Russian forces in latest days have launched a number of assaults across the southern Ukrainian village of Robotyne, army officers and consultants stated, focusing on land hard-won by Ukraine in a uncommon success of its counteroffensive final summer time.
The Ukrainian Military stated it had repelled 4 consecutive days of assaults from Saturday to Tuesday involving armored autos and huge numbers of troops that had massed within the space.
Open-source maps of the battlefield compiled by impartial teams analyzing fight footage counsel that Russia has made marginal positive aspects to the west and south of Robotyne. The Institute for the Examine of Battle, a Washington-based analysis group, said on Monday that Russian forces had superior to the western outskirts of the village.
“Take note of the village of Robotyne,” Dmytro Lykhovii, a spokesman for Ukrainian forces preventing within the space, stated on nationwide tv final week. “Plainly the Russians have set a purpose of attaining some success there” and deliberate to attempt to seize the village, he stated.
The weekend assaults round Robotyne got here as Russian forces took the frontline city of Avdiivka, about 100 miles to the east, and attacked Ukrainian positions on the east financial institution of the Dnipro River, greater than 130 miles to the west. Army analysts say these near-simultaneous assaults are designed to use stress throughout the entrance line to be able to cut back Kyiv’s capability to withdraw and replenish exhausted troops and to power it to burn by way of its already scarce shares of ammunition.
“They’re attempting somewhere else, testing the Ukrainian defenses,” stated Pasi Paroinen, from the Black Bird Group, which analyzes satellite tv for pc imagery and social media content material from the battlefield. “They’re probing and searching for weaknesses.”
Serhii Kuzan, chairman of the Ukrainian Safety and Cooperation Middle, a nongovernmental analysis group, stated Moscow would attempt to construct on its success on the jap entrance within the coming weeks and “lower off Robotyne at any prices.” He and different analysts stated that Moscow had tens of 1000’s of troops round Robotyne, and he predicted that assaults would intensify.
Russia’s positive aspects round Robotyne, a village of just some tons of inhabitants earlier than the battle, have been restricted to date. The village fell underneath Russian occupation shortly after Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022. It was retaken by Ukrainian forces in August, after weeks of fight that underlined the immense challenges Kyiv faces in punching by way of dense Russian defenses erected within the space.
Right now, Robotyne sits in a bulge carved into Russian-held territory, surrounded to the west, south and east by Moscow’s troops. In latest weeks, Russian forces have been attacking the flanks of this pocket and step by step recaptured small stretches of land, utilizing what the Ukrainian army has described as small assault teams backed by armored autos.
“The scenario is dynamic there, the enemy is inflicting heavy fireplace,” Mr. Lykhovii stated on Monday.
Geolocated footage of the battlefield confirmed Russian assault drones hitting Ukrainian-held trenches just some hundred yards south of Robotyne. Rybar, a outstanding Russian army blogger, said that Russian troops had gained a foothold on the southern outskirts of Robotyne and that preventing was now happening within the village, which was largely diminished to rubble in the course of the preventing final summer time. His declare couldn’t be independently confirmed.
Mr. Paroinen, from the Black Fowl Group, stated Russia had retaken some fortifications misplaced in the summertime counteroffensive. He added that Robotyne shouldn’t be straightforward for Ukrainian troopers to defend as a result of Russian troops management the excessive floor across the space.
“Usually, that’s an enormous drawback for the Ukrainians there,” he stated, including that Russia had positioned three divisions round Robotyne, between 30,000 and 40,000 troopers, together with some elite paratrooper items.
Mr. Kuzan, from the Ukrainian Safety and Cooperation Middle, stated he anticipated that a number of the troops concerned within the seize of Avdiivka would now be “redeployed to different components of the entrance line within the coming days,” probably round Robotyne to assist with the offensive push there.
Ukraine’s army stated on Monday that its troops had taken up new defensive positions exterior of Avdiivka, in an try to cease additional Russian advances.
Mr. Kuzan and different army analysts stated that delayed Western army help had weakened Ukraine’s capability to maintain Russia’s assaults all alongside the entrance line. “The Russians have realized that we’re actually ‘starved of shells,’ that means that we can not reply to each one in every of their assaults,” Mr. Kuzan stated. “They may proceed to place stress on Robotyne.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine acknowledged in his nightly deal with on Monday that “the scenario is extraordinarily troublesome in a number of components of the entrance line, the place Russian troops have amassed most reserves.”
Russia, he added, is “making the most of the delays in help to Ukraine.”
