In a short but surely carefully crafted post on the messaging app Telegram, the commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces has ratcheted up speculation that a massive counteroffensive against Russia’s occupying forces could be imminent.
“The time has come to take back what is ours,” General Valerii Zaluzhnyi wrote Saturday morning.
The text appears underneath a video just over a minute in length showing Ukrainian forces apparently training at sunrise.
The video shows an array of Western-provided equipment, including German-made Leopard 2 tanks, seen as one of the key battlefield acquisitions by Ukraine in recent months, as well as US-made MRAP (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected) armored vehicles, M777 artillery pieces and HIMARS rocket launchers.
The video ends with soldiers and their commander chanting a defiant message: “Ukraine, my native motherland, Lord, our heavenly father, bless our decisive offensive, our sacred revenge, our holy victory.”
Officially the counteroffensive is yet to begin. As we have previously reported, the different signals from Ukraine may be an attempt to keep Moscow off-balance.