Has the long-awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive begun? This question arose on Tuesday, June 13, when the Ukrainian army launched several offensive movements since the end of last week.
Heavy fighting began last week at several points on the front, possibly marking the beginning of a Ukrainian counteroffensive that had been expected for months.
Has the counterattack started?
"It seems that the Ukrainian counteroffensive has begun, at least its first active phase," General Olivier Kempf wrote on his blog on Sunday. Therefore, it is difficult for me to follow those who claim this is still a diversion," this strategic analyst and tireless observer of the war in Ukraine notes, reminding that an attack "does not necessarily mean an attack in one place and at once."
And this is the real difficulty for observers of the conflict: the Ukrainian army is now active in three directions. In Bakhmut, a city captured by the Russians in May after ten months of siege, Ukrainians are seizing territory on the flanks and may surround the town in the coming weeks. In the Zaporizhzhia region, south of the city of Orekhov, Ukrainians have been attacking since Wednesday, June 7, but "Ukraine's efforts will be in vain; not a single Russian position will be occupied," according to Olivier Kempf. On the other hand, south of Velikaya Novoselka, the third direction of the Ukrainian offensive on the border with Donbas, fighting has been very heavy since this weekend. Several Leopard tanks were destroyed there, and a column of Ukrainian armoured vehicles was hit by artillery.
The southern front has been in the spotlight since the end of this week
According to Russian evidence, Ukrainians in some places have reached the first line of defence at the Great Novoselka front, but "the Russian army seems to be holding on." "This is a huge surprise because she showed us her average result for the first 18 months of the war," admits Olivier Kempf. We expected that Russian troops would march in large numbers. At the moment, this is not the case, and this is a huge surprise. This is a special surprise for Ukrainians who did not expect such resistance."The losses of Ukrainians are great, but the result is obvious: the Russian first front line is open for more than 30 kilometres, and Moscow must pick up reinforcements that will be lost elsewhere," military historian K. Oshdrick Maas analyzes in Mastodon. These real successes have been achieved with difficulty. At the moment, they are only local.: the Russians still have a lot of fortified positions that have the material means to counterattack."
"About a week after the start of the dynamic phase of the counterattack, the results of 1 were recorded, but many unknowns remain. Progress is slow; the area is just over 100 km2 on different axes - more than in Russia over the past three months, reports The Journal of Defense and International Security. The loss of 25 to 40% of the troops participating in it would not be abnormal: the Defender is useful, and Russia has more than a year in the southern sector to create its defence system. »
"The fighting, as expected, is going hard, and we will have to wait at least a week to start assessing the trend," military historian Michel Goya wrote in a blog post on Friday.
Can Ukraine strike in other places?
So are these attacks the main attack on Ukrainians? The ongoing fighting requires "great efforts to prepare for a brutal fourth offensive elsewhere," as Olivier Kempf notes, "but, indeed, the Ukrainians have not yet brought in the bulk of their troops."Clement Mallin, studying at the Illyrian University of Lyon, identified the Ukrainian brigades at the front today. His conclusions are apparent: out of 12 new troops formed in Western countries with modern equipment, only three managed to be involved. This unit numbered at least 32,000 soldiers and had yet to be deployed to attack Russian defences.
