Nato needs to bang Ukraine and Russia's heads together at Vilnius summit - Patrick Mercer

The only thing to emerge with any clarity from the last few days in Ukraine is that fighting is intensifying in several hotspots along the front lines.

Ukraine has been promising for several months that a great counter offensive is being planned and that it will most probably be aimed at Russian forces in the south with a view to cutting the land bridge that runs along the north coast of the Sea of Azov and connects the Donbas with Crimea. And now that is exactly the point at which a number of assaults have been launched but with little success so far.

The difficult thing is trying to assess what is meant by these Ukrainian operations. Slightly further north a number of attempts have been made to encircle the Russian garrison in the freshly, bloodily captured Bakhmut which, if you recall, we have been told is of no tactical significance despite the thousands of lives lost by Kiev trying to defend it.

Now it seems it remains so unimportant that Zelensky’s troops are attempting to retake it. But it’s further south that Ukraine’s more powerful attempts seem to be focused.

Doubtless the plan is a good one. If the land bridge can be severed then Crimea will be isolated and it’s hard to see how Russia could come back from that without a formal declaration of war and full mobilisation, neither of which is wanted by the Kremlin in Moscow’s politically febrile atmosphere.

Yet the forces committed to these attacks are puny. While Russia points to the fact that the Ukrainian units involved are from the newly raised and Western equipped Storm Brigades, which have been designated specifically for this offensive, the numbers don’t seem to support that conclusion.

Fewer than three brigades have been used so far and they have achieved very little beyond testing Russian defences and, maybe, provoking Putin’s men into unmasking their guns and attack aircraft capacity – and that could be the point.

Perhaps, along with the pinprick raids across the Russian border further north, these are just probes designed to alarm and frustrate the Russians. Perhaps there’s a much larger force poised to attack. Perhaps this will foil Russian intelligence and come from an unexpected quarter. Perhaps….

What is certain is that President Zelensky’s eyes are firmly fixed on the forthcoming NATO summit in Vilnius on July 11-12. He knows if he is to have any credibility at all at this meeting his troops will have had to have made great inroads into the Russian invaders, thus proving that Western aid has not been a waste of time, blood and money.

That supports the argument that current Ukrainian operations are no more than armed reconnaissance and that the major assault will take place just before the summit. But right or wrong, President Zelensky must be acutely aware of the contradictory viewpoints currently swirling around Kiev’s future membership of NATO.

Bear in mind that alliance’s tattered reputation, their utter defeat in Afghanistan, fighting between members, the accusations that America blew up Germany’s gas pipeline, the opposition Sweden and Finland suffered when they applied to join and even President Macron’s infamous declaration in 2019 that “…we are currently experiencing the brain death of NATO.” Make no mistake, it is Nato’s disarray that emboldened Russia to roll the dice towards Kiev in the winter of 2022.

And listen now to the fireside fusiliers – the retired generals and diplomats who seem to ignore the likelihood of a long-term, blood-soaked stand-off in the east. They airily assume it will all be over by Christmas when President Zelensky will once more enjoy his seaside mansion in the Crimea.

Now conjure with this: these same pundits are bandying about the phrase “catastrophic success”. This translates as a fear that Ukraine’s victory will be so overwhelming that she might be tempted to do something deeply ill judged, such as thrusting deep into Russian territory. They infer that Ukraine is so feral, so untamed, she needs to be muzzled by Nato membership for her own protection.

But it’s this sort of vapid rhetoric that might have provoked President Zelensky’s recent outburst to the Wall Street Journal,

“Tell me how many lives is worth one phrase at the Vilnius summit: ‘Ukraine will be in NATO after the conflict’? If they don’t see us there and don’t give us some kind of signal in Vilnius, I think Ukraine has nothing to do at this summit.”

Of course Kiev will go to Vilnius, but I guarantee that all we’ll hear is more empty war mongering. Wouldn’t a determined attempt by Nato to bang Ukraine’s and Russia’s heads together to stop the carnage be so much more welcome?