American Intel, Support Could Tip War’s Tide to Kyiv by Mid-May: Report

American intelligence shared with Ukraine’s military in real time is causing significant damage to Russian forces, and that combined with Western efforts to shore up Ukraine’s anti-aircraft defenses could tip the war’s balance in Kyiv’s favor by the middle of this month, according to a French report. That assessment comes from a reporter with the French newspaper Le Monde, Emmanuel Grynszpan, who returned to Paris after spending several weeks in Ukraine and fielded questions about what he observed in an online session with French readers yesterday. He said that long-range artillery like the Caesar howitzers France has given Ukraine “is capable of tipping the scales by hitting Russian artillery deep, if Ukrainian gunners are well trained and given accurate intelligence on Russian positions.” He added that “the Ukrainians already have a torrent of real-time US intelligence.”Mr. Grynszpan also said in the lively exchange that “if the West manages to plug the holes in the Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense, the Russians will no longer be able to take advantage of the asymmetry that exists today.” Should that come to pass, he added, “the balance could turn as soon as mid-May.” That is the most optimistic scenario, he said, and assumes the Ukrainians “counterattack as soon as the weapons reach them — that is to say very soon.” In addition to the howitzers, the French defense minister, Florence Parly, recently tweeted that Paris would send “thousands of shells” to Ukraine.Not that Vladimir Putin doesn’t have an array of tricks up his sleeve: In a tweet, Mr. Grynszpan suggested that while Russian missile strikes on Odessa’s airport over the weekend may have taken out a runway, the real target was probably the Ukrainian anti-aircraft system protecting Odessa. The French journalist is also one of the few to have spent a good chunk of time in the fiercely contested Donbas region of southeastern Ukraine. He told readers the front line is stable there because the Ukrainians have been building highly resistant positions for the past eight years that the Russians are so far unable to break through. To the east and north it is more complicated, he said, because “the Ukrainians did not have time to build well-equipped bunkers and trenches, so the lines therefore move in both directions.”The Donbas region is an industrial powerhouse of Ukraine, with 90 percent of the country’s coal reserves and important metalworks. In Mr. Grynszpan’s estimation, the big risk for the economy of Ukraine is not just the potential loss of access to the Black Sea, but an “exodus of investors should the war end with Russia occupying a vital section of the country.” American officials said on Monday night that Russian gains in Donbas have to date been “minimal at best,” to the point they could be called “quite frankly anemic,” and that Vladimir Putin’s troops appeared to be displaying a risk aversion to casualties, the Telegraph reported. The newspaper also reported that a Ukrainian counteroffensive pushed Russian forces 25 miles east of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city.It is not only a seasoned French reporter’s summing up and Pentagon prognostications that lend some credence to the tide turning against the Kremlin within a matter of weeks. The American charge d’affaires ad interim to Ukraine, Kristina Kvien, said on Monday during a press conference at Lviv that Washington aims to reopen its Kyiv embassy by the end of May. Ms. Kvien said that in the run-up she would be shuttling between Lviv and the capital. “If security staff tell us we can go back to Kyiv, then we will go back,” she said, adding: “The message to Russia is, ‘You have failed.’” Embassy staff from numerous countries who left Kyiv in the early stages of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have been returning steadily, and high-profile visits by the likes of Prime Minister Johnson and Speaker Pelosi point to a renewed if fragile sense of normalcy in the capital. Elsewhere, there is growing unease. Ukrainian military sources believe Russia will attempt to open up a new front against Ukraine from Moldova, the Times of London reported, and the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Michael Carpenter, said the Kremlin plans to annex large portions of eastern Ukraine later this month. Such moves are already afoot in Russian-occupied Kherson, in southern Ukraine, where a forced switch to the ruble from Ukrainian currency is under way. Whether the Russian “nibbling” of parts of eastern Ukraine, as another report in Le Monde put it, turns into a more permanent meal may depend on the appetites of Vladimir Putin. In a Facebook post on Tuesday, the governor of the Luhansk Oblast, Serhiy Gaidai, said that Russian forces will intensify their shelling of the region in the run-up to Moscow’s commemoration of Victory Day on May 9. Heavy equipment, including artillery and multiple launch rocket systems, will be used to try to destroy “everything in their way,” he said.

American Intel, Support Could Tip War’s Tide to Kyiv by Mid-May: Report

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