A weak spot is found
The course of the counteroffensive
July 28, 2023, 17:55
The counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is advancing
The Ukrainian military liberated the village of Staromayorskoe, Donetsk region, from Russian occupation.
It is believed that the Ukrainian counter-offensive has reached its first climax - the assault on the first line of defense of the occupiers.
The key question remains - where will the Armed Forces of Ukraine direct their main blow?
The most promising direction
Military observer Denis Popovich considers the most advantageous direction for the Ukrainian offensive to be the southern one, from Velikaya Novoselka to Berdyansk.
It was in this direction that the Armed Forces of Ukraine liberated the settlement of Staromayorsky the day before, which, most likely, will force the Russians to retreat to Urozhayny - this is a neighboring settlement.
“Further, in front of Staromlinovka, there is another settlement - Zavitne Bazhannya. That is, the Russians have the main defensive midfielder in Staromlinovka, but they say that Zavitne Bazhanya is also significantly strengthened. Therefore, now it will be necessary to see how ours will behave further. Firstly, whether the enemy will move away from Urozhayne, and secondly, what reserves will be brought into battle both from that side and from the other. It can be difficult with Staromlinovka, but they say that this is the main stronghold,” Popovich notes.
Staromlynovka is already the second line of defense. That is, in this direction, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have advanced the farthest.
The intrigue persists
In reality, the form of the operation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is still unclear to the enemy, the military analyst notes. The Ukrainians continue to attack in areas that are not geographically connected with each other. The settlements for which there are battles are separated from each other by tens of kilometers. The direction of the main blow is still not guessed.
The Russian command has not yet transferred large reserves to where the Armed Forces of Ukraine are attacking (except for the Bakhmut front, where the Russian Armed Forces had to urgently form a new grouping from the reserves to replace the Wagner PMC corps that had gone to the rear), but they used the reserves for their own offensive in the north-east of Ukraine - on the border of Kharkov, Luhansk and Donetsk regions. It, obviously, should divert Ukrainian resources from Bakhmut and the south of the country.
Orekhov and Bakhmut
A breakthrough by armored vehicles along the highway from Orekhov to Tokmak, an important logistics center in the rear of the Russian defense in the Zaporozhye region, was one of the key ideas of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. However, the seven-kilometer journey through the "no-man's land" to the nearest village of Rabotino, fortified by the Russian army, stretched for almost two months. Finally, by the 20th of July, the Armed Forces of Ukraine managed to bypass Rabotino from the east and advance towards it from the north.
In the Bakhmut direction, the Armed Forces of Ukraine were able to push the units of the RF Armed Forces, which replaced the Wagner PMC, from the Seversky Donets-Donbass canal and the Bakhmut-Konstantinovka highway. In recent weeks, Ukrainian troops, despite the transfer of Russian reserves to this area, were able to basically capture the fortified area of the Russian Armed Forces on the hills west of the villages of Kleshcheevka and Andreevka.
