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| Kostiantyn Liberov/Associated Press |
Ukrainian forces threaten key Russian supply route as well as pressing forward in the south
An unexpected Ukrainian military offensive in the east near the country’s second-largest city of Kharkiv is gaining ground, testing Russian occupation forces that also are under pressure in southern Ukraine, in the latest sign that Ukraine’s defenders are seizing the military initiative.
Ukrainian units are advancing eastward from Kharkiv, according to Ukrainian officials and Russian war bloggers, targeting a critical Russian supply route.
The dual offensives in eastern and southern Ukraine show how the country’s military is increasingly forcing Russia to react to its moves. Ukraine’s forces are growing gradually stronger as the country receives advanced weapons from the U.S. and other Western countries, while Russia is struggling to deploy extra well-trained manpower after suffering heavy losses since it launched its full-scale invasion in February.
Russia still holds an advantage in the quantity of artillery and shells, however, and advancing remains difficult for either side’s forces, particularly across the flat and open ground that characterizes large parts of eastern and southern Ukraine.
After pushing Russian troops back from the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv this spring, Ukrainian forces had been gradually retreating from cities in the east that Russia was leveling with artillery and airstrikes. But Russia’s eastern offensive appears exhausted, with manpower and supply shortages exacerbated by Ukraine’s use of long-range rockets provided by the U.S. to strike command posts and ammunition and fuel depots.
One target of the offensive is the city of Kupyansk, a road hub for Russian supplies heading south from the border into eastern Ukraine. A continued Ukrainian advance could also threaten to isolate Russian forces in the city of Izyum, which Russia has been seeking to use as a staging point for its own offensive in eastern Ukraine. --->READ MORE HERE
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| SERGEY VOLSKIY/AFP |
It is an almost everyday occurrence in the Russian-occupied parts of eastern and southern Ukraine.
Russia’s ammunition depots blow up, with large fires erupting as tons of ordnance detonate for hours. Some of these incidents cause giant blasts with a radius of hundreds of meters.
Now that Ukraine has acquired advanced Western artillery and rocket systems, it has gradually begun a campaign to take out Russia’s key military infrastructure. Over the last four weeks, nearly 20 Russian ammunition depots in Russian-occupied Donbas and Ukraine’s south, including some of the largest, have been hit or completely destroyed.
As Russia continues with its slow but steady advance in Ukraine’s eastern region of Donbas, Ukraine’s military is working to undermine Russia’s overwhelming artillery power and disrupt its logistics deep in occupied territories.
Seek and destroy
Devastating strikes upon Russian command posts have become increasingly frequent since mid-June when Ukraine began using the first of four M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, provided by the U.S., nearly a week before their arrival in Ukraine was publicly announced.
On June 15, a massive explosion occurred near the city of Khrustalniy (formerly Krasniy Luch) in occupied Luhansk Oblast.
Explosions continued for days. According to satellite images, the blasts created a destruction zone spanning some 500 meters around the epicenter. The site was one of Russia’s largest ammunition depots, built after Russian forces occupied the area in 2014. In the Azotniy neighborhood in the northeastern part of Donetsk where Russia established ammunition depots through the city, successful attacks have continued on an almost daily basis. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to +++++relevant+++++ and related stories:
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+++++ISW: Russia’s deployment of forces to Ukraine’s south likely enabling Ukrainian counterattacks+++++
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