Hanna Maliar, a deputy defence minister, said on Monday morning that the village of Robotyne, south of Orikhiv, had been liberated, bringing Ukraine into contact with Russia’s main defence line to the south covering routes to the Sea of Azov.
Although the territory gained in the Orikhiv sector is relatively modest – about four miles since the start of the counteroffensive in June – Ukraine’s progress has been steady as it has cleared dense minefields and trenches on the frontline.
A lengthy social media post on Saturday by Oleksandr Solonko, a Ukrainian solider, outlined the difficulties faced by Ukrainian forces as they seek to advance across flat, open terrain punctuated by tree lines, where he said “your movement is visible from afar”, whether by drone or from defensive positions.
“There has been a great deal of talk about fortifications and minefields. Every tree line has been dug up.
“On one stretch of the Mariupol highway, anti-tank fortifications have been installed. We’re not just talking about trenches. There’s an entire system of trenches, dugouts, and even underground tunnels in some places,” he wrote.
Ukrainian forces quickly revised their strategy from the early stages of the counteroffensive to focus on clearing an area of mines – often a mix of anti-tank and anti-personnel mines – with specialist sapper infantry. But the soldiers are vulnerable to artillery strikes, making the task dangerous.
Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s security council, told the Guardian that Russia had laid mines as densely as four to five per square metre in some places. He said progress “isn’t as quick as we’d like it to be, or as our partners would like it to be. But nevertheless we are going forward, step by step”.
The country is urgently trying to obtain extra mine-clearing equipment from the west, and last week Norway became the latest country to publicly confirm it was making a donation. “We are very grateful to all our partners but of course we’d like it more and faster,” Danilov said.
Ukraine came under pressure from the US earlier this month to concentrate its counteroffensive on the southern front amid concerns that the effort had been too spread out. As well as trying to press at two main points in the south, Ukraine had been attacking around Bakhmut in the east, baffling Washington.
Military insiders in Kyiv argue that Ukraine has to fight on a broad front, without significant air support, and has to respond to fresh Russian attacks. Since the start of August, Moscow has launched an artillery-led assault on Kupiansk, near Kharkiv, and territory to the east of the Oskil River, recaptured last September by Ukraine.
The frontline moved a couple of miles closer to Kupiansk in the middle of the month, forcing Kyiv to respond by announcing the evacuation of more than 10,000 civilians from the area and reinforcing the line.
Although the front appears to have stabilised, Russia is outshelling Ukraine by four to one in the sector, local commanders report.
Kyiv appears to have opted for a reset after meetings between Ukrainian commanders led by Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi and western military chiefs including the British chief of defence staff, Adm Sir Tony Radakin, in the middle of the month. British sources said Ukraine was increasingly focusing on the southern front.
Ukraine’s main strategic objective is to cut the land bridge to Crimea by advancing south towards Melitopol from Robotyne and from Velyka Novosilka farther east towards Berdiansk. Russia has been fortifying in the area for months, and unless there is a breakthrough it is not expected Ukraine will achieve the goal this year.
Some experts hope that Russia’s mine-laying and fortifications may be less dense in some places, while Ukraine’s two months of attacks, particularly into the rear, have weakened the defenders’ logistics and reserves.
Emil Kastehelmi, an open source analyst with Black Bird Group, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that a study of aerial photography showed that “fortifications are not as strong in all areas of the first main defensive line” and that they appeared weaker around Verbove, about five miles east of Robotyne.
At the end of last week, Gen Mark Milley, the US’s most senior soldier, said in an interview with the Jordanian TV channel Al-Mamlaka that Ukraine had “attacked through the first main defensive belt” that the Russians had built and was making progress of about 500 metres to 1km a day.
“The Ukrainians have a significant amount of combat power remaining. This is not over yet. So I think it’s frankly too early to say whether it’s succeeded or failed, but it clearly has had partial success to date,” the general said.
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