According to Western reports, even if moving slowly, the Ukrainian counteroffensive is making gradually increasing progress in the Zaporizhia region and Donbass, with Ukraine slowly figuring out how to defend the territory it holds and how to recapture occupied territory. Some experts, of course, consider these estimates to be too optimistic.
New Reports on the Front
“The Russian army continues to focus its main efforts in the directions of Kupyansk, Liman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Mariyansk,” Hania Maliar, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, said on her Telegram channel on Monday. “In the direction of Kupyansk, the enemy during the week actively carried out raids with the aim of driving our units outside the boundary line of the Oskil River and looked for weak points in our defense. Today the fighting continues, but our defenders are firmly holding their positions.”
By September, Ukraine had managed to recapture all of Kupyansk, crossing the Oskil River. This fact was an important factor in the successful Ukrainian counterattack in Kharkiv.
The recent fighting near the Oskil River comes a week after Ukrainian military officials said Russia had massed more than 100,000 troops and 900 tanks in that part of the battlefield.
“Wagner’s mercenary forces are probably trying to advance to the Oskil River again, so as to create a gray zone around the Lugansk region, the possession of which is a critical objective of Russia for the war,” the Ministry of Defense of Britain said on Sunday.
In an attempt to defend this sector of the front, Ukraine appears to be using cluster munitions donated by the US, according to a publication by The Telegraph.
In all other sectors of the same front, Russian forces continue attacks to clear the Serebriansky Forest. In Bahmut, she added that the Ukrainian forces “continue to advance gradually but steadily. Heavy fighting continues to take place in the area of Klitschivka, Avdiivka and Kurdyomovka.”
Russia’s Operation Z Telegram channel admitted on Sunday that Ukrainian forces had breached Russian defenses around Klitschivka.
Meanwhile, as Ukrainian forces push south into the Zaporizhia region toward Berdyansk and Melitopol, they have managed to liberate 12.7 square kilometers of land this week and about 200 square kilometers since the counteroffensive began last month. Of course all these advances were made with a lot of blood.
