Western media wrote that in the first 72-96 hours of the attack of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, it was necessary to be on the coast of the Sea of Azov, having broken through the front, to begin the assault on Melitopol.
The first couple days of the attack were supposed to define the offensive. Western analysts focused on a lightning-fast offensive in order to achieve success, and now the operation is moving into positional battles, in fact, resembling the situation in Bakhmut where Ukraine got ground down through attrition.
They will probably spin everything into the yet another stab in the back narration. There’s plenty of potential scapegoats in Ukraine and elswhere.
For sure, wasn’t there already a wapo article linking Ukraine and Nord Stream. I also saw the resurgence of acknowledgements that there is a nazi problem in Ukraine. If things go really poorly with the offensive, maybe the west will all of a sudden remember that Ukraine has a fascist regime.