Ukraine live briefing: Ukrainian forces claim advances along front line; Russia says it repelled attack in Donetsk
Earlier Monday, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman said that Russia had thwarted a Ukrainian attack Sunday in the eastern Donetsk region. The attack targeted Russian positions along five sections of the front line in southern Donetsk, Lt. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said in a video published by Russia’s state-owned RIA Novosti news agency. His claims could not be verified, and it was unclear whether the attack was related to Ukraine’s expected counteroffensive. Ukraine reported clashes in Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk on Monday but denied Russia’s claim that Ukraine’s attack had been deterred.
Tensions remain high in Russia’s western Belgorod region, where anti-Kremlin militias have carried out drone attacks and shelling in recent days. The governor reported a fresh drone attack overnight.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
The looming counteroffensive
- Some U.S. officials think the Ukrainian counteroffensive is underway, pointing to territorial gains north and south of Bakhmut, as well as strikes deep behind Russian lines that they see as part of a gradual launch of the operation. They note that a successful offensive may look very different from conventional operations involving armored columns that seek to penetrate enemy ground. It may involve, instead, what U.S. officials describe as modern maneuver warfare, something they say is already being enabled by recent Western training and arms supplies and which includes expanded artillery fire, probing attacks, and sabotage or partisan activity behind enemy lines. They hope such actions will force Russian troops to make mistakes and provide Ukrainian forces opportunities to advance.
- Maliar, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, denied that the counteroffensive was underway, and said the country’s efforts were confined to an ongoing push around Bakhmut in a statement on Telegram Monday.
- National Security Council spokesman John Kirby demurred when asked whether Ukraine’s counteroffensive had begun. “I’m not going to be talking for the Ukrainian military,” Kirby said at a White House briefing. “Whether it’s starting now or starting soon or whenever they decide to step up and whatever they decide to do, the president’s confident that we did everything we could over the last six, eight months or more to make sure that they had all the equipment, the training, the capabilities to be successful.”
- A Ukrainian official dismissed as “delusional” Russia’s claim that its forces have blocked Kyiv’s long-anticipated counteroffensive in Donetsk. “In reality, when this starts, everyone will know about it,” Serhiy Cherevatyi, the spokesman for Ukraine’s eastern command, told The Washington Post. Neither side’s claims could be independently verified.
- Ukraine’s upcoming counteroffensive hinges on the element of surprise, Cherevatyi said. The operation will be like Ukraine’s attacks last fall in the Kharkiv region: “fast, effective and obvious to them and everyone else,” he said. In September, Ukrainian forces launched a surprise lightning offensive to recapture Kharkiv from Russian control in days. In the buildup to the Kharkiv offensive, Ukrainian authorities steered attention elsewhere — toward their slow-burning push in the Kherson region.
Key developments
- At least one brigade in the southern Donetsk region is launching an offensive operation, according to a military official in the region, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to provide details. The units conducting offensive operations near Bakhmut and in southern Donetsk on Monday were not among the specialized brigades, some recently trained by NATO, that were expected to lead the counteroffensive, including as the so-called tip-of -the-spear. Ukrainian officials have cautioned repeatedly in recent days that there would be no single moment marking the start of the long-anticipated counterattack, nor an announcement. And other units were also expected to be part of the operation.
- Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Ukrainian troops around Bakhmut for what he characterized as their successful advances against Russian forces. “I am grateful to each of our soldiers, all our defenders … who on this day gave us exactly the news we expect. [Those in the] Bakhmut direction — well done, soldiers,” said Zelensky in his nightly address on Monday, posted on Telegram.
- In Belgorod, a power facility caught fire after a drone attack, regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said Monday on Telegram. Earlier, opposition militias that captured Russian troops had invited Gladkov for talks in exchange for the prisoners, but no meeting took place, they claimed. In the past day, Gladkov said more than 650 shells were fired at targets in the Russian region.
- Belgium has launched an investigation into the use of its donated military equipment by anti-Kremlin militias in Belgorod, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo announced Monday. The Post reported over the weekend that the Russian militias opposed to President Vladimir Putin were armed with NATO-provided tactical vehicles and rifles during two cross-border attacks from Ukraine in the past two weeks. Western countries have repeatedly said that the donated equipment should be used only within Ukraine.
Battleground updates
- Gladkov said Monday that Russian authorities had lost control of Novaya Tavolzhanka, a settlement in the Belgorod region. “For now, we cannot enter there,” Gladkov said in a video posted to Russia’s VK social networking site. “The shelling over the last two days has not allowed us to clarify the information,” he added. In a video posted to Telegram, representatives of the Russian Volunteer Corps, an anti-Kremlin militia operating in the area, taunted local leaders — including Gladkov — saying that the empty settlement was entirely under RVC control.
- Wagner Group head Yevgeniy Prigozhin said Ukraine’s forces have advanced north of Bakhmut, capturing parts of the Donetsk settlement of Berkhivka from Russian control. He denounced the Russian retreat as a “disgrace” Monday and urged Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to come to the front line. The Russian mercenary chief is engaged in a long-running and increasingly public feud with Shoigu, whom he accuses of failing to provide adequate military support to Wagner’s forces.
- Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, visited injured children at a hospital outside Dnipro, where a Russian strike on a residential area killed a toddler over the weekend. A 6-year-old boy is in intensive care, while others are reported to have concussions and fractures, regional Gov. Serhii Lysak said on Telegram.
- A government audit found that only half of the 1,078 bomb shelters in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, are ready for use, Strategic Industries Minister Oleksandr Kamyshin said on Telegram. Last week, debris from a strike killed civilians who were unable to find refuge as a shelter nearby was locked, prompting the government survey.
Global developments
- Turkey, Finland and Sweden will meet next week for NATO talks amid a stalemate over Turkey’s objections to Sweden joining the bloc. “Stockholm has taken significant, concrete steps to meet Turkey’s concerns,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in a statement after meeting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday. Turkey has objected to what it sees as Sweden’s support of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which Turkey considers a terrorist group.
- A peace envoy from the Vatican traveled to Kyiv on Monday, tasked by Pope Francis with listening to Ukrainian officials on how to formulate a lasting peace plan. Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, the archbishop of Bologna, will spend two days in the Ukrainian capital, according to a statement from the Vatican. Last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to the Vatican and met with the pope, who has cast himself as a peacemaker in the conflict.
- Russian forces launched more than 300 Iranian-made Shahed drones against Ukraine in May, Britain’s Defense Ministry said, calling it “its most intense use of the weapons system to date.” Officials suggested Monday that Russia used the drones to force Ukraine to expend its valuable air defense missile stocks, although in practice, most of the drones were “neutralized” by older stocks and electronic jamming.
- Moscow welcomed a suggestion from Washington that the United States is ready to begin discussions on nuclear arms control. “Russia remains open to dialogue,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday. “But we need to first understand how this proposal is formulated,” he added, referring to a statement last week from U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan. Earlier this year, the State Department accused Russia of violating the only remaining treaty that limits the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals.
From our correspondents
In Dnipro, deadly missile attacks prove there is no escaping Russia’s war: A Russian strike on a two-story apartment building in the Dnipro area that killed a toddler and injured 22 others — the second attack there in just over a week — has unnerved residents, Pamela Constable reports.
The strikes on greater Dnipro in central Ukraine, an area away from the front lines of the Russian invasion, were a disconcerting reminder about the inevitability of the war. Since a massive strike in January, the city has been targeted infrequently, allowing its residents a semblance of normalcy. But the burdens of the war weigh heavily.
Masih reported from Seoul, Sands from London, Ryan from Washington and Korolchuk from Dnipro.
correction
An earlier version of this story mistakenly referred to advances made by Ukraine’s forces in the Zaporizhzhia region, near the town of Orikhiv. These advances actually happened in the Donestk region, near the town of Orikhovo-Vasylivka.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment