WAR IN UKRAINETide Turned? Ukraine Staggers Russia with Counteroffensive
Over roughly a six-day period, Ukrainian forces drove east and southeast away from the city of Kharkiv, plowing through what appears to have been undermanned and poorly defended Russian defenses, making a head-snapping counteroffensive to the Oskil River and rewriting the map of the Donbas battlefield. In doing so, experts say, Ukraine may have rewritten the narrative of the entire invasion, nearly seven months since its launch.
In early August, the signs pointed south: Ukraine stepped up its tempo of long-range artillery and rockets attacks in the Kherson region, pounding Dnieper River crossings and Russian ammunition depots. Russia shifted sizable numbers of units southwest, away from the Donbas, in anticipation of what most observers expected was a major counteroffensive.
Last week, the signs pointed east: Over roughly a six-day period, Ukrainian forces drove east and southeast away from the city of Kharkiv, plowing through what appears to have been undermanned and poorly defended Russian defenses, making a head-snapping counteroffensive to the Oskil River and rewriting the map of the Donbas battlefield.
In doing so, experts say, Ukraine may have rewritten the narrative of the entire invasion, nearly seven months since its launch.
For weeks now, across a roughly 2,400-kilometer front line from the mouth of the Dnieper River in the southwest to Luhansk and Donetsk regions in the northeast, Ukrainian and Russian forces have been pounding each other in what many experts called a stalemated war of attrition.
Over the summer, as Western weaponry began arriving in larger quantities, things began to change. Over the past six days, however, everything changed.
“The Ukrainians now have the initiative in this war,” said Mick Ryan, a retired major general in the Australian Army and fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The Russians will now be fighting where the Ukrainians decide to attack them and not at places of their choosing.”
“The loss of equipment and forces in Kharkiv means the Russians have no ability to wage any type of offensive in the short to medium term,” said Konrad Muzyka, a defense analyst for Rochan Consulting.
Ukrainian troops on September 10 claimed control of the city of Izyum, a strategic railway hub in southeast Kharkiv that had been used by Russian forces to supply its forces as they pushed westward earlier in the summer. The city had been attacked just days after the February 24 invasion and besieged for weeks until late March when Ukraine withdrew.
With Telegram, Twitter, and other social media channels awash in photos of Ukrainian flags hoisted in towns once occupied by Russian forces, Ukrainian officials claim to have wrested more territory from the Russian Army in the past week than all the territory Russia has captured since April.
