Kyiv Gears Up for Central Counteroffensive, Acknowledging Extended Timeline
According to Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar, the “biggest blow” in Kyiv’s counteroffensive campaign against Russian forces has yet to come, but the operation is difficult as Moscow is throwing all it can into the battle to prevent Ukraine from pressing forward. Ukrainian forces have advanced in the early phase of the counteroffensive, but it is impossible to independently verify the military operation along the most contentious points of the front line. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington DC-based think tank, cited sources on Sunday as saying that Ukrainian forces may be temporarily pausing counteroffensive operations to “reevaluate their tactics for future operations”.
The Ukrainian military said its counteroffensive is going according to plan, but at the same time admitted to a “difficult situation” on the front. Ukrainian troops may be taking a temporary pause in their counteroffensive after almost two weeks of intense fighting at multiple points along the 800-mile front with Russia, according to the latest update from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) .
Offensive operations began at multiple points along the front, in what appeared to be attacking probes to find Russian weak points, but there is no sign yet of the kind of massed armored columns that experts expect to form the main force of Kyiv’s main push.
The situation on the front line in Ukraine is that Ukrainian forces have been conducting counteroffensive operations in multiple sectors of the front line, with modest gains in the eastern Donetsk and south-eastern Zaporizhzhia regions.
Ukrainian troops may be taking a temporary pause in their counteroffensive after almost two weeks of intense fighting at multiple points along the 800-mile front with Russia, according to the latest update from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) .
The ISW and Western officials deemed Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive to have begun in early June, after several weeks of shaping operations and months in which Kyiv accumulated new Western weaponry and trained fresh combat units. Offensive operations began at multiple points along the front, in what appeared to be attacking probes to find Russian weak points. Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said the “biggest blow” in Kyiv’s military campaign is yet to come, but admitted the operation is difficult, as Russia mounts stiff resistance. “The ongoing operation has several objectives, and the military is fulfilling these tasks,” Maliar wrote on Telegram. “They are moving as they should have been moving. And the biggest blow is yet to come”