The Ukrainian military will launch a much-anticipated counterattack “very soon,” a top ground commander said on Thursday, as Russia loses momentum in Bakhmut.
The commander of the Ukrainian Land Forces, Oleksandr Syrski, announced that a counterattack on the drained Russian forces would soon happen in Bakhmut.
Wagner’s Russian mercenaries are “losing considerable strength and lack steam,” Syrskyi said on social media.
“We’ll make the most of this chance soon, as we did in the past near Kiev, Kharkiv, Balakliya and Kupiansk,” he said.
Last yr, Ukraine launched counter-offensives in Kiev, Kharkiv, Kalaklia and Kupiansk, which turned out to be major turning points in the war and recaptured much of Ukraine’s territory.
Syrski noted that despite the declining strength and variety of troops, Russia was not deterred.
“The aggressor doesn’t surrender hope in any respect costs to get Bakhmut, whatever the lack of manpower or equipment,” he said.
Syrskyi stated that even when Ukrainian troops are under constant fire from Russian artillery, they proceed to reveal “supermanly resilience, courage and bravado”, – reported the Ukrainian newspaper “Ukrainska Pravda”..
In a Ukrainian-occupied village on the northern outskirts of Bakhmut, the intensity of the Russian forces has decreased significantly.
“Per week ago it was really hot here, but in the last three days it has turn out to be quieter” – a Ukrainian soldier he told Reuters.
The weakening of the Russian attack on Bakhmut, once the important thing focus of the Russian offensive, might also be the results of the shift of troops and resources to other areas.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the troops defending Bakhmut earlier this week, then traveled to frontline provinces in the Kherson region on Thursday.
He shared a video of him meeting with residents of the war-torn village of Posad Pokrovske, positioned on a former Kherson front line, and promised the residents that they might soon rebuild.
“We’ll rebuild every little thing, we’ll rebuild every little thing. Like every town and village that suffered from the occupiers,” he wrote.
News of the Ukrainian counterattack got here after Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted his “dear friend” Chinese President Xi Jinping in Moscow this week.
The communist leader faced criticism for trying to seem as a peacemaker in the course of the three-day meeting, barely mentioning the war in Ukraine.
After Xi left Moscow on Wednesday, Putin sent drones across northern Ukraine and rocketed an apartment block in Zaporizhia, killing at the least one person.
At the very least nine people were killed in Thursday’s airstrikes.