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Five weeks after the start of the Russian offensive in the Kharkiv region, the Ukrainian army is holding on, resisting and has even regained territories, while the Russian army is intensifying its attacks on the Eastern front to “maximize exhaustion “Ukrainian troops, before the arrival of Western military aid.
And Ukraine continues to resist. Five weeks after the start of the Russian offensive in the region of Kharkiv, the country’s second city, the Ukrainian army is holding firm, while Russian forces have, in recent months, gained ground in the border regions of Donetsk and Kharkiv , thanks to a shortage of men and ammunition in Ukraine. After stabilizing the front line in late May, the Ukrainian army even managed to counterattack and isolate a group of 200 to 400 Russian soldiers in the town of Vovchansk, some of whom surrendered. The city of Koupiansk, occupied before being liberated in September 2022, is still under heavy pressure.
Russia wants to exhaust Ukrainian soldiers
Because the fighting continues all along the front line. Ukraine judged on Monday that Russia was intensifying its attacks on the Eastern Front to “maximize the exhaustion of Ukrainian troops”, before the arrival of Western military aid, in particular F-16 fighter planes.
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“The command of the Russian troops is currently doing everything possible to increase and expand the intensity of hostilities in order to maximize the exhaustion of our troops,” announced Oleksandr Syrsky, the head of the Ukrainian army, on his Telegram channel. According to the latter, Moscow is aware that “time will play a role” in kyiv’s favor, with the receipt of a “significant quantity of weapons and equipment” from its allies, including American F-16 fighters, supposed to strengthen Ukrainian air defense.
DDM
The Ukrainian commander specifies that Russian forces are concentrating their efforts in the surroundings of “Kupiansk, Pokorvsk, Kurakhové and Vremivka”, located on the Eastern front, while “fierce fighting” continues in the East and South.
The prosecutor of the southern region of Kherson, partially occupied by Moscow, announced Monday that a 50-year-old man had been killed by an “explosive dropped from a drone.” The same day, nine people were injured in a Russian bombing that hit the Poltava region, in the center-east of the country, according to Filip Pronin, its governor. “Today the enemy shelled civilian infrastructure in the Poltava region,” the official said on his Telegram channel, explaining that “several buildings were damaged.”
Ukrainian soldier beheaded
The fighting, particularly in the trenches, was in any case as intense and violent as ever. Ukraine’s Prosecutor General on Tuesday accused Russian forces of having “decapitated” a Ukrainian soldier in the Donetsk region, near the Eastern Front, denouncing a new war crime by Moscow’s army. As part of a ten-point peace plan led by President Volodymyr Zelensky, kyiv has requested the creation of a special court to investigate abuses.
President Zelensky also welcomed on Tuesday the issuance by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of arrest warrants against two Russian commanders who are accused of war crimes linked to bombings in Ukraine.
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Ukraine has also decided to implement partial power cuts throughout the day yesterday across the country to alleviate an electricity network heavily damaged by Russian bombings.
The challenge of controlling the sky
Bombings from the rear, fighting on the front, such is the situation for Ukraine, which still needs weapons and men and hopes to finally control its skies. For several months, Volodymyr Zelensky has been constantly asking his Western partners for systems to protect the Ukrainian skies, but these have only come in trickles. He also estimated in May that his country needed “120 to 130” F-16 fighter planes or other modern aircraft, “so that Russia does not have superiority in the air”.
“It may seem like a paradox, but the path to peace goes through more weapons to Ukraine,” declared Monday the head of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, who attracted the wrath of Beijing after having called for China to pay the price for its support of Russia. A shocking statement to show that the West will not abandon Ukraine.
NATO will also take charge of Western military support for kyiv, until now led by Washington, as decided by NATO defense ministers last week in Brussels. One way to secure aid to Ukraine in the event of the election of Donald Trump…
