Zelenskiy says counteroffensive yet to begin despite Kyiv’s gains at front

Firefighters work at a site of a residential house destroyed by a Russian military strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in the village of Malokaterynivka, Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine May 11, 2023. (REUTERS)

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive against Russia’s invasion force had yet to start, even as his generals claimed some of their biggest battlefield successes in months.

Kyiv says it has pushed Russian forces back over the past several days near the eastern city of Bakhmut in local assaults, while a full-blown counteroffensive involving tens of thousands of troops and hundreds of Western tanks is still being prepared.

“We still need a bit more time,” Zelensky said in an interview with European broadcasters.

Ukrainian forces had already received enough equipment from Western allies for their campaign but were waiting for the full complement of armored vehicles to arrive to reduce their casualties, Zelensky said.

In a major step up in Western military support for Ukraine, Britain announced it was sending Storm Shadow cruise missiles that would give Kyiv the ability to strike targets deep behind Russian lines.

“The key here is to give Ukraine that capability. To defend itself,” Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told parliament in London.

Western countries including the United States had previously held back from providing long range weapons for fear of provoking Russian retaliation. Wallace said Britain had weighed the risk.

The war in Ukraine is at a turning point, with Kyiv poised to unleash its new counterstrike after six months of keeping its forces on the defensive, while Russia mounted a huge winter offensive that failed to capture significant territory.

Moscow’s main target for months has been Bakhmut, which it has yet to fully capture despite the bloodiest ground combat in Europe since World War Two.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russia’s Wagner private army which has led the fight in Bakhmut, has acknowledged Ukrainian gains. Ukrainian operations were “unfortunately, partially successful” he said on Thursday, calling Zelensky’s assertion that the counteroffensive had not yet begun “deceptive”.

A once secretive figure, Prigozhin has released messages daily over the past week, often with obscenity-filled tirades, complaining of Russia’s failure to support his forces.

In his latest audio message he said the situation on Bakhmut’s flanks, guarded by regular Russian troops, was unfolding according to the “worst of all expected scenarios” with territory captured over months being “thrown away”.

On Tuesday, Prigozhin said a Russian brigade had fled from the trenches, giving up a swathe of land southwest of Bakhmut. That was backed up by a Ukrainian unit that claimed to have routed the Russian brigade, destroying two of its companies.

The commander of Ukraine’s ground forces said on Wednesday Russian forces had retreated in places by as much as two km. Ukraine has boasted of few similar advances since its last big offensive last November.

Russia’s military has not acknowledged the setbacks. In its regular daily briefing on Thursday, the Defense Ministry said Russian troops were continuing to assault the western part of Bakhmut, with paratroopers pinning down Ukrainian army units on the flanks.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged that the war was “very difficult”. He said he had no doubt that Bakhmut “will be captured and will be kept under control”.

Reuters could not independently verify the situation on the ground in Bakhmut.

MANAGING EXPECTATIONS

Western allies are sending hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles to Ukraine for its counteroffensive and have trained thousands of Ukrainian troops abroad.

In anticipation of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, Russia has resumed air strikes on Ukraine over the past two weeks after a lull of nearly two months. Moscow says Ukraine has used drones to strike occupied areas and Russian territory near the border.

In the latest report, the governor of Russia’s Bryansk region bordering Ukraine said a drone had hit a fuel storage depot. No one was hurt. Kyiv does not comment on such incidents.

Some Ukrainian officials have tried to manage expectations for their counteroffensive, cautioning against expecting a swift repeat of Ukraine’s big military successes last year, when it pushed Russian forces back from Kyiv’s outskirts and recaptured swathes of occupied territory in unexpected breakthroughs.

Russia is determined to defend the sixth of Ukraine’s territory that it has occupied and claims to have annexed forever. In the six months since the last major Ukrainian advance it has built extensive fortifications along the front. Penetrating that with an armored assault would be far more complicated than anything Ukraine’s forces have attempted yet.

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