Intense fighting in Ukraine’s western Zaporizhia Oblast this week may be a sign that Kyiv has reached a turning point in its counteroffensive against Russian occupiers. The country’s military commanders appear to be pouring thousands of Western-trained and equipped troops into the battle who had been held in reserve for nearly a month.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has acknowledged the offensive’s slow start so far, hailed the reported capture Thursday by Ukrainian forces of the village of Staromaiorske, near the border of the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.
Even Russian President Vladimir Putin is acknowledging that Ukraine’s military actions in the Zaporizhia region have entered “an intensive phase.” In an interview on Wednesday for the state-owned Channel One Russia television network, Mr. Putin said Ukraine used tanks and armored personnel carriers “in large numbers” during the most recent round of fighting, but claimed Russian defenders had held fast.
“The enemy has not succeeded in any of the sectors of combat activity. All attempts at the counteroffensive have been stopped,” Mr. Putin said. “The enemy has been forced to retreat with substantial losses.”
Mr. Putin’s battlefield analysis could not be independently verified. White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters in Washington this week the Ukrainian gains have not come as fast as Kyiv had hoped, but that Ukraine’s forces are still advancing and the situation in the east and south is not a “stalemate.”
Hanna Maliar, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, said their troops are gradually moving forward in the direction of the fiercely-contested eastern city of Bakhmut.
“Battles are quite tough. The enemy is firing intensively,” Ms. Maliar wrote Thursday on her Telegram social media page. “To the north of Bakhmut, we repel enemy attacks.”
The Institute for the Study of War think tank said Ukrainian troops appear to have broken through dug-in Russian defensive positions around Orikhiv, about 60 miles southeast of the regional capital city of Zaporizhia. The Russian Ministry of Defense estimated that Ukraine sent three battalions of armored troops into a “massive assault” near the city.
“Ukrainians appear to have rotated fresh forces into this area for the operation whereas Russian forces remain pinned to the line apparently without rotation, relief or significant reinforcement in this sector,” the ISW said Wednesday in their latest battlefield assessment.
The Biden administration this week announced it would again be dipping into the Pentagon’s supply of military hardware for a $400 million security assistance package for Ukraine. It includes additional munitions for the Patriot air defense system; more ammunition for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS); artillery and mortar rounds and more than 30 Stryker armored personnel carriers.
On Thursday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin declined to comment on the pace of Ukraine’s counter-offensive now approaching its second month, saying Ukrainian officials should be the ones to comment.
“We said throughout that this would be a tough fight and it would be a long fight. There will be challenges, successes (and) setbacks,” he told reporters on a visit to Papua New Guinea Thursday.
U.S. officials and private military analysts have blamed the steady but slow-moving pace of the counteroffensive on the tangle of tank traps, trenches, and minefields that Russia placed in Ukraine’s path. Franz-Stefan Gady, an analyst with the British-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, said minefields are a problem but also noted that Kyiv’s inexperience with complex combined arms operations is more concerning.
“Russian forces, even if severely degraded and lacking ammo, are likely capable of delaying, containing or repulsing individual platoon or company-sized Ukrainian advances unless these attacks are better coordinated and synchronized along the broader frontline,” Mr. Gady said last week after returning from an inspection tour of the battlefield in Ukraine.
The latest U.S. security package includes additional demolitions for clearing obstacles. Mine-clearing systems are needed, Mr. Gady said, but won’t be decisive without better integration of fire and maneuver by Ukrainian troops.
“Some Ukrainian assaults were stopped by Russian [anti-tank guided missiles] even before the first minefield,” Mr. Gady said on Twitter. “I cannot emphasize enough how difficult this is to pull off in wartime.”
Absent an unlikely collapse of Russian defenses, Kyiv’s counteroffensive will likely remain a difficult war of attrition, with reserve forces being fed into combat in the coming weeks and months. Mr. Gady said Western support of Ukraine should continue as there is still the prospect that the counteroffensive will make gains on the battlefield.
“But soldiers fighting on the frontline we spoke to are all too aware that lack of progress is more often due to force employment, poor tactics, lack of coordination between units, bureaucratic red tape [and] Soviet-style thinking,” he said.
While Ukrainian forces are in a position to make “significant gains” in their counteroffensive, the ISW analysts said they will likely occur over a long period as the troops are forced to grapple with successive Russian defense lines.
“Western officials are unhelpfully raising expectations for rapid and dramatic Ukrainian advances that Ukrainian forces are unlikely to be able to meet,” the ISW said.
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.