Ukrainian defense leader says troops have retaken first villages in counteroffensive
Mike Brest
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Ukraine said that its troops made territorial advances around four villages in the southeast, seemingly the first successes against Russia since launching its highly anticipated counteroffensive.
Leaders said on Sunday their troops had retaken three villages (Blahodatne, Makarivka, and Neskuchne), and Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said on Monday that they also liberated the village of Storozhov in the eastern Donetsk region, though the Washington Examiner couldn’t confirm these gains.
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Despite the initial success, the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank that closely follows the war, argued in its most that it would be premature to call it a Ukrainian “breakthrough.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged for the first time on Saturday that the long-awaited counteroffensive against Russia had begun, as Ukraine seeks to liberate and drive all Russian troops out of the country, though the country has said little about its strategy to maintain operational security.
While these villages are small, they would allow Ukrainian forces to try to further penetrate Russia’s front lines.
“Today, at a difficult time for Russia, (feelings of patriotism and pride) unite our society even more strongly … (and) serve as a reliable support for our heroes taking part in the special military operation (in Ukraine),” Russian President Vladimir Putin said as he marked Russia’s national day on Monday, according to Reuters.
He has said in recent days that Ukraine’s counteroffensive had been unsuccessful and cost them a lot of casualties.
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Experts have warned that Kyiv’s success in its counteroffensive is far from a guarantee despite billions of dollars of military aid given to them by the United States and other Western allies. Counteroffensives, in general, often start slow and are the most difficult because they involve penetrating prepared defensive postures.
Zelensky has previously expressed concern that future aid to Ukraine could be contingent upon the country’s success in the coming months as the counteroffensive gets fully underway.