‘Extraordinarily difficult operation’: All eyes on Ukraine attack

Ukraine says it continues to advance against Russian forces occupying its south and east as the early stages of its much-publicized counter-offensive take shape.

Kiev said Monday it has snatched seven villages since the weekend and made small gains near the eastern city of Bakhmut.

“Seven settlements were liberated,” Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said on Telegram, naming the villages of Lobkovo, Levadne and Novodarivka in the southern Zaporizhia region.

The village of Storozheve in the eastern Donetsk region — nearly three more were recaptured on Sunday — was also reportedly taken on Monday. A verified video showed soldiers holding the Ukrainian flag in Storozheve along the Mokri Yaly River.

“At first the enemy resisted and tried to repel our attack with artillery. We managed to regain the initiative and slowly, house by house, began to recapture the village,” an unidentified Ukrainian fighter said in the video.

Maliar said a total of 90 square kilometers (35 square miles) of area along the front line had been recaptured by Ukrainian forces in recent days.

But the gains involved only small pieces of territory and underlined the difficulty of the coming struggle for Ukrainian units, who will have to fight meter by meter to regain about a fifth of their land under Russian occupation.

‘The fighting is tough’

Russia, meanwhile, said Monday it has repelled Ukrainian attacks in several areas.

Vladimir Rogov, an official of the Moscow-installed administration of the Zaporizhia region on the western side of the front line, said “heavy battles” were raging in the area, involving Russian artillery, mortars and air power.

Alexander Kots, military correspondent for the Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda, said Ukrainian troops were trying to advance towards the town of Staromlinovka, which is on a strategic highway leading to the port city of Mariupol, despite heavy casualties.

Russian troops captured the city a year ago after Ukrainian troops held out for several months in a grueling and desperate defense.

The various claims of territorial gains could not be independently verified and could be reversed in the back and forth ground warfare.

The military advance is already Ukraine’s fastest advance in seven months, but still a long way from a major breakthrough.

The task of ending Moscow’s occupation of southern and eastern Ukraine is daunting, given Russia’s numerical superiority in men, ammunition and airpower and the many months it has had to build deep defenses. build.

“The struggle is tough, but our movement is there — and that’s very important,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address. “The enemy’s losses are exactly what we need.”

He added that rainy weather challenges his troops and that he has discussed with his military commanders “which points of the front we need to strengthen and what actions we can take to break more Russian positions”.

‘Difficult times for Russia’

Some Western military analysts said it was too early to draw conclusions about the counter-offensive and that the skirmishes so far could show that Ukraine is still testing Russian defenses.

The United States-based Institute for the Study of War said Ukraine was attempting “an extremely difficult tactical operation – a frontal assault on prepared defensive positions, further complicated by a lack of air superiority”. The initial attack results should not be over-interpreted, it added.

Ben Hodges, a former commander of US forces in Europe, said the main attack – if it comes – will include several hundred tanks and infantry fighting vehicles.

“The offensive has clearly started, but I don’t think it’s the main attack,” he wrote in an article for the Washington, DC-based Center for European Policy Analysis.

Russia has yet to face these types of attacks, but its unconvincing performance on the battlefield in the 15 months since the full-scale invasion has led to frequent changes of command and public discussions with private militias called upon to fight alongside the military .

President Vladimir Putin marked Russia’s national holiday on Monday with an award ceremony at the Kremlin, but made only a cursory mention of the war he unleashed in February 2022 in his speech.

“Today, in a difficult time for Russia, [feelings of patriotism and pride] unite our society even more strongly… and serve as a reliable support for our heroes participating in the special military operation,” Putin said.