Ukraine's counteroffensive against Russia slowly makes progress
It's hardly a blitzkrieg, and the bulk of the forces have yet to be committed, but Ukraine is recapturing settlement after settlement in the south
Ukraine might be a victim of its own success.
Last year, Kyiv launched a surprise operation to recapture territory in Kharkiv Oblast from Russian forces, liberating territory roughly the size of Denmark in the space of five days. That campaign, a closely guarded secret, was unforeseen by just about everyone — especially the Russians. But it set high expectations for Ukraine’s long anticipated spring counteroffensive.
That spring has finally arrived, and Ukraine has gone on the march in the southeastern regions of Zaporizhzia and Donetsk. But so far, Ukraine has been tight-lipped about its slow but measurable gains.
“Words are very unnecessary, they can only do harm,” Oleksii Reznikov, Ukraine’s minister of defense tweeted on June 4, quoting Depeche Mode.
That same day, Ukraine liberated the village of Novodarivka, but waited eight days before publicly acknowledging the victory. As of Wednesday, the Ukrainian counteroffensive has liberated at least eight settlements, according to Deputy Defense Minister Hannah Malyar.
Yet instead of the lightning fast advances seen last October, the fighting has been far more methodical. In this respect, the spring offensive is likely to resemble the months-long slog for Kherson, another region in the south, which took upward of three months for Ukraine to partially liberate.
One Estonian military analyst who goes by “Karl,” told Yahoo News that a slow grind was to be expected. “The element of surprise as to where the Ukrainian counteroffensive would come from was not possible,” he said. “The Russians were waiting from all directions.” Ukraine, Karl added, “is far from having deployed all of its reserve units to the battle. At the moment, it is not a massive offensive.”
Rather, it is a series of probing exercises in which Ukrainian forces find and exploit Russian weaknesses while moving carefully toward the main defensive line, the so-called Surovikin Line, named after the former commander of all Russian forces in Ukraine, which consists of snaking minefields, trenches and concrete anti-tank barriers.
“The main body of Ukrainian offensive capability hasn’t been committed yet,” Sir Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London, told Times Radio on June 17. “It seems they are waiting to see if there are areas where they can make a breakthrough.”
For months Ukraine has been stockpiling U.S.-sent artillery ammunition, especially for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), which continue to strike Russian targets daily.
Also now in Ukraine’s arsenal are U.K.-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles, which are capable of hitting any position in the country and have inflicted heavy losses on Russian forces.
On June 12, Maj. Gen. Sergei Goryachev was killed in a Ukrainian missile strike, the first Russian general taken out in Ukraine in months. Anatoliy Shariy, a popular pro-Russian blogger, claimed the Storm Shadow was responsible. On June 14, Shariy also said Ukraine had struck a formation of Russian troops near Kreminna, a city in Luhansk, that had assembled to be addressed by a commanding officer. At least 100 soldiers were killed, according to Russian bloggers, with another hundred wounded, making it one of the most devastating single strikes of the war in recent months.
But Kyiv faces its own difficulties, including superior Russian air power in the form of Sukhoi fighter jets and Ka-52 Alligator attack helicopters, of which Russia has recently added 20 more to its base in occupied Berdyansk.
Alligators played a major role in an early setback for Ukraine’s spring counteroffensive near Orikhiv in Zaporizhzhia. An armored group of the Ukrainian 47th Mechanized Brigade was attempting to advance when it inadvertently entered a minefield. The vehicles were then struck by artillery fire, as well as antitank missiles launched from the Russian helicopters. At least five U.S.-provided Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and one German-made Leopard 2 tank were disabled and abandoned.
The Russian government has obsessively circulated imagery from that single incident to suggest Kyiv’s campaign has failed and Western military aid is a waste. “I think the Russians have shown us the same five vehicles about a thousand times from 10 different angles,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters at a press conference at the NATO summit on June 15. More importantly, the Western armor did exactly what it was meant to do. The majority of the Ukrainian crews survived unharmed, and the soldiers of the 47th Brigade were effusive in their praise of the donated vehicles that kept them alive. On June 13, the United States pledged an additional 15 Bradleys to Ukraine in its latest round of military aid.
Despite some difficulties, Ukraine has also begun to advance slowly around Orikhiv, the site of its early blunder.
Among those who think Russia is performing miserably is Yevgeny Prigozhin, the serially sanctioned oligarch and financier of the mercenary Wagner Group. For months he has inveighed against the Russian Ministry of Defense and General Staff, possibly as a way to elevate himself politically inside Russia. In a four-minute rant released Wednesday, Prigozhin said: “The Ukrainian counteroffensive is bringing us serious losses and problems, which are hushed up, which the Russian people don’t know about.”
