After a week of heavy fighting, the real tests of Ukraine’s counteroffensive lie ahead, with the country’s troops some distance from Russia’s main defensive line and the bulk of forces prepared for the push still on standby, Reuters says.
The risk for Ukrainians is that before they get the main Russian defensive line, they take too much attrition to breach it, according to Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
The Ukrainian military created 12 armored brigades before the operation, nine of them equipped by the West, with one brigade typically comprising up to 4,000 soldiers. Additionally, the Interior Ministry formed eight assault brigades of 40,000 soldiers.
Poland-based military analyst Konrad Muzyka said only three of those 12 brigades had been spotted in combat, with the main thrusts coming near Orikhiv, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, and Donetsk’s Velyka Novosilka further to the east.
“Those thrusts may indicate Ukraine’s generals have their eye on Tokmak, an occupied town in Zaporizhzia region some 25 km from the front line. A further 50 km away lies the city of Melitopol. Both settlements are heavily fortified,” Reuters says referring to Muzyka.
Muzyka’s main concern is that the progress appears to have stopped after the first week of fighting.
Kyiv has imposed an information blackout to maintain operational security, making independent battlefield assessments hard.
Military analyst Jack Watling, in his RUSI think tank article, suggests that it is too early to determine the success or failure of the offensive.
Read also:
- Frontline report: Russian counterattack fails in south; Ukrainian HIMARS destroy Russian artillery, reserves
- Russian army falls back to defensive positions along entire front line in Zaporizhzhia Oblast – Ukraine’s General Staff
- Ukraine made limited gains in counteroffensive at three directions on June 13 – ISW
- Ukraine liberates 3 km², advances 200-1,400m in “some directions” in three days – military
- Frontline report: Ukrainian troops gain ground in the south
