Ukrainian forces have responded to Russian efforts to expel them from one part of Russian territory by launching a large number of attacks on another border area, using drones, artillery and troops.
More than 20 villages in Russia’s Belgorod region – which are located in a 150-kilometer (90-mile) stretch of land along the Ukrainian border – have come under attack, according to the region’s governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov. The Ukrainian military has not officially acknowledged the operation.
The assault by Ukrainian forces appears to be in response to their recent losses in the Russian region of Kursk, adjacent to Belgorod, where they seized more than 1,000 square kilometers last August. In recent weeks a fresh Russian offensive backed by North Korean troops has pushed them back to the border.
Both Russia and Ukraine are looking for gains across the 1,000-kilometer frontline as the weather improves – and as the Trump administration presses for a ceasefire.
Citing overnight aerial attacks in Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih and “other cities and communities,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday demanded an urgent “strong response” from the US in his nightly address.
“We expect a response – a serious one. We are working toward a response,” he said, describing 172 drone strikes on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure on Friday night. “A strong response is urgently needed – above all from the US, from Europe, from everyone in the world who has placed their bets on diplomacy. Russia must be forced into peace – only pressure will work,” he said.
Ukraine’s General Staff said soldiers being treated at a military hospital were injured in an attack by Russian drones in the northeastern city of Kharkiv in the late hours of Saturday. Two people were killed and twenty-five others were injured elsewhere in the city.
Ukrainian forces on the back foot
It is unclear whether the Ukrainian attacks in Belgorod are intended to take and hold Russian soil, or whether the move is an effort to relieve pressure on Ukrainian troops still in the Kursk area and in the adjoining Ukrainian region of Sumy by forcing a redeployment of Russian forces.
Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said Thursday that Russian units were trying to make incursions into Sumy. And on Saturday, the Russian defense ministry claimed its troops had taken a small settlement inside the region.
So far, the Ukrainian incursion into Belgorod seems much less ambitious than last year’s Kursk offensive. According to Russian officials, it began nearly two weeks ago with a number of cross-border attacks.
The extent of Ukraine’s success so far in Belgorod is unclear. Unofficial Russian sources speak of a Ukrainian presence several kilometers inside Russia. One Russian military blogger said Saturday that the Ukrainians had managed to gain a foothold in the village of Popovka inside Belgorod and that “heavy fighting continues” there.
Earlier this week, Russian television reporter Anna Prokofieva was killed in the same area.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian forces appear very much on the backfoot. In the east of Ukraine, Russian troops continue sustained attacks in the Pokrovsk area of Donetsk – at the highest intensity yet this year, according to the unofficial Ukrainian blog Deep State. But Deep State said the Ukrainians had reduced the rate of their territorial losses since January.
Further south in Zaporizhzhia, the situation for the Ukrainians is deteriorating, according to the spokesman for the military there, Vladyslav Voloshyn. He said Friday that the number of Russian assaults, using small infantry groups, had “increased significantly.”
Geolocated video shows that the Russians have advanced into the town of Shcherbaky. The town was claimed by the Russian defense ministry Saturday. One Russian blog spoke of heavy fighting in the area.
A Ukrainian military commentator acknowledged gains by Russian troops in the area, adjacent to an important highway, though he noted the troops’ heavy losses.
Kostiantyn Mashovets, another Ukrainian military analyst, estimates that the Russians have accumulated as many as 70,000 troops along the Zaporizhzhia front, plus hundreds of tanks and artillery guns.
The Kremlin holds some three-quarters of Zaporizhzhia and has illegally declared its complete annexation.
Little progress toward a ceasefire
Negotiations on limited ceasefires, mediated with some fanfare by the United States, are making little progress. The Kremlin added several conditions for a ceasefire in the Black Sea that are unacceptable to both Ukraine and its European allies.
Moscow and Kyiv accuse each other of targeting energy facilities, despite an agreement earlier this month that they would cease. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday that “Russia reserves the right not to comply with the moratorium on attacking the energy sector, which Kyiv constantly violates.”
One of the Russian negotiators said Friday that he did not expect an overall ceasefire agreement until at least the end of this year. Grigory Karasin said talks in Riyadh “did not lead to anything radical” and “it would be naive to expect breakthrough.” Progress, he said, might be expected at best at the end of the year.
Zelensky has claimed that Russia plans a multi-pronged offensive in the coming weeks to lock in territorial gains ahead of any further ceasefire negotiations.
“They’re dragging out the talks and trying to get the US stuck in endless, pointless discussions about fake ‘conditions’ just to buy time and then try to grab more land,” Zelensky said Thursday on a visit to Paris. “Putin wants to negotiate over territory from a stronger position.”
Reporting contributed by CNN’s Mariya Knight.
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