While earlier advising of modest gains in the east of the country, Ukraine now says it is losing territory again around Donetsk to Russian advances, with a spokesman saying “it’s hot everywhere now”.
An update on the progress of their push to rout the Russian invader and recapture territory — some of which has been occupied by pro-Kremlin forces for nearly a decade now — from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence reveals a mixed bag, with advances in the south but losses in the east.
Deputy Minister of Defense Hanna Maliar said, per Ukraine’s government news service that the country was experiencing “heavy battles” achieving gradual advances in the southern military command region around Berdiansk and Melitopol. This was in the teeth of “intense enemy resistance, remote mining, redeployment of reserves”, she said, but nevertheless Ukrainian forces were “unceasingly” working to push on.
Less encouraging, perhaps, is the eastern area where Maliar revealed “It’s hot everywhere now” and that far from Ukrainian gains, Russia was making advances around Avdiivka, Marinka, Lyman, and Svatove. “The situation is quite difficult”, said the minister.
In all, in the past week Ukrainian forces had liberated 11 square miles in the southern sector and three-and-a-half square miles in the east. In all, the territory gained in one week’s fighting amounted to the equivalent of 9,100 acres of land.
These gains described would be in addition to the 50 square miles Ukraine said it had already liberated in the south as of last week. The figure — which is an area a little smaller than Staten Island — underlines the grindingly slow progress in a batter to liberate tens of thousands of square miles occupied by Russia.
The counter-offensive, after the war entered a less urgently engaged phase over Winter and Spring, is now well into its fourth week. While Ukraine is slipping in progress — per defence minister Maliar’s own account — around Avdiivka, it was precisely there that the country claimed its first counteroffensive gains nearly a month ago.
As reported, the apparently slow progress of the counteroffensive so far has been a topic of discussion at the top of the Ukrainian command structure, with even President Volodymyr Zelensky admitting things were going “slower than desired“, while also blaming Western preoccupation with Hollywood war movies for unrealistic expectations of how quickly things would progress.
Then last week, a top Ukrainian general moved to shift blame onto the country’s NATO allies for not giving enough military equipment fast enough, saying “it pisses me off“. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s military commander-in-chief said his forces were being outgunned by the Russians and said he needed more supplies, including F-16 fighter jets, from the West.
The latest developments dash, perhaps, the hope that Ukraine might be able to exploit a perceived weakness in the Russian army in the wake of the failed insurrection against the Putin government by the mercenary group Wagner last month. Wagner fighters were perceived to be among the most capable pro-Russian forces inside Ukraine and are now apparently out of the game as the Russian government breaks up the military company to neutralise the threat to itself, having exiled its leadership abroad.
Russia, for their part, insists losing Wagner will not impact their ability to keep fighting in Ukraine, saying they have other forces to replace the group with.