Counteroffensive is still ‘going in the right direction’ says officials, in one of west’s first assessments of Ukrainian action launched on 4 June
Ukraine is taking significant casualties and making slow progress towards the Russian main line of defence, western officials have admitted in one of the west’s first assessments of the Ukrainian counteroffensive launched on 4 June.
The officials’ sombre tone was clearly designed to lower expectations of a transformative breakthrough. However they nevertheless insisted the counteroffensive was “going in the right direction” and the losses were not unexpected.
They said the counteroffensive was still in its early days and involved a form of warfare not seen in decades as Ukraine forces are forced to build single lanes of armoured vehicles through mines heading to main Russian defences that in some cases may be still as far as 20km away.
“The vulnerability of the classic single lanes through the minefields make the Ukrainian armoury very vulnerable to attack,” the officials said. The officials denied Ukraine had lost as many as 120 armoured vehicles – a figure touted by Moscow.
One official said: “The Russian manoeuvre and defence approach is proving challenging for the Ukraine and costly to attacking forces hence the advance at the moment is slow”.
The officials suggested there is likely to be “grinding costly warfare likely for many months to come. This is incredibly difficult. They are going against a well-prepared line that the Russians have had months to prepare. Russia has generally put up a good defence from their well-prepared positions and falling back to tactical lines. Whilst they are inflicting casualties on the Russians they are not significant because the Russians are choosing the time to withdraw in a manner similar to the way the Ukrainians defended themselves against Russian vehicles.
“The idea that the Russians were just going to melt away and the Ukrainians were going to drive straight through their defensive line was in people’s wildest dreams.
“In this conflict the advantage has always been with the defender”.
The officials said it may not be clear for as long as three months whether the offensive could be classified as a success.
Most of the vehicles that have been damaged have been hit by mines. As the Ukrainians advance they are also more exposed to drone assaults.
The officials played down suggestions that this assault was likely to give Ukraine a tactical advantage as early as September, and so give it space to reopen talks with Vladimir Putin. “We are a long way away from Ukraine being in a position to reopen negotiations”, the officials said.
The slow progress is likely to place greater pressure on the west to signal to Putin that it is prepared for a long haul, and will not treat the counteroffensive as Ukraine’s one shot at reclaiming its territory. Ukraine has long feared support may decline in the west if the supply of western arms does not produce early tangible results.
Western officials admitted that western-supplied jets may not be available in the short term, even if training of Ukrainian pilots is now underway.
The officials also suggested Putin might have taken a truth serum before meeting military correspondents where he said Russia was suffering severe tank losses and suffering problems with its military industrial base.
Even though there was still a huge amount of confusion about exact Russian deployment, the officials said the vast majority of Russian forces are now committed to positions on the line partly due to the sheer size of the line that has to be defended. That gave Russia little room for further manoeuvre to deploy reinforcements if a point in the line became vulnerable.
By contrast Ukraine was holding back some of its heaviest armoury, including Challenger tanks.
The time in Kyiv is just coming up to 9pm. Here is a roundup of the day’s main news:
Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general, has said alliance members must ensure Ukraine keeps getting enough arms to pursue its counteroffensive against Russia.
Ukraine is taking significant casualties and making slow progress towards the Russian main line of defence, western officials have admitted in one of the west’s first assessments of the Ukrainian counteroffensive launched on 4 June.
Ukraine reported incremental advances in its counteroffensive against Russian forces on Wednesday, in what the country’s deputy defence minister described as “extremely fierce” fighting. In the past day, Ukrainian troops had advanced 200-500 metres in various areas near the largely devastated eastern city of Bakhmut, and 300-350 metres in the direction of the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, Hanna Maliar said.
UN nuclear chief Rafael Grossi delayed a trip to the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station on Wednesday for security reasons, as heavy fighting raged in southern Ukraine.
The Kremlin said it was concerned by unconfirmed media reports that a senior Chechen commander had been wounded in Ukraine. Earlier on Wednesday, the defence ministry’s TV channel reported that Adam Delimkhanov, head of Chechnya’s national guard, had been injured in Ukraine. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov later claimed that Delimkhanov was alive and well.
Kalibr missiles hit the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa at 2.40am on Wednesday, setting a warehouse, a business centre, an educational institution, restaurants and shops ablaze. It was a one of a number of attacks across the country on Wednesday that left 13 civilians dead and 24 injured.
After a destructive feud between his top military chiefs and the mercenary warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin, Vladimir Putin has appeared to side with his top brass, calling for Russia’s “volunteer detachments” fighting in Ukraine to be placed under direct control of the defence ministry.
The decision severely undermines Prigozhin, who has turned Wagner’s role in the capture of Bakhmut into an outsized public profile in Russia that he uses to berate Putin’s generals and promote himself.
Speaking to a group of pro-war bloggers on Tuesday, the Russian president said he welcomed the defence minister Sergei Shoigu’s initiative to force mercenary groups to sign contracts with the ministry – an order Prigozhin has refused to follow.
You can read more on this story from my colleagues Pjotr Sauer and Andrew Roth here:
The death toll from a strike on a warehouse and apartment block in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih has been raised to 12 after the death of a 67-year-old man in hospital overnight, as my colleague Daniel Boffey reports.
The destruction of the Kakhovka Dam has led to a “dire humanitarian crisis” in flooded communities downstream, the United Nations in Ukraine has said.
The dam, part of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant, was breached in the early hours of 6 June, allowing some of the 18 cubic kilometres of water it held back to surge down across a swathe of southern Ukraine.
The damage resulting from the collapse has forced the evacuation of thousands of people, flooded national parks and jeopardised water supplies to millions of people.
The Ukrainian government has now requested the UN to help launch a post-disaster needs assessment that will look in depth at the long-term implications of the devastating destruction of the dam, the United Nations in Ukraine tweeted.
The destruction of the #KakhovkaDam, a consequence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has led to a dire humanitarian crisis in flooded communities downstream, compounding existing war effects.
It will have also significant long-term impacts on a larger area and population.
🧵1/4 https://t.co/pQvyRh6Vea
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has said that Adam Delimkhanov, one of his senior commanders, is alive and well, dismissing reports that he had been killed or injured in Ukraine.
Kadyrov, who has led Chechnya since 2007 and is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said in a post on the Telegram messenger app on Wednesday that Delimkhanov was “alive and well and not even wounded”.
Kadyrov added that he had known Delimkhanov was uninjured from the start of what he called “a fake information attack”, but had remained silent in order to embarrass Ukrainian media outlets which had reported on the commander’s alleged injury.
There had been unconfirmed rumours on Ukrainian social media channels that the Chechen commander had been killed in an artillery strike in southern Ukraine.
Asked about the reports of Delimkhanov, head of Chechnya’s national guard, being injured, the Kremlin earlier on Wednesday said it was “worried” and was waiting for clarification about what had really happened (See post at 13:35).
Russia appears to have doubled the number of trained dolphins defending Sevastopol naval base in Crimea, evidence seen by Naval News suggests.
Analysis indicates the number of trained dolphins has increased from 3-4 to 6-7. This means dolphin patrols might have increased in frequency and have possibly been covering a wider area.
Russia has a history of training dolphins for military purposes, using the aquatic mammal to retrieve objects or deter enemy divers.
The Sevastopol naval base is crucial for the Russian military, as it sits in the southern tip of Crimea which Moscow seized in 2014.
Ukraine had also trained dolphins at an aquarium near Sevastopol, in a program born out of a Soviet-era scheme that fell into neglect in the 1990s.
Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general, has said alliance members must ensure Ukraine keeps getting enough arms to pursue its counteroffensive against Russia.
Kyiv’s Western backers will meet on Thursday at Nato headquarters in Brussels to get the latest update from Ukraine’s defence minister on the progress of the assaults, AFP reports.
“The most obvious thing is to ensure they have the weapons, the supplies, the maintenance to continue to conduct the offensive,” Stoltenberg told journalists.
He added that there was always recognition that Ukraine would suffer losses as it seeks to breach heavily fortified Russian lines.
Stoltenberg said:
There will be casualties, also, when it comes to modern Nato equipment. No one expected there to be zero casualties. The realities of this is fierce, fierce fighting.
Ukrainian troops have advanced 200-500 meters at various sections of the front line around the small eastern city of Bakhmut and 300-350 meters in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister said.
The UN nuclear chief, Rafael Grossi, delayed a planned trip to Ukraine’s Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant until it is safer to travel, a senior Ukrainian government official said on Wednesday.
The Kremlin said on Wednesday it was concerned by unconfirmed media reports that a senior Chechen commander had been wounded in Ukraine and was awaiting clarification about what had really happened. Earlier on Wednesday, the defence ministry’s TV channel reported that Adam Delimkhanov, head of Chechnya’s national guard, had been injured in Ukraine.
Overnight, Russian missile attacks killed three people in the Black Sea city of Odesa and three in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday.
Ukraine is taking significant casualties and making slow progress towards the Russian main line of defence, western officials have admitted in one of the west’s first assessments of the Ukrainian counteroffensive launched on 4 June.
The officials’ sombre tone was clearly designed to lower expectations of a transformative breakthrough. However they nevertheless insisted the counteroffensive was “going in the right direction” and the losses were not unexpected.
They said the counteroffensive was still in its early days and involved a form of warfare not seen in decades as Ukraine forces are forced to build single lanes of armoured vehicles through mines heading to main Russian defences that in some cases may be still as far as 20km away.
“The vulnerability of the classic single lanes through the minefields make the Ukrainian armoury very vulnerable to attack,” the officials said. The officials denied Ukraine had lost as many as 120 armoured vehicles – a figure touted by Moscow.
One official said: “The Russian manoeuvre and defence approach is proving challenging for the Ukraine and costly to attacking forces hence the advance at the moment is slow”.
The officials suggested there is likely to be “grinding costly warfare likely for many months to come. This is incredibly difficult. They are going against a well-prepared line that the Russians have had months to prepare. Russia has generally put up a good defence from their well-prepared positions and falling back to tactical lines. Whilst they are inflicting casualties on the Russians they are not significant because the Russians are choosing the time to withdraw in a manner similar to the way the Ukrainians defended themselves against Russian vehicles.
“The idea that the Russians were just going to melt away and the Ukrainians were going to drive straight through their defensive line was in people’s wildest dreams.
“In this conflict the advantage has always been with the defender”.
The officials said it may not be clear for as long as three months whether the offensive could be classified as a success.
Most of the vehicles that have been damaged have been hit by mines. As the Ukrainians advance they are also more exposed to drone assaults.
The officials played down suggestions that this assault was likely to give Ukraine a tactical advantage as early as September, and so give it space to reopen talks with Vladimir Putin. “We are a long way away from Ukraine being in a position to reopen negotiations”, the officials said.
The slow progress is likely to place greater pressure on the west to signal to Putin that it is prepared for a long haul, and will not treat the counteroffensive as Ukraine’s one shot at reclaiming its territory. Ukraine has long feared support may decline in the west if the supply of western arms does not produce early tangible results.
Western officials admitted that western-supplied jets may not be available in the short term, even if training of Ukrainian pilots is now underway.
The officials also suggested Putin might have taken a truth serum before meeting military correspondents where he said Russia was suffering severe tank losses and suffering problems with its military industrial base.
Even though there was still a huge amount of confusion about exact Russian deployment, the officials said the vast majority of Russian forces are now committed to positions on the line partly due to the sheer size of the line that has to be defended. That gave Russia little room for further manoeuvre to deploy reinforcements if a point in the line became vulnerable.
By contrast Ukraine was holding back some of its heaviest armoury, including Challenger tanks.
Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has rebuffed growing international pressure on Ankara to ratify Sweden’s Nato membership bid before the western defence alliance meets in July.
Western officials had hoped Erdoğan would soften his position on the diplomatically charged issue after he secured a hard-fought re-election last month (AFP reports).
But Erdoğan signalled no major shift in comments released by his office while Turkish and Swedish officials were locked in last-minute negotiations in Ankara.
Sweden and its Nordic neighbour Finland ended decades of military non-alignment and applied to join the US-led defence bloc in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Turkey and fellow Nato member Hungary ratified Finland’s membership this year. But both countries’ parliaments have yet to approve Sweden’s entry.
Turkey is pushing Sweden to ban and crack down on rallies by Kurdish supporters of a group recognised as a terrorist organisation by Ankara.
Sweden hopes to be able to determine who was behind the Nord Stream gas pipeline sabotage by the autumn, the prosecutor leading the country’s investigation told Swedish radio, Reuters reports.
In September 2022, several unexplained underwater explosions ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and newly-built Nord Stream 2 pipelines that link Russia and Germany across the Baltic Sea.
The blasts occurred in the economic zones of Sweden and Denmark and both countries say the explosions were deliberate though they have yet to single out who was responsible.
There has been an update on the fire that broke out on Wednesday at the Novocherkassk power station in Russia’s southern Rostov region, close to the border with Ukraine (See post at 12:54).
Citing reports, the Kyiv Independent tweeted that the fire was said to have started due to “non-compliance with safety precautions during repair work”.
Here are some pictures of a local clean up effort in Odesa after a missile attack hit the southern Ukrainian city.
The Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, said on Wednesday it had voted to give its initial backing to legislation that would allow the defence ministry to sign contracts with suspected or convicted criminals to fight in Ukraine.
More than 15 months into its invasion of Ukraine, Russia is trying to recruit more soldiers for Europe’s largest land conflict since the second world war.
Under the proposed changes, a contract could be concluded with someone being investigated for committing a crime, or who is having their case heard in court, or who has been convicted – but before the verdict takes legal effect, according to the database of the Duma.
People convicted of sexual crimes, treason, terrorism or extremism would not be able to sign up, Reuters reports.
Those who do sign up would be exempt from criminal liability upon completion of their contract or if they receive awards for their combat prowess.
The Wagner mercenary group was previously allowed to recruit convicts from prisons to fight in Ukraine, but said in February it had stopped. Prison rights activists say the defence ministry has taken over that process but wanted to make changes.
The new changes being examined by the Duma do not cover recruitment of people already serving their sentences and the defence ministry has not commented.
The Kremlin said on Wednesday it was concerned by unconfirmed media reports that a senior Chechen commander had been wounded in Ukraine and was awaiting clarification about what had really happened, Reuters reports.
Earlier on Wednesday, the defence ministry’s TV channel reported that Adam Delimkhanov, head of Chechnya’s national guard, had been injured in Ukraine (See post at 10:32am).
Delimkhanov, who is a member of the Duma as well as commander of the Chechen division of the Russian national guard, is widely seen as the Caucasian region’s second most senior official, behind Ramzan Kadyrov.
Vladimir Putin will hold talks in Moscow on Wednesday with Cuba’s prime minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz, the Kremlin said.
Russia is seeking to bolster relations with Latin American, African and other non-western countries as the west tries to isolate and economically punish it for its invasion of Ukraine.
Germany enshrined a Nato commitment to spending 2% of its gross domestic product on defence and identified Russia as the biggest threat to European security as the government announced its first ever National Security Strategy on Wednesday.
Here are some of the highlights of Germany’s strategy outlined in a policy document and at a government press conference, as reported by Reuters:
Russia is the biggest threat to peace in the Euro-Atlantic area
Russia is trying to destabilise European democracies, weaken EU and Nato
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said it is important to continue to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine, including when the war ends
Germany’s military budget was the seventh largest in the world last year behind the US, China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia and the UK.
Nato members pledged in 2014 to move towards spending 2% of GDP on defence by 2024.