Ukraine cedes flooring, builds up battalions and F-16s for counteroffensive

Ukraine endured its slow rearguard motion all through the previous week, ceding flooring in ft and inches to keep the lives of its squaddies whilst managing to forestall a Russian step forward anyplace alongside its entrance line.
In the meantime, it all started to obtain its first F-16 fighter jets from Western allies, a brand new weapon that would lend a hand flip the steadiness of energy within the skies, which is vital to trends at the flooring.
It additionally endured to construct an estimated 15 new battalions it’s counting directly to sooner or later mount a counteroffensive that may roll again Russian conquests.
The combating was once fiercest in central Donetsk, the japanese province that has observed lots of the bloodiest battles of this warfare.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated Pokrovsk was once the focal point of Russian efforts on August 1.
“Pokrovsk, I’d say for nowadays, this can be a precedence for them … the biggest collection of workforce, the biggest collection of guns and [glide bombs], the entirety they’ve, they’re centring nowadays within the Pokrovsky path,” Zelenskyy was once quoted as pronouncing via Suspilne, Ukraine’s public broadcaster.
Pokrovsk lies 20km (12.4 miles) off the end of a salient that Russian forces have created west of Avdiivka since seizing it in February.
Within the intervening six months, they’ve complicated 26km (16 miles).
Russian forces finished their seize of Vesele on the tip of this salient on August 4.
(Al Jazeera)
Without equal Russian objective, Zelenskyy stated, was once to take hold of Sloviansk, which in conjunction with Kramatorsk, bureaucracy the spine of Ukraine’s defences in Donetsk.
However Russia has obfuscated the path from which the principle thrust for Sloviansk and Kramatorsk would come, prioritising other fronts at other occasions.
As an example, Ukraine’s normal personnel stated on Friday that Russian assaults have been expanding in Toretsk, a front-line town 50km (30 miles) east of Pokrovsk. That depth grew via Sunday when the overall personnel stated Toretsk was once soaking up 80 p.c of Russian assaults.
The struggle for Chasiv Yar
About 50km (30 miles) northeast of Pokrovsk, any other fierce struggle raged.
Russian forces started to advance thru Chasiv Yar, a prime flooring Ukrainians have defended stoutly to lengthen any other Russian offensive to damage thru to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
Geolocated photos on Friday confirmed that Russian forces had crossed the Siversky Donets-Donbas canal, a key defensive function that had held them at bay for months.
Through Monday Ukraine’s normal personnel stated assaults have been nonetheless being repulsed in Chasiv Yar, on the other hand, one Ukrainian formation was once pronouncing its departure, an obvious admission that town would now not in the long run be held.
“Chasiv Yar is any other Ukrainian town that in reality ceased to exist after the so-called ‘liberation’ via the Russians,” wrote Ukraine’s Black Swan strike workforce from the 255th Attack Battalion on-line. “Our battalion defended it for 4 months, steadfastly conserving the positions assigned to us. Now it’s time to leisure and get ready for brand new duties,” it posted.
(Al Jazeera)
Video taken via the battalion confirmed an totally abandoned and gutted town, with occasional artillery explosions on August 5 proceeding to blow aside the deserted concrete skeletons of constructions.
Requested via the Philadelphia Inquirer in past due June whether or not Ukraine would arrange to carry Chasiv Yar, the manager of Ukrainian intelligence Kyril Budanov had stated, “I will be able to chorus from reaction.”
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Ukraine’s flooring forces commander Oleksandr Pavlyuk on Sunday gave the weekly tally of Russian losses: 8,220 squaddies, 67 tanks, and 160 armoured combating cars – weekly Russian losses conventional for the previous a number of months. Al Jazeera may just now not independently test the toll.
What’s Ukraine’s recreation?
Russian President Vladimir Putin had set the conquest of Donetsk and Luhansk as a objective for his armies via remaining February, the warfare’s 2d anniversary.
In June, he advised Ukraine he would comply with a ceasefire and peace talks provided that Ukraine passed over the ones two provinces along side Zaporizhia and Kherson, which Russia additionally partly occupies.
Ukraine’s incapacity to compare Russian troop power and firepower seemed to vindicate Putin’s technique of attritional warfare to forestall Ukraine from ever retaking the initiative.
A serviceman of the twenty fourth Mechanised Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, runs at the street alongside a entrance line amid Russia’s assault on Ukraine, close to the city of Chasiv Yar in Donetsk area, Ukraine, on August 6, 2024 [Oleg Petrasiuk/Press Service of the 24th King Danylo Separate Mechanised Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces/Handout via Reuters]
Ukrainian Brigadier-Normal Andriy Hnatov stated as a lot in an interview on Friday.
Putin introduced his Would possibly 10 incursion into Ukraine’s northern Kharkiv area a month after Ukraine handed a brand new mobilisation legislation to boost 1 / 4 of 1,000,000 new troops, he stated.
“It’s now not unintentional,” stated Hnatov, who has commanded the Khortytsia workforce of forces dealing with the fiercest battles in Donetsk.
“The true objective of the enemy was once to not seize 10-15 kilometres (6-9 miles) of our territory there … the objective of the enemy was once to do the entirety in order that lets now not briefly really feel the result of mobilisation.”
Konstantyn Mashovets, a retired Ukrainian colonel who steadily feedback on army trends, stated Ukrainian troops within the Pokrovsk space have been “not as good as the enemy in forces and approach … particularly within the air element and artillery”, and known as the Russian advance “gradual however moderately assured”.
(Al Jazeera)
However Ukraine has performed defence figuring out that it might take Putin years – via some estimates 14 years – to finish his conquest of simply Luhansk and Donetsk.
It seems that to have executed this to shop for time for a technique the place it feels it has the benefit – the use of drones to undermine Russian energy on land, at sea and within the air.
A Russian army reporter stated Ukraine’s technique was once “catastrophic” for Russian forces in Siversk, the place “the enemy [first person viewer] drones dismantle the entire dugouts and burrows identified to them, and there is not any strategy to dig new commonplace shelters, as they’re burning within the first levels of building”.
Ukraine has posted movies appearing off its drone operators’ dexterity.
In a single, drones dispatch dugouts in Zaporizhia.
In others, a drone drops an explosive immediately into the open hatch of an idling armoured combating automobile, or onto a rushing patrol boat, or onto bikes – all hits requiring nice accuracy.
Ukraine introduced this yr it might construct 1,000,000 mild FPV drones. Its manufacturing charges had been so spectacular, that during some spaces Russian forces have reportedly depended on Ukrainian losses for up to 1 / 4 in their drones.
However Ukraine has extensively utilized aerial drones and missiles to devastating impact in Russian and Russian-occupied territory.
Ukraine’s normal personnel stated Ukrainian missiles had “completed off” the Rostov-on-Don, a Russian $300m Kilo-class diesel submarine berthed at Sevastopol. “Because of the hit, the boat sank at the spot,” the personnel stated on Friday.
(Al Jazeera)
The Rostov-on-Don was once first broken in an assault in September remaining yr.
“It was once additional repaired and examined within the aquatorium of Sevastopol harbour,” stated Ukraine’s personnel. Satellite tv for pc imagery by way of Planet Labs PBC captured on August 2 steered that Ukrainian forces broken the submarine.
The similar strike destroyed an S-400 rocket launcher and broken any other, satellite tv for pc images confirmed.
On Saturday, Ukraine struck the Morozovsk airfield in Rostov.
Its normal personnel stated ammunition depots containing go with the flow bombs have been destroyed. Video confirmed secondary explosions on the website online, corroborating that declare. Russian resources stated 55 Ukrainian drones have been concerned, and one army reporter stated 18 of them hit their mark, destroying a Sukhoi Su-34 bomber.
Ukraine stated its forces additionally struck oil amenities in Rostov, Kursk and Belgorod.
Zelenskyy wrote on social media that attacking Russian airfields and plane at each alternative was once truthful. Russia had struck Ukraine with 600 go with the flow bombs in per week, he stated – a determine in line with what he advised newshounds in April. “That is the one strategy to realistically supply coverage for our other folks.”
Russia’s defence ministry on Wednesday claimed it had fended off an “invasion” of Russian territory via Ukrainian forces with a battalion’s price of armoured combating cars and tanks. The Ukrainian forces, it stated, made a two-pronged assault from Sumy into Kursk.

Satellite tv for pc photographs confirmed destroyed cars about 7km (4 miles) inside of Russian territory.
Anti-Putin Russian combatants have two times all through the warfare staged such incursions on Russian soil, however now not Ukrainian squaddies.

Author: OpenAI