Ukraine claims little further progress in fighting in the southeast.
Intense fighting is at the front in at least three clear directions, but Russia has had time to prepare well.
Ukraine’s blue-yellow flag is flying again in the small settlement of Storozjeve, the country’s deputy defense minister Hanna Maljar announced on Monday morning. She shared a difficult-to-verify image on social media in which a group of soldiers pose with a Ukrainian flag.
Storozjeve is located in southeastern Ukraine, near the county border between Donetsk and Zaporizhzhya. Over the past weekend, there have been several Ukrainian victory cries from the area.
The small towns run like a rosary south from the slightly larger town of Velyka Novosilka – towards Russian-controlled territory. Russia has not conceded any setbacks in the area, but several influential and unofficial Russian voices admit that the Ukrainians have made some advances during intense fighting.
Hundreds of meters
The next town on the road south is Makarivka. There, information from the Russian so-called military blogs, journalists loyal to the Kremlin and propagandists who follow the war and sometimes give a somewhat clearer picture of the course of events, diverges. One writes that Russian forces were forced out of there in fighting during the night to Monday, while another says that fighting in the town has resumed.
The Ministry of Defense in Moscow claims only that Ukraine is suffering heavy losses.
The area in general is called the Vremivka ledge. Each town consists of a few residential buildings and farms, or a couple of blocks. When Ukraine announced over the weekend that it had recaptured three towns, Deputy Defense Minister Maljar said they had advanced hundreds of meters: 300 to 1,500.
In another direction, further northeast, the Ukrainian forces have advanced around the long-contested and largely destroyed city of Bakhmut, which Russia spent many months and human lives trying to take control of. Ukraine appeared on Friday to try to encircle the city, according to The Economists war analysis.
Prepared lines
Assessors have in recent weeks tried to play down any expectations that Ukraine’s offensive will be able to proceed as quickly as in, for example, Kharkiv in the northeast last September, when Russian forces largely retreated.
In recent months, Russia has established defensive lines on occupied land described as some of the most extensive since World War II. Trenches, minefields, barbed wire, earthen embankments and vehicle obstacles have been deployed along about 100 miles of Ukrainian soil, according to a report from analysts at the American think tank CSIS.
In the occupied part of Zaporizhzhya county, three parallel lines of defense have been established, which extend far behind today’s front line. These are located north of the larger city of Melitopol – which has been singled out as a natural target for Ukraine to cut Russia’s “land bridge” along the coast to the Crimean Peninsula.
Destroyed Leopards
It is in this direction that Ukraine seems to have had the hardest time so far. Several media reports that Ukraine has deployed its 47th mechanized unit there, which has been reinforced with, among other things, modern Leopard tanks.
Several such were lost in offensive maneuvers in Zaporizhzhya last week, according to the paper Forbes and the analysis firm Oryx. But after the weekend, Ukrainian forces are reported to have made at least minor progress.
In any case, it is still too early to talk about a Ukrainian breakthrough, writes the American think tank Institute for the study of war in a report.