The 4 navy personnel, together with officers, spoke on the situation of anonymity as a result of they weren’t approved to publicly talk about the battlefield developments.
Russian navy bloggers additionally reported heavy combating within the Zaporizhzhia area, part of the entrance line that has lengthy been seen as a probable location of the brand new Ukrainian marketing campaign.
By slicing south by way of the flat fields of Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv’s forces might intention to sever the “land bridge” between mainland Russia and the occupied Crimean Peninsula, slicing off essential Russian provide traces. They may additionally try and liberate the town of Melitopol, which Russia has established because the area’s occupied capital, and Enerhodar, the place the Zaporizhzhia nuclear energy plant is situated.
Valeriy Shershen, a spokesman for Ukrainian navy items situated throughout a lot of the jap and southern entrance line, confirmed “extra exercise” within the Zaporizhzhia area however added that he “wouldn’t say it’s one thing main.” Within the Zaporizhzhia area, Ukrainian forces are typically “nonetheless in a protection operation,” Shershen mentioned in an interview.
Ukrainian officers have mentioned repeatedly in current days that they’d not make an official announcement that the counteroffensive had begun, and that no single motion would mark its begin.
Within the interview, Shershen additionally described “small counteroffensive actions” of a neighborhood scale, significantly the battle for Velyka Novosilka, a village within the Donetsk area simply east of the Zaporizhzhia area. The Russians, he added, have stepped up their shelling within the Zaporizhzhia area in anticipation of a doable Ukrainian assault.
The offensive is predicted to unfold over the course of months and can function a pivotal check of a U.S.-led technique to arrange Ukrainian forces with probably the most superior warfare techniques.
Igor Strelkov, a former officer of Russia’s safety service who performed a brutal function in Russia’s unlawful annexation of Crimea in 2014 and later its conflict within the jap Donbas area, mentioned Thursday that it was clear Ukraine’s counteroffensive had begun.
“Maybe, we are able to now reliably say that the offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine started five-six days in the past,” Strelkov wrote on Telegram, offering evaluation of troop actions at completely different scorching spots alongside the entrance.
The counteroffensive is intensifying as a disaster builds in Ukraine’s southern Kherson area, the place a breach of the Russian-controlled Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric energy plant on Tuesday despatched water dashing over the banks of the Dnieper River and into dozens of residential communities in Ukrainian- and Russian-controlled territories. The huge flooding has redrawn the battlefield in that a part of the southern entrance.
Within the Zaporizhzhia area, fierce obstacles will stand in Ukraine’s means. Russian forces have spent months fortifying the world with mines and trenches. A member of 1 brigade collaborating within the offensive within the southeast described “steady heavy combating.”
“It is rather troublesome on the sector,” he mentioned Thursday morning. “Our artillery and aviation are working, however the Russians’ are working, as effectively. It’s troublesome for us and for them. The armed forces are advancing. However not as quick as we wished.”
Isobel Koshiw in Kyiv, Ukraine; Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Lativa; and Francesca Ebel in London contributed to this report.