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Ukraine’s top military commander signaled on Saturday morning that the country’s forces were ready to launch a retaliatory attack that had been anticipated after months of preparations, including recent attacks on logistics targets as well as feints and disinformation intended to keep Russian forces on edge.
“It’s time to return what is ours,” Ukraine’s top military commander, General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, said. written in the statement.
The blunt statement, accompanied by a video of Ukrainian troops preparing for battle and released on social media, appeared to rally a country weary from 15 months of war and fuel anxiety in Russian ranks. But General Zaluzhnyi gave no indication of where and when Ukrainian forces might try to break into Russian-held territory.
Another senior Ukrainian official also suggested that a counterattack was imminent.
Oleksiy Danilov, head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told the BBC in an interview released on Saturday that Kyiv forces are “ready” and that a large-scale attack could come “tomorrow, tomorrow or a week. .”
Ukraine has spent months amassing an arsenal of Western-supplied weapons and training tens of thousands of soldiers in sophisticated offensive maneuvers for the campaign, which military analysts suggest will focus on Russian-held areas in southern and eastern Ukraine.
There were no general indications of large troop movements on the broad front line on Saturday morning. Ukraine and Russia have engaged in intense information campaigns using video and social media during the war.
But the statement of General Zaluzhnyi and Mr. Danilov came as many senior officials of Ukraine – including the head of military intelligence – have said in recent days that Ukraine now has what it needs to go on the attack.
In many ways, military analysts have noted, the counterattack may have already begun.
For weeks, Ukraine has apparently sought to set the stage for the campaign and “shape” the battlefield through a series of coordinated attacks behind enemy lines aimed at disrupting critical Russian logistics operations, undermining Russia’s combat capabilities and compromising Moscow’s capacity to move. troops around the battlefield.
In recent times, the tempo and range of attacks inside Russian-held territory has increased. While the Ukrainian military has not claimed responsibility, local Russian proxy officials in the occupied territories have reported attacks.
Adding to speculation that the start of a counterattack was imminent, internet and telecommunications went down in some Russian-held areas of Ukraine late Friday.
NetBlocks, which tracks internet outages around the world, said internet service is interrupted on the Crimean Peninsula and in parts of the Zaporizhzhia region in southern Ukraine – including in the city of Enerhodar, where Russian forces are taking control of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. Internet service is also down in Berdiansk and Melitopol, two strategically important cities that Russia has turned into military strongholds, according to Netblocks.
“The reason for the internet blackout is the disruption in the work of the Russian internet provider Miranda Media, which operates in Crimea,” organization reported.
The shutdown comes as Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of preparing provocations at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which is not far from the front lines. On Saturday, the morning after Ukrainian military intelligence warned that Russia was preparing to “simulate an accident” at the plant, Ukrainian officials said the night had passed without incident.
Ukrainian officials have been deliberately vague about their military plans, most likely in the hope of maintaining an element of surprise in what has been a telegraph campaign. He said the counteroffensive would not be marked by a single event and might feature feints and deception at first.
At the same time, Ukrainian officials are also looking for hope, warning of a long and bloody war in the coming months.
Russia still controls more than 40,000 square miles of land in southern and eastern Ukraine, which is about 17 percent of the country, and has spent months strengthening its defensive positions.
As Kyiv continues to seek more advanced weapons for its forces, senior Ukrainian and Western officials have said in recent days that Ukrainian forces have what they need to launch a counteroffensive.
And the arsenal will continue to grow. A week after President Biden told US allies that he would allow Ukrainian pilots to train on American-made F-16 fighter jets, in a move to allow other countries to give the planes to Ukraine, the Ukrainian army began training in Germany on how to operate them. and maintain the American tank M1 Abrams, according to the Pentagon.
About 200 troops – about one armored battalion – have begun conducting what the military calls combined arms training at training ranges in Grafenwoehr and Hohenfels, Germany, Lt. Col. Garron Garn, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement.
The instruction includes basic soldiering tasks like marksmanship and medical skills, along with training at the platoon and company level, and finally larger exercises involving battalion-sized units facing off.
Another 200 Ukrainian soldiers began training on how to fuel and maintain tanks, Colonel Garn said.
Defense Department officials previously said about 31 tanks would be sent to Germany for use in a training program for Ukrainian forces expected to take 10 to 12 weeks. Combat-ready tanks could reach the battlefield in Ukraine by the fall, officials said.
Initially, American defense officials said that M1 Abrams tanks would not arrive in Ukraine until next year. But since January, when the Biden administration reversed long-standing resistance and announced it would send tanks, senior defense officials said they wanted to speed up the timeline.
As with fighter jets, the delivery of M1 Abrams tanks and their trained crews will be several months away, possibly too late to have any impact on the Ukrainian counterattack. However, Ukrainian forces have received dozens of advanced Leopard II tanks as well as scores of Bradley fighting vehicles and other armored vehicles.
While the timing of the counterattack remains unclear, the statement from General Zaluzhnyi is the most direct indication that the clock is ticking.
The video accompanying the statement was broadcast on national television and quickly spread across social media platforms.
Titled “Prayer for the Liberation of Ukraine” – a nationalist poem from the 1920s – it features Ukrainian soldiers preparing for war and vowing to “exterminate” their enemies.
“Bless our decisive attack!” the soldiers chanted.
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