The Russian Army appears to be massing forces for an
attack along the same southern battlefront where Kyiv’s troops are planning
one, the Ukrainian military warned on Wednesday. The warning, by the
Operational Southern Command, raised the prospect of a more pitched, seesaw
battle in southern Ukraine than had been expected in the Ukrainian counteroffensive,
which has been pushing toward the Russian-occupied city of Kherson.
“The enemy continues to wage hostilities along the occupied defense line,”
the command said in a statement. The Russians are assembling troops for an
assault, it said.
Overall, the front in Russia’s war in Ukraine stretches for more than
1,500 miles in a continuous arc from the city of Kharkiv in the north to the
city of Kherson in the south. But it is effectively two distinct theaters of
war.
In the eastern Donbas region, Russia has been slowly advancing, while in
the southern Kherson region, Ukraine has been recapturing territory with the
help of long-range American-provided rockets striking ammunition depots,
command posts and bridges deep behind Russian lines.
The strikes on bridges over the Dnipro River, which separates Kherson from
Russian supply lines to the occupied peninsula of Crimea, had been seen as
particularly hopeful for Kyiv. The Russian Army has begun using barges to cross
the river.
But the massing of an assault force in the northern portion of
Russia-occupied territory around Kherson would pose challenges to Ukraine’s
plans. The Operational Southern Command said Russian troops staged probing
attacks with tanks, but did not break through Ukrainian lines.
Russian forces also attacked with helicopters and rocket artillery around
Kherson, in an area of flat farmland crisscrossed by small rivers and
irrigation canals that form natural barriers, the Ukrainian military said. The
Ukrainian Air Force and artillery units struck several Russian targets in the
area, it said.
Already in eastern Ukraine, the fighting has settled
into a stalemate of Russian advances in some areas and Ukrainian counterattacks
in others, with neither side moving more than a few miles over weeks of combat.
The Russian military has turned to its air force to try to break the
deadlock, said Serhiy Haidai, the head of the Ukrainian regional administration
of Luhansk Province. On Tuesday, Russian planes attacked eight villages and
small towns along a front near the administrative border between Luhansk and
Donetsk Provinces, he said.
The attacks, Mr. Haidai said, were intended to pin down Ukrainian troops
in the east, preventing them from being redeployed to other areas in Ukraine,
like the south, where Ukrainian forces are preparing for a counteroffensive.
In the north of Ukraine, Russia attacked the city of Kharkiv early
Wednesday morning, launching missiles from across the border near the Russian
city of Belgorod, according to a Telegram post by Oleh Synyehubov, the military
governor of Kharkiv. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
