Secretary of State Antony Blinken said heeding calls from Russia and others, including China, for a ceasefire and negotiations to end the war now would result in a “Potemkin peace” that…
By Susie Blann and Matthew Lee | Associated Press
“Potemkin Village” was a tactic Russia’s 18th century government minister Grigory Potemkin used to build brightly painted village fronts to create an illusion of prosperity for Russia’s empress. Ukrainian officials have given confusing signals about whether a counteroffensive is coming or already underway. Some have suggested it will not be a barrage of simultaneous attacks across the entire front line, rather a series of more targeted, limited strikes, first to weaken Russia’s supply lines and infrastructure, then broaden and intensify.“This is not a movie,” he told reporters in Kyiv. “It is hard to say how you’ll see the counteroffensive. The main point here is for Russia to see it.
Blinken described the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a catastrophic strategic failure for Moscow that had strengthened, not weakened, NATO, the European Union and Ukraine. Russia has become more isolated, he said, shackled to China as a junior partner in a relationship that Beijing has increasingly come to resent, and no longer able to use energy as a political tool in countries it once counted as its own or satellites.
In Kyiv, in Moscow’s sixth air attack in six days, Ukrainian air defenses late Thursday and early Friday intercepted all 15 cruise missiles and 21 attack drones targeted at the capital, Ukraine’s chief of staff, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said. The Ukrainian capital was simultaneously attacked from different directions by Iranian-made Shahed drones and cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea region, senior Kyiv official Serhii Popko wrote on Telegram.
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