Ukraine launches long-awaited counteroffensive to oust Russian forces: officials
Ukraine on Thursday finally launched its much-anticipated counteroffensive to push Russian forces from its territory more than 15 months into the war, officials on both sides of the conflict claimed.
Two Ukrainian officials, including a source close to President Volodymyr Zelensky, told ABC News Thursday that the counteroffensive was underway.
Separately, a senior officer and a soldier near the front lines corroborated the counteroffensive claims to NBC News, something Kyiv has not officially confirmed.
Asked to comment on the media reports regarding the counteroffensive, Ukraine’s military dismissed them.
“We have no such information. And we do not comment on anonymous sources,” a spokesperson for the Ukraine Armed Forces General Staff said.
“The enemy was detected in time by our reconnaissance forces and a preventative strike was delivered by our artillery and aviation forces and using anti-tank weapons.”
Multiple reports from Russian sources likewise claimed that Ukrainians were trying to break through enemy lines in the Zaporizhzhia region in the southeast, but were meeting stiff resistance and taking significant losses.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said his forces had repelled four separate overnight Ukrainian attacks in Zaporizhzhia and that Kyiv’s forces had been forced to retreat “with heavy losses.”
“At 1:30 a.m. today the enemy attempted to break through our defenses in the Zaporizhzhia direction with forces from the 47th Mechanized Brigade numbering up to 1,500 men and 150 armored vehicles,” Shoigu said in a statement.
Shoigu alleged that Ukraine had lost 30 tanks, 11 armored infantry vehicles and up to 350 troops.
The Post could not independently verify Shoigu’s figures, and the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has not commented on his statement.
Vladimir Rogov, a Kremlin-installed official in the Russia-controlled part of Zaporizhzhia, echoed Shoigu’s remarks, saying Kyiv’s forces had tried to break through the Russian lines using drones, armored vehicles and rocket systems, but without success.
Writing on his Telegram channel Thursday morning, Rogov said Ukrainians had been “hitting the positions of our guys for many hours with artillery and HIMARS.”
He also said Kyiv’s soldiers shelled the occupied town of Tokmak in an attack that destroyed two homes.
Rogov, who was speaking on his official channel on the Telegram messaging application, said Russian forces expected more such attacks in the coming days and weeks, and urged civilians to flee the area.
Ukraine had spent months training soldiers and amassing huge quantities of modern military equipment and ammunition supplied by its Western allies in preparation for the pushback.
Hostilities in Zaporizhzhia have been escalating for several days, with Moscow first reporting a Ukrainian attempt to punch through Russia’s defenses there Monday.
Kyiv has denied those early reports, insisting that the fighting in Zaporizhzhia was not part of its counteroffensive, which has not begun yet.
In its daily Ukraine briefing Thursday, Britain’s Ministry of Defense reported heavy fighting along “multiple sectors of the front,” adding that Kyiv held the initiative in most areas.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, said “the events that are happening now on the front line signal the start of the offensive and Ukraine will intensify its efforts.”
In eastern Ukraine, the battle for Bakhmut continued, with Ukrainian troops advancing on the flanks of the ravaged city, which was captured by the Wagner Group last month and handed over to the Russian regular forces.
Two senior US officials speaking to CNN said Ukrainian forces met stiff resistance in the east in recent days, suffering “significant” losses in troops and foreign-made military equipment, including armored personnel carriers.
Russia’s military claimed Wednesday that the attack in the Donetsk region was “thwarted” and the enemy was “destroyed.”
“The Armed Forces of Ukraine, having failed to achieve the offensive objectives and suffered significant losses in South Donetsk direction, made the attempts to break the defense of Russian troops in Donetsk direction close to [Bakhmut],” a spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Defense said.
The contradictory comments about the counteroffensive come just days after the destruction of the Nova Khakovka dam in Ukraine’s Kherson region, which caused catastrophic flooding and triggered mass evacuations.
At least five people have died, many were left homeless, and tens of thousands were without drinking water.
Zelensky and his aides toured the disaster region Thursday to asses the damage. Just hours after the president’s visit, Kherson was shelled by the Russians, forcing the suspension of rescue work.
Ukraine and Russia have blamed each other for the calamity, with Moscow accusing Kyiv of bombing the dam, possibly to deprive the Russia-annexed Crimea of drinking water.
Kyiv warned in the fall that the dam, which has been under Russian control since the first months of the invasion, had been mined, and has suggested that Moscow intentionally blew it up to try to prevent Ukrainian forces crossing the Dnipro River in their counteroffensive.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a staunch ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, backed Moscow’s claim that Kyiv bombed the dam to distract attention from what it described as a failed attempt to launch the counteroffensive.
With Post wires
