Ukraine Achieves Mixed Success in Counteroffensive’s Early Battles, Says U.K.

“Russian performance has been mixed: some units are likely conducting credible maneuver defense operations while others have pulled back in some disorder, amid increased reports of Russian casualties as they withdraw through their own minefields.”

Ukrainian forces launched a much-anticipated counteroffensive in recent days, a campaign that could decide whether Kyiv will succeed in its goal of dislodging Russian forces from some of the nearly 20% of Ukrainian territory they currently occupy. 

The West has supplied Kyiv with billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and has trained tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops to support the current counteroffensive. Kyiv needs to show its Western backers it can turn that aid into gains on the battlefield. 

After weeks of strikes aimed at eroding Russian defenses, Ukrainian forces have begun a concerted push in the country’s southeast. 

Ukrainian officials have said little about the progress of the country’s long-awaited counteroffensive but have acknowledged that it will likely take weeks or months and involve significant casualties.

The fighting has so far largely focused on an unforgiving stretch of flatlands that offer little cover for Ukrainian troops attacking the Russians, who have erected line after line of defenses in anticipation of a Ukrainian push there. 

“The situation is tense on all areas of the front,” Hanna Maliar, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, wrote Friday on Telegram. “War is not without losses. The most terrible, but inevitable losses are people. And unfortunately, they have not yet created military equipment that cannot be destroyed.”

At least three people were killed and more than two dozen injured in a Russian drone strike on the city of Odesa early Saturday. Ukraine’s military said air defenses destroyed all of the drones, but falling debris hit residential buildings. Photo: Serhii Smolientsev/Reuters

Thus far, military analysts say Kyiv’s forces are probing for weak spots in the Russian defenses. Though some of the equipment provided by Western allies is in use, videos posted online suggest most of the heavy weaponry has been held back from the fighting. 

Russian military bloggers close to the Kremlin say that most of the Ukrainian attacks this week have focused on the line between the village of Lobkove, near the Dnipro River, and the town of Vuhledar in the east. Moscow spent months building up defenses in this area, expecting Ukraine try to punch through and cut the land bridge between Russia and Crimea, the southern Ukrainian peninsula that Russia has occupied since 2014. 

“Units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine tried to dig in the previously occupied village of Lobkove, pulling armored vehicles there,” Rybar, an influential pro-war Russian military blog, wrote Saturday on Telegram. “After the targeted work of Russian artillery, the enemy had to retreat. At the moment, the settlement is in the ‘gray zone.’”

The U.S. announced its latest security package for Ukraine on Friday, which includes additional munitions for Patriot batteries and other air-defense systems. The $2.1 billion package will come from a program known as the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which procures equipment from the defense industry for the war effort over the long term as opposed to drawing directly from Defense Department stocks.

Moscow also launched another wave of missiles and drones into Ukraine on Friday night and Saturday morning.

Three people were killed and at least 10 injured by drone attacks in the Odesa region. Iskander ballistic missiles struck the Myrhorod military airfield in Ukraine’s northern Poltava region.

“There is some damage to the airfield infrastructure and equipment,” Poltava Gov. Dmytro Lunin wrote Saturday on Telegram. 

In all, Ukraine shot down two of the eight Russian missiles and 20 of the 35 Iranian-made Shahed drones, according to the country’s air force—a lower success rate for Ukraine’s air defenses than in most recent assaults. 

Ukraine, meanwhile, struck the occupied southern Ukrainian port city of Henichesk, on the Azov Sea, according to

Ukrainian officials continue to deal with the aftermath of the destruction of the Kakhovka dam earlier this week, which flooded the southern regional capital of Kherson and much of the surrounding area. 

At least five people are dead and 13 more missing as a result of the dam burst, according to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry. Around 2,500 people have been evacuated. 

Write to Ian Lovett at [email protected]