Ukraine offensive in "third phase": Defense Minister gives insight into the planning

Created: 09/13/2022, 05:05

By: Richard Strobl, Andreas Schmid, Franziska Schwarz

Ukrainian soldiers and their national flag stand on top of a Russian tank captured in eastern Ukraine on Thursday, September 8, 2022.

© IMAGO/Vudi Xhymshiti

Ukraine is continuing its counter-offensive.

Russian soldiers are apparently fleeing.

News ticker on combat events in the Ukraine war.

• Ukraine

  probably reaches

  Luhansk

  region : reports of mass looting by fleeing Russians.

• Military experts

  on

  Ukraine counter-offensive

  : Putin makes “fatal mistake”.

• The course of the front

  in the

  Ukraine war

  : experts see a shift.

• This

  news ticker

  on

  military events

  in the

  Ukraine war

  is constantly updated.

Update from September 12, 10:55 p.m .:

According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine has recaptured 6,000 square kilometers of previously Russian-occupied areas in its counter-offensive since the beginning of September.

The soldiers "liberated" this area in the south and east and would "advance further," Zelenskyy said in his evening video address.

Update from September 12, 9:45 p.m .:

According to their own statements, the Ukrainian authorities have discovered four bodies with “traces of torture” in a recaptured town in eastern Ukraine.

Initial investigations indicated that the people found in Zaliznychne in the Kharkiv region were killed "by Russian soldiers during the occupation of the place," the regional prosecutor's office wrote on Monday on the online network Facebook.

Three of the bodies were found on private property, one on a factory site near the train station.

According to the public prosecutor's office, after the Ukrainian recapture of several towns, the authorities received information that several citizens had been killed by Russian soldiers.

The bodies would now be examined by coroners, the law enforcement agency said.

It is being investigated for murder and "violations of martial law".

Ukraine offensive in "third phase": Defense Minister gives insight into the planning

Update from September 12, 9:46 p.m .:

Ukraine’s counter-offensive is currently looking like a resounding success.

Now the Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Resnikov has declared that the offensive is currently in the “third phase”.

According to reports by

and

, Resnikov told the French newspaper

that in the first phase attempts had been made to prevent Russia from further attacks.

In the second phase, attempts were made to stabilize the front line.

According to this, the army leadership also designed the plan after the arms deliveries from the West.

After the delivery of the Himar missile systems by the United States, the supply lines to the Russians began to be cut off.

Update from September 12, 6:54 p.m .:

Ukraine’s counter-offensive apparently continues.

CNN reports that Kiev's troops have crossed the Seversky Donets River and captured the city of Svyatohirsk.

A Ukrainian flag flies at the city's administrative building.

According to the report, this will make it much more difficult for Russian troops to withdraw from the region.

Especially if Ukraine's soldiers advance even further east.

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Russia is recruiting new soldiers - "from the poorest" regions

Update from September 12, 6:42 p.m.:

Russia has apparently recruited new soldiers for the Ukraine war.

The

, citing Ukraine's secret service, reports that volunteers from the far east have been recruited for the army.

Accordingly, these are people “from the poorest and coldest regions of Russia”.

Ukraine probably reaches Luhansk region: reports of mass looting by fleeing Russians

Update from September 12, 4:30 p.m

.: Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive continuing?

According to their own statements, Kiev's troops are pushing back the Russian occupiers in some areas in the east and south.

So also in the Donbass region of Luhansk?

Luhansk Oblast Governor Serhiy Haidai posted a photo of a Ukrainian flag on Facebook.

According to the

, it is said to be hanging over a transition tower in Kuzemivka, a village in Luhansk Oblast near the border with Kharkiv Oblast.

According to its own statements on Sunday evening, Ukraine has so far recaptured around 3,000 square kilometers of land.

To put this into perspective: That corresponds to around three times the area of ​​Berlin.

However, Russian troops still control a large number of areas.

The intelligence service of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense is now reporting on mass looting by Russian soldiers as they “escape” from Kharkiv Oblast.

Russian soldiers would steal generators and residents' personal belongings.

For example, phones and computers were stolen.

According to the secret service, there were also cases of looting in educational institutions. 

Ukraine war: Total power failure in Kharkiv

Update from September 12, 2:40 p.m

.: Another total power failure in Ukraine.

This time the metropolis Kharkiv is affected.

"Due to the shelling, objects of critical infrastructure are out of order, as a result, electricity and water supply failed," the city's mayor Ihor Terekhov wrote on Telegram.

Work is in progress to fix the problems.

The evening before, there had already been a brief, widespread power outage in the Sumy, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Poltava and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

Military experts on Ukraine counter-offensive: Putin makes “fatal mistake”

First report from September 12

: Kiev/Washington - The think tank "Institute for the Study of War" (ISW) in Washington has been publishing regular analyzes of combat events since the Russian invasion of Ukraine - the most recent does not sound good for Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin.

The reason for this assessment is Ukraine's successes in its counter-offensive.

"Putin risks a common but deadly mistake by waiting too long to send reinforcements to the Luhansk front,"

quoted the paper as

The ISW military experts even see a "time-and-space dilemma" for Putin, because the Russian army should actually withdraw troops from other battlefields in order to set up a new line of defense in the areas occupied by them - but the ISW sees no signs of this .

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The course of the front in the Ukraine war: Experts see a shift

The day before, the ISW reported that President Volodymyr Zelensky's Ukrainian soldiers had regained more territory within five days than the Russian troops had occupied in total since April.

"The liberation of Izyum will be Ukraine's greatest military success since the victory in the Battle of Kyiv in March," it said in its analysis of the situation.

As a result, Russia's planned advance on the Donbass from the north failed, the experts said.