Ukraine Recovering Its Land Mass, Metre By Metre

"War takes away the best. The army today lost one of the brightest and most effective military leaders, [Major General Sergei Goryachev, Chief of Staff of the 35th Combined Arms Army, killed Monday on Russia Day, the country's national holiday in a missile strike in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region] who combined the highest professionalism with personal courage."

Pro-Kremlin war reporter Yury Kotyonok

 

"Usually, colonels, lieutenant colonels, and majors who provide activities at headquarters die along with a general."

"So, such an attack on the command post of the 35th Army before a big offensive is a very serious ticket to success."

Ukrainian military expert Mykhailo Zhirokhov

 

"The enemy is doing everything to hold onto the positions they captured. They are actively using assault and army aviation, conducting intense artillery fire."

"Our troops on the offensive face continuous minefields, which are connected to anti-tank ditches."

Ukraine Defence Ministry

Firefighters helping a resident at a heavily damaged residential building hit by shelling in Kryvyi Rih, in central Ukraine, on Tuesday.  Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

"The enemy is doing everything to keep the captured positions. Russians actively use assault and army aviation, and conduct intense artillery fire."

"During the offensive, our troops encounter continuous minefields, which are combined with anti-tank ditches."

"All this is combined with constant counterattacks by enemy units on armored vehicles and the massive use of ATGMs and kamikaze drones."

Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar

According to accounts by pro-Kremlin military bloggers, General Goryachev was killed in a Storm Shadow strike; with him several other high-ranking Russian officers, though their deaths remain unconfirmed by Russia's Defense Ministry. The Ukrainian military has had to push through minefields under artillery and aerial bombings, but still reported gaining some ground. 

 

Ukraine reported liberating seven villages in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions over the past week. The first weeks of the counteroffensive however, has seen the Ukrainian army lose at least 16 Bradleys and four Leopard tanks, according to open source intelligence project Oryx. Ukrainian command made no comment on military equipment losses.

 

A Ukrainian national flag is seen near the frontline in the newly liberated village Neskuchne, in Donetsk region. Photograph: Reuters

Mostly along the southern front but also in the east, Ukraine is pushing an advance at a number of points, and in some areas, it is making incremental and real gains, liberating villages near the frontline. Ukraine in the last week attacked the western edge of the Zaporizhzhia sector, where the frontlines meet the Dnieper River and again south of Orikhiv 18 miles east and, significantly, either side of a Russian salient at the border between Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk oblasts where the most gains have been recorded.

 

Ukraine’s brigades have been recording videos of flag-raisings in a number of villages south of Velyka Novosilka, Neskuchne, Storozheve, Blahodatne and Makarivka. Some of these gains may yet be contested; Russian war bloggers reporting a successful counterattack. So far, the Ukraine advance has been at the rate of almost four miles in a week, a speed greater than Russian forces gained during their winter offensive.

 

The gains, at this early stage, are impressive, even if incrementally they represent relatively small areas, towns and villages, in an occupation that represents one-fifth of the land mass of Ukraine. The gains cannot yet be verified and it is eminently possible they could yet be reversed. Ukrainian forces fight meter by meter to retain possession of their Russia-annexed country. Recent conflict on the 1,000-kilometre front line has been made more complex by the dam breach that caused floodwaters to swell a portion of the Dnieper River that separates the sides. 

According to Vladimir Rogov, with the Moscow-appointed administration of the Zaporizhzhia region, "heavy battles" raged in the area Monday involving Russian artillery, mortars and air power. Russian front lines jut into territory held by Ukraine; the protrusion one of several epicentres of intense fighting, the frontlines cutting across southern and eastern Ukraine. The capture of the villages sees an incursion in the first line of Russian defences that might give Ukrainian forces a deeper thrust into occupied areas.

Before last year's Ukrainian counteroffensive that retook Kharkiv and Kherson in the north and the south, Russian forces controlled much larger areas than they now do. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that "counteroffensive, defensive actions are taking place", not specifying whether an all-out counteroffensive was taking place in line with the vast infusion of Western firepower. 

 

Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated the counteroffensive had begun and Ukrainian forces were taking "significant losses". This was before Russia had lost its 10th general to Mr. Putin's 'special military operation'.

 

In the past 24 hours, Ukrainian soldiers have gained 200 meters in the direction of Toretsk in the Donetsk region, according to the country's deputy defense minister | Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images