Zelenskyy says counteroffensive actions under way against Russia

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said counter-offensive actions were underway against invading Russian forces in his country, but declined to release additional details.

The Ukrainian leader made the comment Saturday at a press conference in Kiev, standing next to visiting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

He was answering a question about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s statement a day earlier that Ukraine’s counter-offensive had begun and that Ukrainian forces suffered “considerable casualties”.

Zelenskyy said that “counter-offensive, defensive actions are taking place in Ukraine. I will not speak of what stage or phase they are in.”

“I am in contact with our commanders from different directions every day,” he added, citing the names of five of Ukraine’s top military leaders.

“Everyone is positive. Pass this on to Putin.”

Top Ukrainian authorities have not yet announced that a full-scale counter-offensive was under way, although some Western analysts have said fighting has intensified and the use of reserve forces suggests that this was the case.

In his late night video address, Zelenskyy gave few details as he urged troops to keep fighting.

“Thank you to all those who hold their positions and those who move forward,” he said, citing the eastern and southern fronts, where the fighting is fiercest.

Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces had repelled enemy attacks around Bakhmut and Marinka, sites of heavy fighting in the east. Russian troops, it said, “continue to suffer heavy casualties that they are trying to cover up”.

Deputy Defense Secretary Hanna Maliar made it clear on Telegram that the military would not make any statements until positions on the battlefield were clear.

“Ask yourself… am I willing to receive information about the liberation of this or that city, not when our troops enter it, but as soon as they establish a stronghold?” she wrote.

Ukraine has said for months that it plans to launch a significant counter-offensive to recapture Russian-held lands in the south and east. But it is enforcing strict operational silence for now and has denied starting the main operation.

With little independent reporting from the front lines, it was difficult to assess the state of the fighting.

‘Meaningful’ operations

Britain’s defense ministry, meanwhile, said Ukraine had conducted “significant” operations in several eastern and southern parts over the past 48 hours, breaching Russian defenses in places.

“In some areas, Ukrainian troops have probably made good progress and penetrated the first line of Russian defenses. In other cases, Ukrainian progress has been slower,” it said, also typical of the Russian military’s performance as mixed.

“Some [Russian] units are likely conducting credible maneuver-defense operations, while others have retreated in some disarray, amid mounting reports of Russian casualties as they retreat through their own minefields,” it said.

Ukraine’s counter-offensive is expected to use thousands of troops trained and equipped by the West, but Russia has built massive fortifications in occupied territory to prepare, while Kiev also lacks air supremacy.

Patrick Bury, a defense and security expert at the University of Bath in the UK, told Al Jazeera that the counter-offensive was likely to be a “long game” and that the initial operations “would probably be the bloodiest part for the Ukrainians”.

“It is highly unlikely that we will see a rapid breakthrough, as we saw in Kharkiv in September, where the Ukrainians, with the help of allied intelligence, were able to identify spots where exhausted and ruined Russian units and essentially drove past them and kept going. It won’t be like that,” he said.

“The Russians have had months to prepare major offenses and these are … defensive positions with trenches, bunkers and minefields in particular, designed to lead attackers into killing zones.”

The Ukrainians would likely suffer “many casualties” during the attack.

“It’s much easier to defend: you know the ground, you know what the plan is, you know, ‘I’ll stay in this position until they get here and then I’ll fall back to here, and then to that. Another function will support me,” said Bury.

“It is significantly easier for the defenders, as the Ukrainians found out when they were defending last year. It is much more difficult for the attackers,” he added. “Yes, you have some intelligence prep, but you don’t know exactly where everything is; it’s all new to you, the terrain and you get shot at etc while trying to move forward; so it is much more difficult for them.”

The south is seen as a key strategic priority for a Ukrainian advance that could aim to recapture Europe’s largest nuclear power plant and cut Russia’s land bridge to the occupied Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, dividing Russian forces. touch.

The fighting there has drawn renewed attention after the destruction of the Russian-controlled Kakhovka dam along the Dnieper River on Tuesday.

Flooding from the breached dam has forced thousands to flee their homes and fueled fears of humanitarian and environmental catastrophe. Ukraine says Russia blew up the dam. Moscow accuses Kiev of firing at it.

Trudeau, the first foreign leader to visit Ukraine since the dam burst, offered financial, military and moral support.

He pledged 500 million Canadian dollars ($375 million) in new military aid, on top of the more than 8 billion Canadian dollars ($6 billion) that Canada has already provided since the war began in February 2022, and announced 10 million Canadian dollars ($7.5 million). ) for humanitarian aid in flood control.

Trudeau said the dam’s collapse was “a direct result of the Russian war,” but he did not directly blame Moscow.

In other developments, the British government also said it will give £16 million ($20 million) in humanitarian aid to those affected by the floods.

Most of the money is channeled through international organizations such as the Red Cross and the United Nations. The UK also sends boats, communal water filters, water pumps and waders to Ukraine.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, meanwhile, said on Saturday that he wanted to continue talking to Putin and plans to do so again “soon”.

Scholz has spoken to Putin by phone several times since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.

The chancellor said the basis for a “fair peace” between Russia and Ukraine is the withdrawal of Russian troops.

“That needs to be understood,” he said.