Ukraine wants to take advantage of changes in Russia’s military strategy

Meanwhile, a day after President Biden promised support for Kyiv in its fight against Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky chastised the West for allowing its forces to fight better-armed Russian forces. There is a failure to supply the required heavy weapons.

Ukraine said on Sunday that its forces have withdrawn Trostianets, about 14 miles from the Russian border, potentially opening a road to the provincial capital of Sumy, which has been besieged by Russians since the invasion’s early days.

The successful counter-attack shows how the Ukrainian military is trying to take advantage of changes in Russia’s military posture.

On Friday, after suffering heavy losses and facing stiff resistance from Ukrainians, Moscow said it would resume its offensive in Ukraine in the country’s east.

The Russian army has dug into defensive positions around towns and cities in the north and around the capital Kyiv, which it failed to seize – in order to concentrate on the Donbass region in the east.

Russia’s firepower is currently focused on Mariupol, a strategically important city that links Russian-controlled parts of eastern Ukraine with Moscow-occupied territory in the south. Thousands have fled Mariupol, while those left behind endure constant Russian shelling and survive without adequate food, water or medical supplies.

Jack Watling, a land warfare specialist at the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank, said “repelling the Trostyanets” demonstrates that the Ukrainians are capable of counterattacking, meaning that Russia cannot assume that once they land. If captured, they have secured it. , “This limits the amount of resource they apply to the space they are trying to take up at any one time.”

The head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Kyrillo Budanov, said Russia sought to divide the country by merging the territories under its control into a single state.

“After his failures near Kyiv and his inability to overthrow Ukraine’s central government, Putin is already changing his main operational directions—now it is south and east,” Budanov said. “In fact, it is an attempt to make North and South Korea in Ukraine.”

In areas under its control, Russia is trying to establish parallel authority and forcing people to reject Ukraine’s currency, the hryvnia, Mr Budanov said.

The Russian axis was drawn into a month-long war that killed and wounded thousands of Ukrainians and uprooted more than 10 million from their homes.

During a visit to Warsaw on Saturday, Mr Biden appeared to call for the expulsion of Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying the Russian leader’s invasion of Ukraine ignited “a new fight for freedom” between democracies and autocrats . A White House official later went back on Mr Biden’s remarks, which were rejected by the Kremlin. A person familiar with the situation said Mr Biden’s remarks were not part of his planned remarks.

While Mr Biden was in Warsaw, Russian missiles struck a site some 210 miles away near the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, which has become a center for people displaced by the fighting and for weapons and other materials that the West has to support. sending for. Ukrainian Army. Such support has helped Ukrainian troops gain some ground in areas where Russian troops had initial success after the offensive began on 24 February.

Russian attacks on Lviv damaged a plant used to repair and modernize the Tor missile system, radar systems and other equipment for the Ukrainian military, according to Sunday’s briefing by Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov.

Lviv’s mayor, Andrey Sadovy, said the attacks had affected fuel-storage facilities and other infrastructure, and military infrastructure had been removed from the city by the time the war broke out.

In a speech late Saturday, an apparently irritated Mr Zelensky renewed his plea for tanks, aircraft and missile-defense systems. “That’s what our partners have. It’s what’s covered with dust at their storage facilities,” he said.

“It may not be acceptable to everyone on the continent if there is a threat of conflict with Russian invaders in the Baltic states, Poland, Slovakia and throughout Eastern Europe,” he said. “At risk only because they left only one percent of all NATO aircraft and one percent of all NATO tanks somewhere in their hangar. One percent! We didn’t ask for more. And we don’t ask for more. And we’ve already had 31 days. Waiting till!”

Before the Russian invasion, members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization sent large amounts of military, non-lethal and humanitarian aid to Kyiv. There has been a recent increase in the quantity and variety of weapons, but what Mr. Zelensky has publicly requested is still low.

The US and NATO allies have sent portable antitank and antiaircraft weapons, as well as lethal drones. Mr. Zelensky has requested fighter jets, tanks and anti-aircraft systems capable of shooting down Russian warplanes at high altitudes, but said Ukraine has not got what it needs.

A NATO spokesman cited Coalition Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s comments on the same issue on Sunday after a summit on Thursday. “We all listened to President Zelensky very carefully,” Stoltenberg said, refusing to give details of the systems being supplied. “But what I can say is that the allies do what they can to support Ukraine with weapons so that Ukraine can defend [itself],

In one video, Taras Savchenko, the deputy head of the Sumi Regional Administration, destroys Russian tanks left behind in the Trostanets. On Sunday, the brigade involved in the recapture of the city said Russian forces had left behind weapons, equipment and ammunition that they would use to capture other Ukrainian cities under Russian control.

Many facilities in the city, including a hospital, are clogged with mines, said Dmitro Zyvitsky, head of the Sumy regional administration.

Arrangements are being made for medical supplies, food and other assistance, he said. As communications in the city have been lost, rescue workers will drive around the city with loudspeakers on Monday to inform residents about the distribution of humanitarian aid.

Russia’s transfer war plan sheds light on how the Kremlin’s sweeping effort to annex most or all of Ukraine has stalled. When Moscow invaded Ukraine, it attacked on several fronts, aiming to capture territory, including Kyiv. Early in the fighting, Ukrainian troops were able to withstand an air raid to capture the capital, halt tank columns moving into the city and halt Russian advances in other areas.