Ukraine urges patience, saying “the biggest blow is yet to come”
Ukraine fought to allay any disillusionment over small and difficult gains during the second week of its counteroffensive (June 15-21).
Ukraine pressed counteroffensives on four main fronts during the 69th week of the war, but made frustratingly slow progress because of stiff resistance from Russian defensive positions.
During a telethon on June 19, Ukrainian deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said that over the previous week, Ukrainian recaptured territory had climbed to 113 square kilometres, only 13 kilometres more than what Ukraine claimed it had reconquered almost a week earlier.
“The Russians are putting up a furious resistance,” she said, pointing out that Russian forces had fired an estimated 5,800 artillery rounds and 277,000 bullet rounds in just a week.
Ukraine’s offensives were focused on Bakhmut and Donetsk city in the east. In the south, at the border between Donetsk and Zaporizhia regions, Ukraine had advanced 7km into Russian-held territory towards Melitopol, and it maintained an open front in western Zaporizhia, south of Orikhiv.
Maliar estimated killed or wounded Russians at 4,600 and destroyed equipment at 400 pieces.
Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu said Ukrainian forces had launched 263 attacks against Russian positions since June 4, providing a possible starting date for the counteroffensive. “All attacks have been repelled,” he said.
“The biggest blow is yet to come,” wrote Maliar on Telegram. “One mustn’t measure the result of the work of the defense forces exclusively by settlements and kilometers traveled… The ongoing operation has several tasks and the military is carrying out these tasks,” she wrote.
She may have been referring to suspected Ukrainian strikes at Russian ammunition depots far behind the Russian front lines.
Repeated explosions at Rykove, in Kherson region, were suspected to come from a Russian warehouse.
“The detonation of a large Russian ammo dump in Rykove (Kherson) is potentially a big deal, affecting the whole southern front, because the only railroad from Crimea to Melitopol passes through the town, and Russia had stockpiled ammo there, believing it to be a safe location,” Wrote Ukraine Reporter.
Russia also claimed to have inflicted losses of matériel. The leader of the “We are together with Russia Movement” in Zaporizhia, Vladimir Rogov, said Russian long-range weapons had struck Ukrainian ammunition warehouses in Zaporizhia city, which lies in free Ukraine, citing a series of explosions there, inflicting a blow on the counteroffensive. Russia’s defence ministry said it had successfully struck depots of Western-manufactured military hardware using sea-launched precision missiles, without saying where they had struck. “All the assigned targets have been neutralised,” it said.
Ukraine’s bottom line was that whatever the delays it might have suffered, its counteroffensive had only made gains and suffered no losses.
“We have no lost positions. Only liberated ones. They have only losses,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address.
The fiercest battles
Ukraine’s general staff said Russia was focusing its attacks in the directions of Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Maryinka.
Ukrainian ground forces overall commander Oleksandr Syrskyi said Russia was prioritising the defence of Bakhmut. “Despite the advance of our troops in the south and the loss of territory and settlements in this direction, the enemy continues to move some of the most combat-capable units to the Bakhmut direction,” he said. His forces were dominating high ground and forested ground as part of a stealthy strategy of gradually pushing Russian forces out of Bakhmut, he said.
Russia’s defence ministry said that from its point of view the fiercest fighting was in Zaporizhia, south of Orikhiv, where Ukraine launched waves of attacks by mechanised battalion groups, which were repelled. Russia claims it destroyed nine tanks and 20 armoured fighting vehicles.
Trash-talking
Ukraine’s southern forces said they were advancing and capturing enemy equipment, suggesting Russian forces might be retreating in disarray in places. “The enemy is fiercely resisting, moving units and troops, using reserves, so we have positive dynamics,” said the southern forces press centre.
Ukraine also emphasized Russian manpower shortages.
Eastern forces spokesman Serhiy Cherevaty said Russian Russian forces in Lyman “use a mixed group, which includes motorised rifle units, and airborne units, and units of the combat army reserve, as well as territorial troops,” adding that “storm-Z” units of prison inmates were being thrown into this mix. He also said Russian forces in Lyman were using obsolete T-62 tanks, on of which had been destroyed.
Russia’s defence ministry, on the other hand, prioritised announcements of destroyed Western equipment. Ukraine’s allies have donated more than 250 tanks and hundreds of armoured fighting vehicles, touted by Western military analysts as superior to anything in the Russian arsenal.
Russia said its forces repelled four attacks by a battalion tactical group in southern Donetsk near Novodonetskoye on June 18, destroying 35 tanks and some 70 armoured fighting vehicles, including Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Stryker armoured personnel carriers provided by the US.
Its defence ministry said its forces had also destroyed Bradley Fighting Vehicles and German-provided Marder APCs on the right bank of the Dnipro in Kherson. Serviceman Andrei Kravtsov was awarded a million rubles for allegedly destroying a German-built Leopard tank “during a special operation”.
Ukraine did not confirm or deny these alleged losses.
Longer-term plans
Ukraine’s allies gradually shifted to longer-term pledges of military and financial assistance, evidently foreseeing a long war.
During the 13th meeting of the Contact Group on Ukraine at Ramstein in Germany, Canada pledged $500mn in new funding, 288 AIM-7 air-to-air missiles, artillery ammunition, training and maintenance for F-16s, among other things.
Denmark approved a fourth military aid package for Ukraine worth 2.95bn euros for 2023-2028. The US, UK, Denmark and the Netherlands pledged hundreds of air defence missiles. Norway, Germany and Denmark announced multi-year pledges.
European Commission president Ursula Von Der Leyen proposed a budget of 50bn euros to assist Ukraine over the next four years. The sum included 33bn in financial assistance. The pledge was unveiled at a two-day London conference for the raising of funds to rebuild Ukraine.
An odd distinction
Shoigu announced that Ukraine planned to use US-made HIMARS and UK-made Storm Shadow missiles against annexed Ukrainian territory. “Deployment of these particular missiles out of the special military operation zone will be regarded as direct involvement of the USA and UK in the conflict and will result in immediate retaliatory strikes at decision-making centres in Ukraine territory,” Shoigu said on June 20.
It was unclear where Russia would consider use of these missiles legitimate. Russia formally annexed Crimea in 2014, and Russian president Vladimir Putin formally annexed the four regions of Ukraine he partially controls – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson – on September 30, following sham referenda.
Zelenskyy said the long-range Storm Shadow missiles provided by Britain were “now doing a very useful and accurate job at the front,” without specifying whether they had been used in the strike on an ammunition depot at Rykove in Zaporizhia.