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No peace negotiations are on the horizon to end the Ukraine war, rather every effort is being made for the April-end “Counteroffensive” to “liberate” the “Russian-occupied” territories of Ukraine in the last 14 months of the Russia-Ukraine war. Just a couple of days back, the US has started providing $500 million in immediate assistance from Pentagon stocks using the presidential drawdown authority. Another military aid of $2.1 billion is in the pipeline using Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) funds, reported the Voice of America (VOA) on April 4.
The new US military aid package to include munitions for Patriot air defense systems and three surveillance radars, hundreds of thousands of ammunition-rounds along with 155 mm and 105 mm artillery rounds, which Ukrainian forces have continued to quickly burn through against Russian attacks. Quoting a senior defense official, the VOA has reported that the new equipment in the package includes nine 30 mm gun trucks that could “detect and intercept drones such as the Iranian-built Shahed[s]” that Moscow is currently using in the fight.
With the recent military aid, the US has now pledged more than $32.5 billion worth of security assistance to Ukraine since the invasion. When viewed as a percentage of donor country GDP, the US ranks about 10th in its security donations to Kyiv.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military has alleged Russia for attacking over the Odessa region with 17 Iranian-made drones the same night, with a claim to have destroyed 14 of them. No evidence so far. However, a case of military support to Russia is being built up against Iran and North Korea while China has already denied the allegations. Seems, all efforts are being made to spread the flames of war over other parts too.
After the leading partners of the US in the Ukraine war have refused to supply expensive sophisticated weapons to Ukraine, the US and NATO are exerting unprecedented pressure on their allies in the Asia-Pacific region to send weapons and military equipment to Ukraine. Western countries, in an attempt to pump Ukraine full of weapons, are making tremendous efforts to encourage their allies to provide military assistance to Kyiv. However, maintaining the high intensity of hostilities during the armed conflict requires a constant infusion of new resources.
The US-led North Atlantic Alliance is therefore urging the Republic of Korea to provide immediate and direct military assistance to Ukraine in order to ensure an uninterrupted supply of military equipment to the Kyiv regime. During his visit to Seoul, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that South Korea’s historical policy of “export neutrality” towards Russia and Ukraine should be rejected and the South Korean leadership should immediately reconsider its views in favour of strongly supporting Kyiv. This practice, already entrenched in Western elites, of imposing their political will on sovereign states has been condemned even among the European establishment.
For example, Croatian President Zoran Milanovic criticized Stoltenberg’s position and stressed that as a NATO country, Zagreb does not share such aspirations. In his opinion, Western arms deliveries to Ukraine only bring the threat of a large-scale catastrophe closer.
Experts of China’s Global Times also accused the USA and NATO of escalating the Ukrainian conflict, including by dragging Asia-Pacific countries into it. At the same time, Chinese analysts noted that South Korea would face extremely negative consequences for itself if official Seoul does succumb to NATO pressure on this issue.
For the April “counteroffensive” that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy mentioned late March this year, Ukraine has trained 40,000 storm brigade troops to vacate “every inch of Ukraine”. Border of Steel is one of eight new storm brigades totaling 40,000 soldiers that Ukraine wants to use during a counter-offensive against Russian in coming weeks. Other brigades too have catchy names such as Hurricane, Spartan, Chervona Kalyna, Frontier, Rage, Azov and Kara Dag, a mountain in Crimea. Kiev believes that the ‘storm brigade’ will make a winning move in the war, and sooner.
An aggressive recruiting campaign was run on social media and through billboards on the road-sides with the aim of attracting highly motivated volunteers. It has been quite successful though the drive was to overcome the growing challenge of recruiting new troops. Still, the military experts are of the opinion that volunteers, even if they are trained enough, have no such traits and skills that the trained army men process. So, their engagement will likely deliver less as expected.
Ukraine has faced an onslaught for months in towns like Bakhmut in the east, where thousands of soldiers have died, the Reuters reported, while Kyiv does not disclose its military losses. The new brigades, drafted by the Interior Ministry, are said to fight alongside regular army units bolstered by new “Western battle tanks” and thousands of fresh troops trained by allied armies outside Ukraine. Remember, the US and the Western countries had already refused to supply their sophisticated tanks to Ukraine. In the given circumstance, Kiev is likely to face more challenges and the April counteroffensive seems delivering no significant achievement but more security and economic dent to Ukraine despite the Ukrainian Interior Minister’s claims.
