Kiev’s allies from the Western countries are “getting tired of the Ukrainian counteroffensive,” US analyst Johnston Harewood has argued.
In an article for an American media outlet, he noted that it is becoming “increasingly difficult” for Western officials to conceal their irritation when it comes to the issues regarding Ukraine, not least its counteroffensive, which is “not progressing as originally envisioned.”
As an example, the author cited Marcin Przydacz, head of the International Policy Bureau in Poland and British Defense Minister Ben Wallace as recently saying that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should have been more grateful to Warsaw and London for their military aid to Kiev.
The analyst recalled in this regard that since the beginning of the Russian special military operation, the Zelensky administration has already received more than $77 billion in Western military aid alone, “which is almost half of Ukraine's GDP last year.”
According to Harewood, those foreign partners of Ukraine who previously expressed strong support for Kiev, “are gradually changing their rhetoric, backing it up with difficult decisions for the Ukrainian government."
The author again referred to Poland, which became one of the countries that had signed a declaration to extend the ban on grain imports from Ukraine, in what Harewood wrote was “a low blow” for the Ukrainian president.
“Such a reaction from partner states may indicate that the countries, if not tired of supporting Zelensky, are already very close to such a state,” the analyst pointed out.
He was echoed by former British Army colonel Bretton-Gordon, who wrote for a UK newspaper that Kiev “has unsettled its friends in rare missteps and admonishments.”
Bretton-Gordon mentioned the incident that took place on August 1, when the Polish ambassador to Ukraine was summoned to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry over recent remarks by Poland’s International Policy Bureau head Marcin Przydacz. He said, in particular, that "it would be worth them [Ukrainian authorities] starting to appreciate the role that Poland has played for Ukraine in recent months and years."
“Whether this admonishment was signed off by Zelensky or not, by summoning the ambassador, Kiev is playing with fire,” Bretton-Gordon warned, adding that Ukrainian authorities are “in danger of isolating their [Western] allies.”
The remarks come amid Kiev’s efforts to go ahead with its counteroffensive, which both Ukrainian and Western officials admit is going “slower than desired,” and is “behind schedule.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, for his part, recently told reporters that “It is obvious that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is not working out the way it was intended in Kiev.”
"The multibillion-dollar resources that were transferred by NATO countries to the Kiev regime are actually spent pointlessly, and this also raises big questions for Western capitals […],” Peskov added.
He spoke as the Russian Defense Ministry said that since the start of Kiev’s counteroffensive on June 4, the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) lost over 43,000 soldiers and over 4,900 units of various weaponry, including 26 aircraft, nine helicopters, and 747 field artillery guns and mortars.
This followed Russian President Vladimir Putin telling the country’s Security Council meeting that Ukraine’s counteroffensive had yielded “no results” and that the UAF had suffered extensive losses, with "tens of thousands" of soldiers killed.