Ukrainian troops have made their first significant advance after a week of fighting on the southern front, the German tabloid Bild claimed on Monday, noting also that the reported taking of five small villages had come at the cost of heavy losses in Western-provided armor.
“On the eighth day of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, the Russian front in the south of the country began to show cracks,” Bild reporter Julian Roepcke said in a video update on the battle. “The first sections of the front in Donetsk in the east have been collapsing since yesterday.”
Roepcke, who has been at the vanguard pro-Ukraine reporting at the tabloid, cited military sources in Kiev to claim an advance of several kilometers into Russian-controlled territory. However, by Monday evening local time Ukrainian military analysts were reporting heavy fighting at two of the villages supposedly “liberated” earlier in the day.
Kiev has only deployed five of the 25 brigades it has prepared for the operation, according to Roepcke. Some 40,000 troops are still being held in reserve, he said.
Claims of the Ukrainian advance come as even the most ardently pro-Ukrainian “open source intelligence” outfits acknowledge heavy losses of Western-supplied armor and equipment in the fighting on the Zaporozhye front.
The 47th brigade of the Ukrainian army has lost seven Leopard 2 tanks and 17 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles in just five days, without achieving tangible success south of Orekhov, according to Dutch-based “OSINT” outfit, Oryx. The group has frequently been criticized for inflating its estimates of Russian losses and downplaying those of Ukraine. Roepcke quoted them in his video report.
The destroyed or damaged and abandoned Bradleys account for about 15% of the 109 that the US had supplied to Ukraine, Jakub Janovsky of Oryx told CNN. The activist expressed hope that most of the vehicles might be recovered and repaired if Ukrainian forces manage to take the area.
Ukrainian troops launched their much-heralded “spring counteroffensive” at the beginning of June, sending tanks and armored vehicles against Russian defensive lines in Zaporozhye and Donetsk regions. Kiev spent several days insisting on complete silence, until video evidence showed the wrecks of German-made tanks and US-made armored vehicles after a failed attack in Zaporozhye.