Zelensky's New Counteroffensive Plan Designed to 'Steal More Money From West': Former US Officer

Kiev’s alleged push for another counteroffensive, this time in the autumn, can be perceived as the West’s red herring, Scott Bennett, a former US Army psychological warfare officer and State Department counter-terrorism analyst, told Sputnik.

The Zelensky regime had elaborated a plan for a major offensive in the Kherson and Zaporozhye region in early October, securing the approval of Ukraine's sponsors in Washington and London, an informed source told Sputnik earlier this week.

According to the source, Kiev's special forces intend to seize control of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) as part of the blueprint.

All this could be Western countries' red herring, Scott Bennett suggested, pointing to the Ukrainian Army's futile attempts to break through Russian defensive lines.

“As a result of the resounding defeat of Ukraine, the West is frantically searching for an opportunity to try and escape the coming judgement and potential crimes against humanity charges for the death and destruction the Biden Administration has recklessly unleashed. And the nearest opportunity for distraction may be the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant,” Bennett argued.

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He recalled that many perceive this facility as "a target for destruction in a kind of ‘doomsday’ button that the US might try and push, in an attempt to generate sufficient chaos and destruction to distract the world away from the small scale battles of Ukraine, to the global implications of a nuclear disaster.” According to the former psychological warfare officer, the potential destruction of the Zaporozhye NPP would be the "ultimate expression" of this chaos.

He warned that if the facility is destroyed, “the resulting tsunami of social, political, economic disruption would disorganize opposition parties and protests against the current political elites in Europe and America, and justify a lockdown or martial law and police state mentality which could be endlessly extended.”

Bennett didn’t rule out that "the West will combine its best liars in the CIA, the Mossad, the MI6 to blame the event on Russia, and perhaps also simultaneously initiate some self-inflicted false flag attacks at the same time—such as assassinate Joe Biden and Zelensky at the same time and blame this on Russia in order to justify ‘police action’ and a drafting of Americans into the military for conflict with Russia.”

“We’ve seen it in Vietnam, and the 9/11 war on terror, so they may try and do it again, sad to say. The American media, the most professional liars and propagandists since [Nazi] Germany’s Goebbels, have already planted in the minds of Americans that ‘Trump supporters’ are becoming Russia-sympathizing domestic terrorists who may try and assassinate Biden, so the writing is on the wall,” the former State Department analyst added.

Commenting on how Zelensky's alleged new advance can be explained, given the failure of Kiev’s summer counteroffensive, Bennett claimed that the Ukrainian president is “a madman, or being told what to do by madmen—or both. I suspect the latter. “

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When asked if it’s safe to say that the alleged October counteroffensive plan is an attempt to appease the Ukrainian people and justify Western demands, Bennett said that it is “camouflage for Zelensky’s scheme to steal more money from the West, and show some kind of a “good faith effort” that would invite future ‘re-construction’ donations and investments by the West.

“The military reality is that Ukraine is destroyed, the war is essentially over, and the Russian military and people have prevailed and been victorious. Of course, the West is trying to distract away from this reality and create all kinds of miniature flash-points and terrorist attacks upon innocent civilians in Crimea and Moscow and elsewhere, but this too shall end,” the ex-State Department analyst asserted.

Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed last month that Ukrainian troops had failed to achieve any tangible results on all the frontlines since the beginning of their counteroffensive on June 4, something that he said had claimed the lives of more than 71,000 Ukrainian soldiers by the time.