The Ukrainian army has announced the liberation of the village of Robotyne after weeks of battle on the southern front, a grab which its supporters hope could give impetus to its difficult counter-offensive.
This area of the front is the axis of attack towards the cities of Tokmak then Melitopol, in an attempt to break the unity of the territories occupied by Russia in the south and east of the country with Crimea, annexed in 2014 .
Russia continued its bombardments across the country, killing at least three people in a village in the center, in the Poltava region.
Since the launch of their counter-offensive in June, the Ukrainian forces have been advancing only slowly, as they are confronted with extremely dense fortified lines of defence.
Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, claims to inflict considerable losses on its enemy, ensuring that the counter-offensive is a failure.
In kyiv, it is stressed that the assault is part of a long-term strategy and that the army is advancing slowly but surely.
With the capture of Robotyne, however, the Ukrainian army hopes to be in a position to drive a corner of the front, even if in front of it still stand trenches, anti-tank fortifications and minefields.
“Robotyne has been liberated. Our forces are advancing southeast of Robotyne and south of Mala Tokmashka,” Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Maliar said on television about the two localities in the region of Zaporizhia.
“The enemy is suffering huge losses in these directions, but he is trying to concentrate his forces there so as not to abandon his positions,” she added.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a pro-Western analysis center, believes that Russia had allocated significant resources to defend the positions it is ceding and wonders about the capacity of Moscow to do the same for the following defensive lines.
“Russian forces have committed a considerable amount of equipment, effort and men to hold defensive positions that Ukrainian forces are penetrating,” notes the ISW.
“It is difficult to say whether the Russian forces will be able to maintain their (defensive) advantage without being able to commit as many means and personnel to the following defensive layers”, continues the institute.
In any case, for the Ukrainian authorities, each reconquered village represents a blow to the ambitions of the Russian president, a year and a half after his invasion of Ukraine.
“Putin’s whole legitimacy with the Russian elite is that he hasn’t lost the war yet. The more Russia loses control of occupied territories, the faster support for the regime will decline,” X said. the ex-Twitter, Mikhaïlo Podoliak, adviser to the Ukrainian presidency.
Sign of the difficulty of the Ukrainian offensive, the advances are often counted in a few hundred m2, at best a few km2.
On the eastern front, Ukrainian troops recaptured south of Bakhmut – captured by the Russians in May – a square kilometer in the last week of fighting.
In addition, Ukraine is struggling to hold its lines against a Russian offensive in the northeast that has been eating away at for weeks.
The fear is that Russia will now send tens of thousands of troops in this direction in order to break through the front and force Ukraine to turn away from its main axes of attack in the south.
Ilia Yevlach, spokesperson for the Eastern Command of the Ukrainian army, assured Sunday that Moscow had massed 45,000 soldiers in the Kupyansk sector and 48,000 others in that of Lyman, a little further south.
On Saturday evening, the British Ministry of Defense had indicated in a daily report that Ukrainian gains could lead Russia to try “to regain the initiative” by increasing its offensive operations tenfold.
“Kupyansk-Lyman is a potential area for this,” according to this source.
Ukraine is trying to maintain pressure on Russia by also increasing drone attacks on Russian territory, some flying as far as Moscow, and against Crimea, a key rear base for supplying troops. Russians.
Finally, despite the war raging there, Russia intends to organize regional elections on September 10 in the part of the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson which it occupies and which Mr. Putin has claimed should be annexed in last September.
The Russian Election Commission has indicated that advance voting will begin there on August 30.
For Ukraine and most of the international community, these electoral operations have no legitimacy.
28/08/2023 15:40:57 – Kiev (Ukraine) (AFP) © 2023 AFP