Ukraine’s counteroffensive spreads to all fronts, winning back territory lost in March
Russia appears to be on the defensive in Kharkiv, Donetsk and Kherson oblasts, as Ukraine slowly but surely gains ground two weeks after it seized the offensive initiative
Russian forces lost territory on all fronts during the 28th week of their war in Ukraine, as a counteroffensive spread from the southern Kherson region to the eastern and northern fronts of the country, demonstrating Ukraine’s ongoing ability to seize the initiative.
Ukrainian forces launched a new counteroffensive in the northern Kharkiv oblast on September 6.
Despite radio silence from the country’s political and military leadership in Kyiv, Ukrainian and Russian military bloggers reported heavy fighting in Verbivka and Balakliya, 70km southeast of Kharkiv city, which Ukraine recaptured in early May.
Ukrainian forces appeared to have recaptured Verbivka, where they posted geolocated footage showing dead Russian soldiers.
Rybar was one of several Russian military bloggers reporting ongoing fighting around Balakliya on the evening of September 6, but early on September 7 reported that the town had been completely surrounded.
“Balakliya is in the operational encirclement and in the range of fire of Ukrainian artillery. All entrances are cut off by [enemy] fire," he wrote. Russian reporters also said that Russian forces had blown up bridges across the Balakleyka and Krainya Balakleyka rivers to prevent further Ukrainian advance.
Unconfirmed reports said the attack had triggered a collapse of the Russian front, which was weakened last month to redeploy forces to the south. The offensive appears to have resulted in a bloodbath for Russian soldiery. Ukraine reported 460 enemy fatalities, an extraordinary toll for one day.
The offensive came a day after Ukrainian forces spectacularly destroyed a Russian ammunition depot in Balakliya, in a repeat of the successful tactics of corrosion used in the south.
Ukrainian troops maintained pressure in Donetsk oblast, recapturing Ozerne on September 4, thus gaining a foothold on the occupied northern shore of the Siversky Donets river.
Ukrainian News24 and MilitaryLand posted footage showing the servicemen crossing the Siversky Donets river home after completing the mission, and geolocated photographs confirmed their success.
Ukrainian troops maintained the eastern offensive on September 6. Denis Pushilin, head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, said Russian forces were defending Kodema in Donetsk.
During the second week of their southern counteroffensive, Ukrainian forces recaptured Vyskopillya in Kherson oblast on September 4. There was no official fanfare but servicemen started posting videos of captured Russian armour and of greeting locals the following day on social media.
Eventually, Zelenskyy’s office posted a photograph of Ukrainian soldiers raising their flag over the town. Battles had raged there since Ukraine launched its counteroffensive on August 29.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy indirectly confirmed gains in the east and south on September 5, hailing battlefield successes and referring to two freed settlements in Kherson and one in Donetsk.
Geolocated footage confirmed Ukrainian forces had also recaptured Olhyne and Novovosnesenke.
Zelenskyy predicted that Crimea, to the south of Kherson, seized by Russia in 2014, would also be won back.
“I believe that the Ukrainian flag and free life will return to Crimea again,” he said in a nightly video address, repeating Ukraine’s goal of returning to pre-2014 borders. “Everyone can see that the occupiers have already started fleeing Crimea. This is the right choice for all of them.”
Despite the loss of equipment and ammunition during weeks of precision strikes that preceded the counteroffensive, Russia’s forces are retaliating.
Russian defence ministry spokesman Lt.-Gen. Igor Konashenkov says Russian forces thwarted an overnight attempt on September 2-3 to land 250 Ukrainian special forces troops on 42 boats in Energodar, neighbouring the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, from across the river. He said they planned to take over the plant. Posted footage showed corpses floating in the shallows of the river.
Russian defence minister Sergey Shoigu said his forces shot down 190 Ukrainian UAVs and intercepted 226 HIMARS rockets overall. If true, that suggests Russia still has the capacity to blunt two of Ukraine’s most effective weapons in its ongoing counteroffensive.
A Ukrainian special forces officer told Al Jazeera that taking Kherson city itself would take “several months at least,” and would require more Western military aid.
US General Mark Hertling called the Ukrainian strategy of attacking western Kherson region a “brilliant move” because Russian forces there have their backs to the Dnipro river and it’s possible to choke off their lines of communication.
“Poor RU leadership pushed many [battalion tactical groups] over the Dnipro because Putin wanted Kherson City, Mykolayiv, and eventually Odesa. But on the M14, there are only 2 Bridges across the Dnipro. Destroy those bridges...and logistics & a trapped force becomes a RU problem,” he wrote.
Ukrainian strikes continued to hamper Russian resupply routes to the west bank of the Dnipro river, where the counteroffensive is unfolding. They struck the Antonivsky bridge using rocket artillery, and continued to press the offensive. Geolocated footage on September 5 showed Ukrainian troops fighting near Kostromka and Bezimenne in Kherson oblast.
Hertling said there was “a potential for a lot of Russian prisoners,” an important asset to Ukraine, which is trying to secure exchanges for some 2,000 servicemen it ordered to surrender at the Azovstal plant in Mariupol.
Drinking the Koolaid?
Russia officially dismissed the spreading Ukrainian counteroffensive as a failure in its early days, saying it had inflicted heavy casualties.
New research suggests that such Kremlin narratives may be losing their efficacy on the Russian public.
Maxim Alyukov led a quantitative study of Russian television and social media coverage of the war at the Russian Institute in King’s College London.
He found that the number of television stories on Ukraine has decreased by half compared to February and March.
TV managers are reintroducing shows that were cancelled to make time for war propaganda, he told Al Jazeera. “It’s back to normal – back to a pre-war style of reporting, with a balance of propaganda and entertainment… because if you lose [viewers], you lose control of them.
Alyukov also found that mention of a key Russian justification for the war – ‘denazifying’ Ukraine – has decreased by a factor of six on TV. “They almost abandoned this idea,” he said.
“[The Kremlin] used four very specific ideas to justify the invasion: Denazification, demilitarisation, protecting the Donbas population and NATO expansion,” Alyukov said. “They all fit into the general idea of fighting the West and restoring Russia’s greatness… but the idea of denazification is something people struggle to comprehend.”
Russian president Vladimir Putin’s grip on social media is slipping even more. Despite being outlawed as a term for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the word “war” is used on social media almost four times more often than on TV, including by regime supporters, Alyukov found.
It may not help Putin that propagandists have committed obvious blunders. Ukraine’s defence ministry said Russia claimed to have destroyed Leopard 2 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, equipment Ukraine hasn’t yet received.
But the Russian leadership insists on its tactics. Speaking to young diplomats on September 1, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said it was the West that unleashed the war on Russia “shamelessly, openly, rudely and aggressively”.
As for Putin, he committed 50,000 troops, 60 warships and 140 aircraft to the Vostok 2022 wargames with China, possibly to belie reports that he is running short of weapons and men. A US intelligence report revealed he is buying millions of artillery shells from North Korea, suggesting that sanctions may be already causing supply chain problems. According to Ukraine’s defence ministry, Russia has lost more than 50,000 men, 2097 tanks, 4,520 armoured personnel vehicles, 1194 artillery systems and 445 planes and helicopters.