run via the Kerch bridge (the same one that was damaged in a mysterious bombing in October) – as well as being a humiliating blow for Putin. “But the obvious counterpoint to that is that the geography is perfectly obvious to the Russians as well. They have been preparing for a possible attack and they are very well dug in.”
Last week, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said that “Russia has constructed some of the most extensive systems of military defensive works seen anywhere in the world for many decades”. These two pictures give a sense of how quickly that’s been happening, showing the development of a trench network near the village of Medvedivka, Crimea between 3 January and 11 February:
There are other options available. “They could also try to attack Crimea by crossing the Dnieper River further west,” Dan said. “But the Dnieper is a formidable, wide river that has already hurt the Russians when they were forced to give up Kherson.”
Also possible is a counterattack in Bakhmut in the eastern Donbas region, where Russia has the upper hand after long and bitter fighting – but Ukraine made its first significant gains in months this week. The head of the Wagner army, Yevgeny Prighozhin, claimed that the counteroffensive “is taking place at full speed” in Bakhmut, but has a history of comments designed to increase Moscow’s support for his forces there. The Kremlin has denied any major change in the area.
Bakhmut “lacks strategic importance to either side, but it’s symbolic,” Dan said. A breakthrough there would raise the question of what to do next: “You’d be heading into territory which Russia has held since 2014 and where the welcome would not be as warm for the liberating forces,” Dan said.
Finally, the Ukrainians could seek a breakthrough in the northern province of Luhansk – more sparsely defended, and providing a route to Russian-held cities in the Donbas. But there is less obvious strategic value in that territory. “And it’s quite close to Russia proper, so it would be easier to bring in reinforcements,” Dan added.
***
Are Ukrainian forces ready?
After a long diplomatic fight, Ukraine finally secured the delivery of tanks from the US, Germany and other European countries in January. Last month, Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg said that 230 tanks had been delivered along with more than 1,500 armoured vehicles and “vast amounts of ammunition”.
Is that enough? “They’d like 400 – they have 200,” Dan said. “The West tends to provide enough to repel the Russians, but not enough to strike a decisive blow.” Nonetheless, with Ukrainian tank crews trained on their new equipment, the new armour will be a crucial even if Ukraine wants more.
As for numbers: “The leaked Pentagon documents talk about a tabletop exercise which suggested that Ukraine needs 12 brigades to make some progress – as many as 60,000 troops – and that’s roughly what they have.”
Against that numerical strength is the problem of newly enlisted soldiers who are less motivated or experienced. “The people who wanted to fight signed up on 24 February last year,” Dan said. “By this stage, there is a real concern about the enthusiasm of recruits. Russia knows how to win wars with crappy, conscript armies of people who don’t want to fight. Ukraine relies on highly motivated soldiers.”
***
Could the counteroffensive be decisive?
Ukrainian politicians have recently been talking down the possibility of a stunning success: defence minister Oleksii Reznikov, for instance, last week told the Washington Post that “The expectation from our counteroffensive campaign is overestimated in the world” and that he feared “emotional disappointment”.
A more acid take on that same weight of western judgment came from presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak, who wrote on Twitter: “‘Military observers’ argue whether the “second season” will be as successful as the first one. Political analysts warn that if viewership drops, investors will consider whether to renew the series for a third season.”
The point of all this: the Ukrainians are keen to emphasise that it is possible for the advance to be strategically important without the kind of jaw-dropping impact of last autumn’s success in Kharkiv. Managing expectations in the US and Europe is crucial to ensuring that only incremental success is not seized on by sceptics as a reason to reduce military support. That is another important point of context for Zelenskiy’s comments.
“The expectation is clearly that this will be a long war,” Dan said. “Barring some very unlikely circumstances, you should not expect this counteroffensive to be transformational. But that doesn’t mean it may not provide significant breakthroughs, and shore up western capitals. Ukraine needs to win – not necessarily decisively now, but to show that that is a real possibility.”
What else we’ve been reading
When Moloko followed two smash hits with a single that had the bellowed chorus “Ramesses! Colossus!”, one reviewer asked: “Did you not like being a pop star, then?” But Róisín Murphy (above) is still going, and still one of the most interesting pop stars around. Alexis Petridis’s interview, ahead of “the best album of her 30-year career”, is just great. Archie
Earlier this month a Black man named Jordan Neely started shouting on a subway train in New York. “I want food!” Neely reportedly said, “I’m not taking no for an answer!”. What ensued after sent shock waves across the city: a white veteran pinned Neely down and strangled him. Neely died. For the New Yorker (£), Adam Iscoe examines the mental health system in New York and how its failing the city’s many residents who are living with severe mental illness. Nimo
“Time for my annual week-long obsession with exercise”, writes Emma Brockes, in an extremely relatable and funny column about the weird psychological tricks those of us who aren’t natural meatheads play on ourselves to get to the gym. Archie
Fly-on-the-wall footage of counselling sessions has become a very popular sub-genre of TV and podcasting (I am not averse to some Esther Perel myself) and can be a useful way to destigmatise therapy. Eleanor Morgan writes thoughtfully about the pitfalls and positives of this highly intimate form of entertainment. Nimo
Eurovision, but make it even nerdier: the Guardian’s data team have an alarmingly exhaustive breakdown of what makes a winner: high energy pop in a major key by a solo artist with lyrics like “love” and “la la”. Sounds about right! Archie
Sport
Europa Conference League | West Ham United came from behind to win the first leg of their semi-final against AZ Alkmaar 2-1 thanks to a penalty from Saïd Benrahma and Michail Antonio’s close-range finish. Manager David Moyes said: “It doesn’t matter how you do it really and the job is to get it done.”
Tennis | Victoria Azarenka has described the Madrid Open’s decision to cancel speeches after the women’s doubles final as “unacceptable”. The tournament organisers have issued a public apology amid suggestions that the speeches were cancelled to avoid Azarenka and others criticising how the tournament treated its female players.
Football | After Burnley’s remarkable march to the championship title this year, manager Vincent Kompany tells Andy Hunter that his new five-year contract is meant to signal his commitment to his players. Kompany, who has been linked to vacancies at Chelsea and Spurs, said: “It is really difficult to find a good environment and really difficult to be in a place where you have achieved something.”
The front pages
The Guardian leads with “UK sends long-range missiles to Ukraine in first for west”. The Telegraph reports on a push to get those who left the workforce during the pandemic back into jobs, under the headline “‘Go back to work and we can cut tax by 2p’”.
The Financial Times says “BoE lifts rates and warns inflation target will not be reached until 2025”. The Mirror’s take is “Interest rate pain: it’s not over yet”, while the i says “New UK inflation warning as Hunt admits key pledge may be broken”. The Times has good news with “Food prices ‘on way back down’”.
The Sun has a full page story on the hosts of ITV’s This Morning, with the headline “Phil: It’s not been easy for me or Holly”. Finally, the Daily Mail leads with “Don’t say convicts, it upsets criminals”.
Something for the weekend
Our critics’ roundup of the best things to watch, read and listen to right now
TV
City on Fire (Apple TV+)
Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage have ruthlessly carved out the thriller that was embedded in Garth Risk Hallberg’s baggy 2015 novel of the same name. They have also relocated the action from 1976 to 18 months after 9/11. An Inspector Calls-on-steroids look at the interconnectedness of people, this is a quality product from Apple’s reliable conveyor belt. Lucy Mangan
Music
Overmono – Good Lies
Like the Russell brothers’ 2022 EP Cash Romantic – which lurched, pleasingly, between drum’n’bass, electronic abstraction, 2-step and trance – Good Lies doesn’t veer dramatically between sub-genres. Instead, it builds on the blueprint, distilling their wide-ranging tastes into a coherent sound that subtly incorporates a panoply of inspiration, where the most obvious influence is garage. Alexis Petridis
Film
The Eight Mountains
This rich, beautiful and inexpressibly sad film is about the friendship between men who can’t talk about their feelings. It is set in the breathtaking Italian Alpine valley of Aosta. But the “eight mountains” of the title refers to the eight highest peaks of Nepal. This film climbs mountainous heights and rewards you with the opposite of vertigo: a sort of exaltation. Peter Bradshaw
Podcast
Educating Daisy
Audible, all episodes out now
Daisy May Cooper’s podcast is based on the fact that she hasn’t read a book since doing GCSE English. Celebrity guests bring a novel, and hope to succeed in educating the host. It’s a raucous, silly listen. Her guess at the subject of Tim Key’s choice, The Diary of a Nobody? “Curb Your Enthusiasm in Victorian times, where he’s complaining about shoe shines, penny farthings and the workhouses.”
Alexi Duggins
Today in Focus
Hosting Ukraine’s Eurovision party
On the eve of the Eurovision song contest finals, Hannah Moore travels to Liverpool to watch the rehearsals and hear from Ukrainians running stalls in ‘Eurovision Village’, while Chris West, the author of Eurovision! A History of Modern Europe Through the World’s Greatest Song Contest, explains how politics always plays a big part in the event but this year is particularly poignant.
Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka was Uganda’s first wildlife vet and works in animal conservation – a sector dominated by white, often male, researchers. By 17, she was running the wildlife club at her high school – she knew the area well and developed a great understanding of how social and economic conditions in the country affected the way animals were treated.
In the years since she graduated from the University of London’s Royal Veterinary College, Kalema-Zikusoka founded the wildlife charity Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH), the Gorilla Conservation Coffee social enterprise and is vice-president of the African Primatological Society. Her work is all about making sure that people and animals are able to live comfortably and harmoniously – that’s why tackling poverty and health inequality is a central part of her conservation efforts.
All these organisations do not keep her away from what she loves the most though: spending time out in the field with the gorillas and local communities. “I’m always there,” she says. “That’s what gives me energy. I’m a very practical hands-on person.”
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until Monday.
