Counterattacking Ukrainian forces have advanced up to 1,400 metres at a number of sections of the front line near the eastern city of Bakhmut in the past day, a military spokesman said on Saturday. The advance is the latest in a series of similar gains reported this week by Kyiv near Bakhmut, which Russia said it had fully captured last month after the bloodiest and longest battle since it began its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Ukraine’s counteroffensive move has “definitely begun.” Ukraine has been laying the groundwork for weeks, conducting what’s known in military jargon as “shaping operations” or long-range artillery and missile attacks on key Russian logistical targets far behind the front lines. Monday seemed to herald a change, with small detachments of lightly armoured Ukrainian units moving forward across the open fields towards Russian fortifications in southern Ukraine, southeast of Zaporizhzhia. “Now the so-called ‘fighting reconnaissance stage’ is taking place along the entire length of the front,” Serhii Kuzan, co-founder and chairman of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Centre. “That means there’s a probing of Russian defences.” Some videos and accounts suggested that they quickly ran into trouble. “Somewhere this happens more successfully with small losses and somewhere less successfully, where the Russians fight back.” By Tuesday, the world’s attention was captured by the destruction of the dam at Nova Kakhovka and the subsequent flooding that soon covered around 230 square miles (596 sq km) either side of the Dnipro River. For all the Kremlin’s denials, it seems highly likely that Russian forces, which controlled the dam, decided to blow it up, taking one of Kyiv’s military operations off the table. Kyiv had already signalled its interest in this stretch of the front line more than once.