Ukraine’s armed forces were unlikely to embark on a major frontal offensive until they had weakened Moscow’s battlefield capability, he indicated. “That’s already happening too, probably,” he said. A second stage involved seeking out and eliminating Russian command and control centres, causing a breakdown of communications with troops in the field. The first saw the step-by-step elimination of Russia’s military potential, with strikes against logistical targets such as weapons depots and fuel dumps. Kostenko said the campaign was already unfolding in stages. According to Kostenko, Ukraine’s long-anticipated push should be understood as a rolling “spring-summer campaign” against an entrenched and powerful adversary. Speaking earlier the same day, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said his forces needed “some more time”. On Thursday night, Russian military bloggers erroneously reported that it had already started. There has been intense speculation that Kyiv is about to launch a major counteroffensive. This stretches for 900 miles, from the eastern city of Bakhmut where Ukrainian troops launched a local counterattack this week, to the southern provinces of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. These operations took place every night on “a tactical level”, he said, close to the frontline. Kostenko, a decorated special forces colonel, said his unit had destroyed dozens of Russian military objects. Two bombs fell on a Russian armoured fighting vehicle. That night Kostenko’s team repeated the exercise over occupied territory. The drone dropped a dummy anti-tank grenade on to a pile of tyres. It ascended to a height of 100 metres, buzzing above a yellow rapeseed field. At a secret location in southern Ukraine, Roman Kostenko watched a drone rise into the sky.
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