Ukraine has reportedly banned foreign journalists from visiting frontline positions without any written permission by its Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny.
Switzerland’s Le Temps newspaper reported that this act of censorship could be explained by Kiev’s reluctance to make huge losses public after its troops were unable to break through the Russian defense lines amid their counteroffensive.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Anna Malyar, for her part, earlier argued that Western media reports about the deployment of the elite 82nd Airborne Brigade had led to strikes on its positions.
All this shows that “Ukraine is failing in its offensive and they're looking for somebody to blame instead of blaming themselves,” retired CIA intelligence officer Larry Johnson said.
Referring to the counteroffensive, he said that Kiev is unwilling to “take responsibility for launching an attack that has no chance of succeeding.” He added: “Primarily because they lack air cover, they're now trying to blame journalists or someone else.”
“What's so absurd about this? You remember we spent the first three months of 2023 hearing about Ukraine saying, ‘We're going to attack or launch a counteroffensive’. I mean, who does that? If you're going to launch an offensive, you're going to sucker-punch people. You want to surprise them. You don’t want to announce it in advance. So this is just one more sign of Ukrainian failure,” Johnson underscored.
The ex-CIA officer argued that even if Ukraine had “some extra reserves hanging around”, it would “not change the situation on the battlefield.” He also theorized over a hypothetical scenario assuming the Ukrainian military had gotten the better of Russian troops during Kiev’s counteroffensive.
“If Ukraine was winning, if Ukraine was defeating Russia, they [Kiev authorities] would have reporters out there on the front lines, they'd have cameras. They'd be doing live updates every 15 minutes, because there would be good news to tell. Well, there's no good news. There's very bad news. Ukraine is getting defeated and they’re trying to cover that up. And the only problem is as long as there are smartphones, government can't cover up what's happening on the ground,” Johnson concluded.
The Ukrainian military launched its much-touted counteroffensive in early June after multiple postponements. Russian President Vladimir Putin underscored late last month that "the enemy was not successful in all directions of the fight.” According to him, “All counteroffensive attempts have been stopped, and the enemy has been pushed back with heavy losses."
According to the Russian Defense Ministry's estimates, Ukraine's losses in the counteroffensive were about 43,000 troops and 4,900 units of military equipment as of August 4.