Ukrainian troops, on the defensive for the past four months, will launch their long-awaited counter-offensive “very soon” now that Russia’s massive winter offensive is running out of steam without taking Bakhmuth, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces said Thursday. .
Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi’s comments are the biggest sign yet that Kyiv is close to its change of tactics.
Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group, trying to capture Bakhmut in what has become the longest and bloodiest battle of the war, “are losing considerable strength and are running low on troops,” Syrskyi said on the social networking site Telegram.
“Very soon, we will seize this opportunity, as we have done in the past near Kyiv, Kharkiv, Balakliya and Kupiansk,” he said, listing Ukrainian counteroffensives last year that were turning points in the war.
Syrskyi was one of the main commanders behind the Ukrainian strategy that last year managed to repel Russia’s assault on Kyiv and pushed back Moscow’s forces during the second half of 2022.
But the front lines in Ukraine have been largely frozen since Ukraine’s last major offensive in November. Since then, Moscow has sent hundreds of thousands of newly drafted reservists and convicts recruited from prisons by the Wagner Group into battles described by both sides as a meat grinder.
The Russian campaign has made little progress, and Ukraine, which seemed likely to withdraw from the small eastern town of Bakhmut, decided this month to keep its troops there, denying Moscow its first victory since last August.
Kyiv has long said it plans a major counteroffensive sometime this year, using newly supplied Western weapons. Several of its most successful offensives in the past year came quickly after Russia depleted its forces in major battles in the east.
There was no immediate response from Moscow to the latest claims that its forces in Bakhmut were losing momentum, but Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner’s mercenary boss, issued pessimistic statements in recent days warning of a Ukrainian counterattack.
On Monday, Prigozhin published a letter to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu saying Ukraine was aiming to isolate Wagner’s forces from Russia’s regular troops, demanding that Shoigu act to prevent it and warning of “negative consequences” if he failed. .
On Wednesday, Britain’s Defense Ministry reported that Ukraine had launched a local counter-attack west of Bakhmut that would likely relieve pressure on the main route used to supply Kyiv forces inside the city.
There is still a threat that the Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut will be surrounded, he said, but there is “a realistic possibility that the Russian assault on the city is losing the limited momentum it has gained.”
