The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense claims on Monday “success” last week in its difficult counter-offensive on the southern front, and to have taken back three square kilometers from Russian forces near Bakhmout (east). But for Ulrich Bounat, geopolitical analyst, specialist in Central and Eastern Europe, the reconquest of Ukrainian territory promises to be long and costly in terms of men and materials.
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Ukrainian forces “continue their offensive operations in the Melitopol sector” and “have achieved success near Novodanylivka and Novoprokopivka” in the south, Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Maliar said on state television on Monday. according to which the Kiev army also recaptured three square kilometers near the city of Bakhmout (east).
Two months after the start of the counter-offensive, and one week after the liberation of the village of Robotynethe Ukrainian army continues its efforts on the southern front where it would have pierced the first line of Russian defense in the region of Zaporijjia. An announcement made Friday by the Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Defense and confirmed by Washington, while the voices that doubt the effectiveness of this counter-offensive have been heard in recent days in the press in the United States.
But the Ukrainian counter-offensive could only be long and extremely violent, recalls Ulrich Bounat, geopolitical analyst, specialist in Central and Eastern Europe, joined by Aabla Jounaidi, from the international service. “ It is probable that in part of the staffs, there was a hope, undoubtedly a little mad besides, that indeed with the armored vehicles provided and the assault tanks provided, the Russians would crack rather quickly.
There had nevertheless been some voices which had tried to calm things down a bit, I am thinking of General Mark Milley, the Chief of Staff of the American army, who had said: ”Be careful, the fighting is going to be long and difficult. And for once, we are really in there: this ability to finally break through the lines, to launch a large armored offensive, it does not work.
It was probably the only way to get a quick win, it didn’t work. And so effectively, we came back to something that is much slower, a kind of attritional war, with small assault groups attacking a house, a trench, etc. It’s progressing, it’s extremely slow but it’s progressing. It also helps to protect the equipment and the men a little. »
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Bet on the exhaustion of the adversary?
” What is playing out in the background is also, and probably above all, a battle of the reserves, a battle of the artillery, continuesUlrich Bounat. There is a very clear will on both sides to exhaust the reserves and to ensure that finally the enemy after a while cracks… I think that’s what the Ukrainians are hoping for . We can already see that there is part of the reserves which had been put in the South by the Russians, which were mobilized to try to fill up the holes at the level of the breakthrough. Because even if it’s not progressing, the fighting is extremely violent, we’re still fighting really house by house, with assault groups. So in this context, the objective, the hope of one camp and the other, is that the other reaches the end of its reserves and either runs out for the Ukrainians, or cracks, at the after a while, for the Russians.”
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