After several weeks of fierce fighting on the country’s southern front, the Ukrainian army has managed to liberate the village of Robotyne. An essential strategic victory for kyiv, which hopes that this reconquest will allow it to provide impetus to its difficult counter-offensive.
This area of ??the front is the axis of attack towards the cities of Tokmak and then Melitopol in an attempt to break the territorial unity of the areas occupied by the Russians in the south and east with Crimea, annexed in 2014.
Russia meanwhile continued its bombing, which killed at least three people in a village in the center, in the Poltava region.
Moscow also claimed on Monday that it had launched two fighter jets to intercept over the Black Sea, near Crimea, two American reconnaissance drones, a type of incident that has become frequent in recent months. 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.
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 military hope to be in a position to drive a wedge into the front, even if in front of them still stand trenches, anti-tank fortifications and minefields.
Kiev fears that Russia will now send tens of thousands of troops into the northeast in order to break through the front and force Ukraine to turn away from its main axes of attack in the south.
