Counter-offensive starts: Ukraine liberates seven villages and loses luxury tanks

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While hundreds of state-of-the-art fighter jets have been hurtling through German airspace since Monday in the gigantic NATO exercise Air Defender 2023, Ukraine is still hoping in vain for the delivery of Western fighter jets. Fortunately, the government of the war-torn country had been able to rely on American F-16 aircraft to launch its long-heralded counter-offensive against the Russian invaders. Now Kiev has launched a major attack on the Russians without the jets.

Several Ukrainian test attacks have been going on for days along the approximately 1,500 kilometers long front line. The goal: find weak points in the Russian defense and then hit the corresponding spot with full force.

Area of ​​the city of Zurich recaptured

In the Donbass region of Donetsk, Ukraine says it has already liberated seven villages and recaptured an area the size of the city of Zurich. Apparently, several attacks around the almost completely destroyed city of Bakhmut, which Russian Wagner forces had taken in May after months of costly fighting, were also successful.

The Ukrainian test attacks in the southeastern region of Zaporizhia, which includes Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, have not gone so well so far. Vladimir Putin’s troops (70) have so far managed to repel the Ukrainian attack. In the process, the Russians lost at least two of the highly acclaimed Western Leopard 2 tanks and several American Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. The Russian side even claims to have captured a still operational American tank. This information cannot be verified.

Selenski’s hometown hit hard

In Zaporizhia, fighting is likely to intensify significantly in the coming weeks, despite initial Ukrainian failures. If Ukraine manages to penetrate here, Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s (45) units could drive a wedge between the Russian forces on the occupied Crimean peninsula and those in Donbass. If Russia loses land connectivity between the two regions, Russia’s war logistics could quickly collapse.

Russian war planners are also aware of this. Your troops have used the relatively quiet spring months to erect massive defensive walls in the region. Nowhere is the Russian defense as dense as in the Zaporizhia region, as satellite images show. “We are running into a wall of steel,” a Ukrainian soldier told the Wall Street Journal after one of the attacks.

Zelensky on Tuesday encouraged his compatriots despite renewed Russian missile strikes against civilian targets in his southern Ukrainian hometown of Kryvyi Rih: “Our freedom now depends on all of us,” he said on social media. “Believe in victory, it will come!”

Source: Blick