A Ukrainian tank, this Wednesday near Chasiv Yar (Donetsk region). Iryna Rybakova (AP)
In an operation that can last weeks or months, Ukraine is trying to take an axe to the territory gained by the Russian army with the great invasion launched in February last year. Clashes between local troops and Russian invaders in the southeast of the country have intensified in recent hours, particularly in the Zaporizhia region, Ukrainian and Western testimonies confirm anonymously, in a sign that the expected Ukrainian counteroffensive is taking hold. The first signs were recorded on Monday.
The scene of this new battle unleashed is Zaporizhia, the strategic region in which Ukraine tries to break the corridor that allows Russia to connect the Crimean peninsula, illegally annexed in 2014, with Donbas (the territory that includes the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk). Zaporizhia is also home to Europe's largest nuclear power plant, occupied since March 2022 by Russian forces. In Zaporizhia there are indications that they are already fighting the German-made Leopard tanks that Kiev has received from different European countries, including Spain, as seen in some images circulating on social networks and Russian military sources say. Meanwhile, Ukraine maintains that it continues to advance against enemy positions in Bakhmut (Donetsk region), a town that Russia has almost completely controlled since May after long months of fierce fighting.
Some of the confirmations of the great military operation even comes from the environment of President Volodímir Zelenski, according to the US network ABC, although the president keeps silent in public so as not to frustrate it. One of the most novel advances has occurred around the city of Orijiv, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said on Telegram. Zelenskiy already acknowledged at the end of May in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that they had everything ready for the counteroffensive. The government and the army have insisted that there would be no flag for the start of the operation, but, at the same time, they have not stopped offering clues about its imminence.
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The Russian command itself recognizes that Ukraine has launched in the last hours a serious attack in Zaporizhia, a region controlled 80% by Moscow, but, according to the Russian Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, they have managed to repel it causing "serious casualties" among the 1,500 Ukrainian troops. Three of the Leopard tanks were destroyed, according to Russian military sources cited by Reuters. In another sign that this new phase in the war has already begun, the British Ministry of Defense notes in its daily report that the local army has taken the initiative on the battlefield. Two US media outlets, ABC and The Washington Post, began the counteroffensive on Thursday, although local authorities refuse to offer any confirmation. A senior U.S. official told The New York Times that fighting has intensified in the southeast. Faced with this official silence, local Ukrainian media quote foreign media.
The military of the highest levels have also spoken out. "The time has come to recover what is ours," read a May 27 video released by the top commander of the armed forces, Gen. Valeri Zaluzhni, which gave the blessing to the major operation to regain lost ground. "Our heroic soldiers are going on the offensive to liberate Ukraine from the Russian occupiers and raise the flag of victory," added the ad surrounded by military epic and inspired by the century-old work of local author Osip Mashchak.
These moves suggest that this week's rupture of the Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper and the flooding of dozens of towns in the Kherson region have not been enough to significantly alter the plans that Kiev had been cooking for months. Some analysts, without concluding precisely that it was the Russians who blew up the dam, consider, despite everything, that it could have been a strategy to try to prevent the Ukrainian advance, as the Institute for the Study of War (ISW, according to its acronym in English) has shown.
In practice, the water has forced a Russian withdrawal to positions where it is difficult to continue attacking with its artillery Ukrainian positions on the western side of the river that it had been bombarding almost daily. That movement has forced them to position themselves between five and 15 kilometers beyond the flooded land, according to the spokeswoman for the Southern Command of the Armed Forces, Natalia Humeniuk. Two-thirds of the flooded area is under Russian rule, according to local authorities in Kherson.
Visit of Zelenskiy
Without referring to aspects related to the counteroffensive, President Zelenski traveled to the area on Thursday to closely follow the rescue work and be aware of the consequences. The Kremlin announced that President Vladimir Putin does not plan to travel to the flooded towns that are under the control of his military. The attacks are taking place from the Russian side on the western bank of the Dnieper while Ukrainian emergency teams carry out rescue work.
Volodímir Zelenski, this Thursday in Kherson. MYKOLA TYMCHENKO (EFE)
In total, nine people were injured, including two members of the rescue services, according to sources from that service and the governor of Kherson. Pro-Russian authorities in power on the eastern side of the river also accused Ukraine of launching attacks that killed two people. Five others reportedly perished as a result of the floods.
Having overcome the main obstacle of the first weeks of the great invasion, which consisted of stopping the Kremlin troops in their attempt to take Kiev, the local army has since carried out two successful counteroffensives. One, last September, allowed him to recover almost in its entirety the Kharkiv region, in the northeast. Another, in November, made it possible to expel the Russians from the west bank of the Dnieper River and liberate from occupation the city of Kherson, the only provincial capital they had taken in the large-scale invasion that began on February 24 last year.
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