MAKE no mistake about it, Ukraine has started its counter-offensive against Russia.
They might be coy about it in public but Ukrainian troops are clearly probing the front lines for weaknesses.
And yesterday’s attack on the Kakhovka dam was a Russian military attempt to make it difficult for Ukrainians to cross the Dnieper river and take back land in the south.
Russia is trying to hold on to its strategic “gains” in Ukraine and protect the annexed region of Crimea as Ukraine begins its offensive.
Blowing up the dam may not just slow down Ukrainian troops but also make them more vulnerable to attack if they are forced to cross into the south of the country at other points.
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We don’t yet know how damaged the dam is but this is an ecological, economical and humanitarian disaster.
Agricultural land which Ukraine relies on to produce crops will be flooded, and we still don’t know whether the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in the south west has been compromised.
It also has some serious consequences for those living in Crimea who use the water supplies.
But the Russian military will have taken none of this into consideration when it made the decision to explode the dam.
Theirs is a scorched-earth policy of destruction.
President Vladimir Putin will do what he always does and blame the West for the attack, while those who support him in Crimea will accept it as part of the awfulness of war.
Good weather
There has been some debate about whether Ukraine has started its counter-offensive but I am in no doubt that it has, given the number of missile strikes in the past couple of weeks.
In public, Ukraine will not admit the offensive has started, for military reasons.
And of course, Russia wants to control the narrative, claiming it has pushed back enemy assaults at five points in Donetsk, killing 250. I doubt this because they would never be as precise as that so quickly in dynamic battle.
I predicted the offensive would begin at the end of May or the start of this month so Ukraine can take advantage of the good weather.
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Politically, the Western world was also waiting to see the result of all that equipment and training given to Ukraine.
At some point we will see a traditional offensive, with the artillery, rocket launchers, tanks and armour rolling across the countryside and liberating towns, very much like at the end of the Second World War.
But not yet.
At the moment it is about discovering weakness in the Russian defences. This is very modern warfare and it is as much about electronic and cyberwarfare as it is about the battlefield.
Ukraine will have two strategic objectives but it is unlikely to do both at the same time. It will want to reclaim the Donbas and the second objective could be a push into the south towards Crimea, splitting the Russian army, with those trapped to the west forced to flee or surrender.
Russia is undoubtedly strong on the front line, with around 200,000 troops, but when push comes to shove they may disintegrate.
Russia has no lack of soldiers and can send in wave after wave of men, and the question is then whether well-trained Ukranians, supported by Western weaponry, will be enough to beat a huge army.
We are about to find out.
The Ukranians are better in battle and have that will to fight because they want their country back.
Over winter, in the trenches along the Donbas, Ukrainian soldiers fared better than the Russians, who were disorganised and struggled for supplies and food.
Ukraine has 600,000 reservists and a third of them had spent time in the trenches between 2014 and 2022, so were used to that type of conflict.
Negotiating table
Russia believes that if it can keep this war going for a couple of years, then Western support will fall away.
There is no chance of anyone coming to the negotiating table in the coming months.
It might be that if Russian lines are pushed back to where they started before February 2022, the West will consider this to be a win and China may get involved to bring everyone back around the negotiating table.
However, negotiations could prove tricky because Ukraine wants all of its land back, including the areas of the Donbas taken in 2014.
Whatever happens, Ukraine will need to have made some dramatic advances by the middle of September, before the winter comes and a push into the occupied territories becomes more difficult.
In Russia there is a ground-swell building against the war and the country has lost close to a quarter of a million soldiers.
That starts to have an impact on communities. Everyone knows someone who has gone to or been lost in the conflict.
Putin could start to lose support rapidly — but he doesn’t care. The problem is that opposition within the country doesn’t have an easy political outlet.
I believe he will be deposed at some point — but we just don’t know when.
