Will Putin manage to spin Kyiv’s counter-offensive as a victory?

The Ukrainian counter-offensive has duly started and, needless to say, there is a rush to judgement. It is going to play out over the coming weeks, even months, though, and at present we are still working off partial and often deceptive information. But, while there is relatively little one can say about the events unfolding on the battlefield, there is more to be said about the way they are being spun.

After weeks of diversionary actions and then days of feints and probes, the fighting has begun in earnest. It is focused on the rubbled ruins of what were once Bakhmut, the towns of Avdiivka and Marinka towards the city of Donetsk, and in the south, at Lobkova and Orikhiv, towards the crucial transport hub of Tokmak. The last of these appears to be the main focus of the fighting as Kyiv, as predicted, tries to cut through the ‘land bridge’ corridor connecting Crimea to the Russian mainland.