A top Ukrainian commander has claimed that Russia’s biggest offensive in months – involving tanks, thousands of soldiers and armoured vehicles in an attack on the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka – is failing, as he admitted Kyiv’s own attempts to advance in the south were proving “difficult”.

Russian forces have pummelled the town over the past week, a key bulge surrounded by Russian-held territory on the eastern Donbas front.

It is one of the largest assaults by Moscow since last year’s full-scale invasion and comes at a time when Ukraine’s counteroffensive is moving slowly, and the world is focused on the imminent Israeli ground invasion of Gaza.

  • zerfuffle
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    1 year ago

    Haven’t we been getting reports for weeks of a potential Ukrainian Kherson offensive? We’ve been hearing of river crossings, troop concentrations, and persistent Russian bombings and missile strikes. Something big is brewing on the Kherson front.

    Seems like the Russians picked the two points furthest away from Kherson (Avdiivka, Kupyansk) and decided to bait Ukrainian redeployment there. Avdiivka is also the main territory allowing for constant Ukrainian shelling of Donetsk and it seems like ex-DPR troops are leading the charge here, so make of that what you will.

    • PrettyFlyForAFatGuy
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      1 year ago

      getting heavy equipment across the dniepr is probs too tough to do on a large enough scale to open a front in Kherson. i suspect these amphibous attacks are designed to keep the russians defening as broad a stretch of land as possible to thin the amount of reinforcements being sent to push back against the breakthrough near tokmak

      • zerfuffle
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        1 year ago

        Why dedicate so many forces there, then?

        Russia isn’t missing soldiers if all they have to do is sit around and wait. Their 300k new troops can easily do that with rotations and training.

          • zerfuffle
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            1 year ago

            Have you been seeing at all what Russia has been doing for the past six months?

            There’s a reason Ukraine hasn’t been able to do jack shit in the Zaporizhzhia area.