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Ukraine will continue to defend the Donbas, and develop a counteroffensive near Izyum, but the south will become a new active area of the war.
The situation in eastern Ukraine has stabilized. Now, the main focus of the war has shifted to the south. Such a statement was made on August 9 at the Pentagon.
According to Colin Kahl, US Deputy Secretary of Defense, both sides – Ukrainians and Russians – are suffering losses, and this war is the most intense conflict in Europe since World War II. “But the Ukrainians have many advantages, not the least of which is their will to win,” he added.
It is now about the fact that the epicenter of the fighting is moving from the Donbas to the Kherson region. The control over the crossings across the Dnieper will become their key factor, – British Ministry of Defense.
Russian troops are accumulating in the south – columns of military equipment of the occupying army are moving from the eastern regions of Ukraine to Kherson. This is done, according to the estimates of the UK defense department, either for the offensive or in order to stop the attacks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
According to the calculations of Konstantin Mashovets, a military observer and coordinator of the Information Resistance group, the size of the enemy grouping on the right bank of the Dnipro River – on the Kherson-Berislav bridgehead – has already reached 22-23 battalion tactical groups (BTGr).
Despite this, the offensive of the Russians in this region did not begin.
Moreover, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine constantly reports on the liberation of villages in the Kherson region: in early August, they said that in general, the Armed Forces of Ukraine had already returned 53 settlements under their control in the region, seven of them in the last week. Recently, the General Staff announced that the Russians had begun a defensive operation in the south.
A month ago, Ukraine’s Defense Minister Alexei Reznikov announced the existence of an order from President Volodymyr Zelensky to de-occupy the south. The authorities called on the residents of the occupied areas of the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions to leave the region to facilitate the actions of the army.
Then, with the help of American M142 HIMARS rocket systems, the Armed Forces of Ukraine began to methodically destroy enemy ammunition depots and command posts in the south, as well as strike at the road and railway bridges across the Dnipro River in the Kherson region, as well as at a similar object in the Nova Kakhovka region. Thus, the supply of the entire enemy grouping, which holds a bridgehead on the right bank of the Dnipro River, between Kherson and Mykolaiv, was under threat.
Read also: Operational information on Russian invasion (August 14)
