While the results of Ukraine’s counteroffensive are awaited in the south and southeast of the country, Russia is playing its cards in the northeast. According to Moscow, the push of its troops has managed to advance three kilometers in Kharkiv over the weekend. The fruit of this Russian offensive, which Kyiv denies, is small but significant, because it is perhaps their only joy on the battlefield since they captured the city of Bakhmut in May.
The spokesman of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Igor Konashenkov, stated yesterday that his troops achieved this advance in three days in a sector of the Kharkiv front with a width of 11 kilometers. The spokesman of the Russian group Occident, Sergey Zibinski, assured that in the vicinity of the town of Olkhona, Russian troops managed to occupy seven strong points of the armed forces of Ukraine. In addition, they defeated a company of Ukrainian infantry.
In this way, while the robust defenses built by the Russians hinder the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south and southeast, Moscow’s troops increase the intensity of their assaults in the northeast. “They have a plan. The occupiers want to recover the territories they lost in the south of the Kharkiv region,” Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said on television. In September, Moscow suffered a serious setback when the Ukrainians forced their forces to withdraw from the territories they had occupied in Kharkiv since the first days of their intervention.
Ukrainian authorities deny that there have been significant Russian advances in the area. Andrí Iermak, head of the office of the Ukrainian presidency, wrote in Telegram that “the Russians bombed the village of Kucherivka, in the district of Kúpiansk, and hit a house”, as a result of which “there is news of two dead and three wounded”.
The Ukrainians also launched offensives in this area, but according to Konashenkov Russian troops repelled 12 counterattacks by three Ukrainian motorized brigades.
How the Ukrainian counter-offensive develops and Russia’s ability to regain the initiative on the battlefield may determine the future of the conflict, as well as the various initiatives to find peace.
The last one, the weekend meeting in Jidda (Saudi Arabia), was attended by representatives of more than 40 countries, including Russia’s partners, such as the BRIC countries, among which China stands out. But there was no delegate from Moscow, which shows that Russia and Ukraine are not yet ready to negotiate. Kyiv demands that Russian troops withdraw. Moscow wants, among other things, that the “new territorial realities” be recognized, that is, that it be accepted that Russia stays with the four Ukrainian regions that in September 2022 it said it had annexed (Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk and Luhansk); that the West stop the supply of weapons to Kyiv, and that the neutral state of Ukraine be confirmed.
The spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, pointed out yesterday that none of the ten points of the formula of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, “which they try to promote in these meetings, is not aimed at finding a negotiated and diplomatic solution to the crisis” and that this plan in itself is a “meaningless ultimatum for Russia”.
