Russians risking isolation in the south prepare for Ukrainian attack

Ukraine has warned that Russia is in a rush to bolster its troops and defenses in the south, and that Kiev still needs more weapons from the west, creating a heightened sense of urgency ahead of an impending counter-offensive to attack the Moscow-taken regain territory.

The Ukrainians have been preparing a broad counter-offensive in the southern region of Kherson for weeks, and recent long-range missiles have left thousands of Russian soldiers west of the Dnipro River, in and around the port city of Kherson, in a precarious position, largely cut off from Russian strongholds in the East.

But Russia is now moving “the maximum number” of troops to the southern front in the Kherson region, the head of Ukraine’s National Security Council told Ukrainian television on Wednesday. The official, Oleksiy Danilov, described “a very vigorous movement of their troops” to the Kherson front.

While Western weapons have poured into the country, Ukraine said more weapons are still needed and ammunition remains limited. Some Ukrainian officials have become increasingly frustrated with what they say is the slow pace of arms deliveries from Western allies. Donor countries are training Ukrainian soldiers to use the new equipment, but that too remains a work in progress.

“Just give them weapons and make them work,” said Natalya Gumenyuk, the spokeswoman for Ukraine’s southern military command, which is responsible for the Kherson offensive.

“They pat us on the shoulder and say, ‘Hold on,'” she said. “We need more than just moral support, although we are grateful for it. We need real support, real weapons, real ammunition for those weapons.”

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, who marked a national holiday on Thursday, vigorously defended his country’s sovereignty and independence, rejecting Russia’s President Vladimir V. Putin’s idea that Ukraine is a recent fiction that rightfully belongs to Russia.

“Every day we fight so that everyone on the planet finally understands: we are not a colony, not an enclave, not a protectorate,” said Mr. Zelensky. “No gubernia, an eyalet or a crown land, no part of foreign empires, no ‘part of the country’, no union republic. No autonomy, no province, but a free, independent, sovereign, indivisible and independent state.”

In Kherson, which the Russians quickly captured after the February invasion, they have had months to strengthen their defenses, and the Ukrainians have yet to launch a major land-based counter-offensive.

“Of course we wait for the command to attack, but it’s not that simple,” said Senior Sgt. Oleksandr Babynets, 28, member of the Ukrainian 28th Separate Mechanized Brigade, which is dug in along the western border of the Kherson region.

“The Russians have organized defense lines, dug in and deployed a lot of weapons,” he said. “We don’t want to just go on and die. We have to work intelligently.”

In the past month, while most of the Russian troops were mired in the fighting far to the east, in the Donbas region, Ukrainian forces in the south managed to push back Moscow’s forces a few kilometers toward Kherson. At their closest, along the western border of the Kherson region, they are about 30 miles from the city. There, the lines are largely frozen while each army jockeys for advantage.

As the counteroffensive heats up, Russia has again launched attacks on the north, with attacks from the Black Sea, Belarus and Russia injuring at least 15 people in the region of the capital Kiev, Ukrainian authorities said on Thursday. The attacks were the first in weeks to hit the capital region, which the first Russian offensive early in the war failed to capture.

“Not a quiet morning,” Mr. Zelensky said in a video address. “Rocket terror again. We’re not giving up.”

There were at least 20 Russian attacks, with Kalibr cruise missiles launched from warships in the Black Sea, Iskander ballistic missiles from southern Belarus and missiles fired by fighter jets from Russian territory, a Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said.

Five attacks hit the Kiev region, disrupting a tenuous sense of normalcy that had prevailed after Russian forces withdrew from the region from the end of March, repulsed by Ukraine’s tenacious defenses that inflicted heavy Russian losses.

Halyna Serhienko, who lives in Vyshhorod, a suburb of Kiev, said her 5-year-old daughter was particularly scared.

“Our whole house was shaking,” Ms. Serhienko said.

Ukrainians believe the most promising front for a major advance is in the western part of Kherson, where Ukrainian forces have carried out recent attacks to cut off Russian forces from their supply lines across the Dnipro River, which connects Ukraine and the Kherson region itself. cuts through.

Ukrainian officials and Western military analysts said several attacks this week on a major bridge over the Dnipro and other critical roads and bridges in recent days had left Russian forces around the city of Kherson especially vulnerable.

A report from British intelligence said on Thursday that Russia’s main force on the western side of the river “seems very vulnerable now” due to the attacks on the bridge.

“The city of Kherson, the most politically important population center occupied by Russia, is now virtually cut off from the other occupied territories,” the report said. “Losing it would seriously undermine Russia’s efforts to portray the occupation as a success.”

However, the Russians seem to be trying to build a new crossing over the river. Yuri Sobolevsky, a regional official in Kherson, wrote on Facebook on Thursday that four tugboats pulled pontoons across the Dnipro, though he claimed a floating bridge would not help the Russians resupply their troops.

Serhii Khlan, the head of the Ukrainian military administration in Kherson, predicted that the Russians would fail because of “the raging current of the river, which makes it impossible to build the crossings”.

The Russians may also try to transport equipment across the river, he said, but an announcement by local officials in Kherson loyal to Moscow that there would be no humanitarian transports for at least three days underlined the depth of their dilemma.

The military maneuvers came as Ukrainians took a break on Thursday to celebrate a new national holiday, Day of Statehood, launched last summer as the threat of Russian invasion threatened the country.

Ukraine chose the date to mark what is known as “the baptism of Rus”, when Grand Prince Volodymyr of Kiev, the first Slavic state, converted to Christianity in the 10th century and began to convert his people. That event, and Volodymyr himself, is regarded by both Russia and Ukraine as central to their national identities.