Ukraine claims small territorial gains as counteroffensive grinds forward
Earlier this week, the Ukrainian military said it had liberated seven small villages in southeastern Ukraine, most clustered near the border of the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.
Brig. Gen. Oleksiy Hromov, deputy chief of the main operations department at the Ukrainian military’s general staff, said at a briefing in Kyiv on Thursday that these villages resulted in a gain of 81 square kilometers, or about 31 square miles.
“We are ready to continue fighting to liberate our territory even with our bare hands,” Hromov said.
At the same time, however, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said that Ukrainian forces were on the defensive in other areas along the front.
“Our troops are dealing with strong enemy resistance and their superiority in numbers of men and weapons,” Maliar wrote on Telegram. “The enemy is trying with all his might to prevent the advance of our troops.”
Maliar also said that fighting continued in the areas near the towns of Makarivka, Novodanilivka and Novopokrovka south of the city of Orikhiv in the Zaporizhzhia region, and toward Rozdolivka and Brekhivka on the outskirts of the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region.
“At the same time, the offensive continues in several directions, our defenders are gradually but surely moving forward and inflicting significant losses on the enemy,” Maliar wrote.
Ukrainian officials have warned that the counteroffensive will exact a high cost in human lives and equipment, especially as their country’s forces lack Western aviation to provide air cover and also lack long-range artillery that can reach deeper into Russian-held territory than what is currently being used.
Still, they said that the beginning of the attack could not be delayed. Kyiv needs to register major battlefield gains this summer and fall, before the harsh winter sets in — and to provide Ukraine’s Western backers evidence that Ukraine is capable of defeating Russia.
The question of continued support will be the focus of a high-stakes NATO leaders’ summit to be held next month in Vilnius, Lithuania.
U.S. officials say they recognize that Kyiv’s progress in eastern and southern Ukraine will be slow going.
“Ukraine’s fight is a marathon, and not a sprint,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in his opening remarks at a meeting Thursday in Brussels of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which includes ministers from about 50 countries assisting Kyiv’s war efforts.
Austin said that the United States “will stand with Ukraine for the long haul,” and military equipment and training would continue to flow to Ukraine’s military, so that Kyiv can “prevail over [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s campaign of cruelty and conquest.”
