Ukrainian Forces Re-Take Eight Towns In Kherson Oblast

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Caleb Newton
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The fight in Ukraine between the country’s defenders and the forces of Russian President Vladimir Putin is continuing, and Ukrainian personnel have reportedly retaken eight settlements in the Kherson region. Ukrainian forces do not appear to have specified the retaken jurisdictions, but according to official Ukrainian sources, “Russian attempts at advancing to Oleksandrivka and Tavria remained unsuccessful, as were the attempts to seize Mykolayivka.” The horrifying images that have emerged from temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories from which Russian forces have since departed make the urgency of liberating occupied territory abundantly — and soberingly — clear. Meanwhile, the Kherson region is also the area where Ukrainian personnel recently claimed to have killed two Russian generals and wounded a third, adding onto the growing list of top Russian military personnel taken out by Ukraine.

According to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry — in other words, a component of Ukraine’s military intelligence apparatus: “On April 22, 2022, the Armed Forces of Ukraine landed a devastating blow on the forward command operations center of the 49th Combined Arms Army of the Russian occupation forces, which, in defiance of combat instructions and common sense, was located a short distance from the combat line in Kherson Region.” The command center was itself destroyed, according to Ukraine’s defenders. As relatedly summarized by the U.K. Ministry of Defense in a Sunday update, “Ukraine has repelled numerous Russian assaults along the line of contact in the Donbas this week. Despite Russia making some territorial gains, Ukrainian resistance has been strong across all axes and inflicted significant cost on Russian forces.” The same U.K. source says “[poor] Russian morale and limited time to reconstitute, re-equip and reorganise forces from prior offensives” are among Russia’s operational problems.

The U.S. recently concluded that Russia had lost 25 percent of its previously established combat power in Ukraine, an assessment that incorporated Russian forces who’d left Ukraine alongside those who’d been essentially wiped out. Steep Russian losses in Ukraine have included thousands upon thousands of individual troops and vast quantities of equipment, and late last week, Foreign Policy journalist Jack Detsch reported that according to a senior defense official “Ukraine has more tanks available in country than Russia, thanks to European deliveries of Soviet-era T-72 tanks.”

And when recently announcing an additional $800 million dollars of defense assistance — meaning weapons — from the U.S. for Ukraine, President Joe Biden outlined the remarkably expansive scope of what’s been provided. “In the past two months, we’ve moved weapons and equipment to Ukraine at record speed,” as Biden put it. “The United States alone has provided 10 anti-armor systems for every one Russian tank that’s in Ukraine.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently characterized new weapons deliveries for his country as exactly what his team had been after, remarking: “And I am grateful to all our partners who finally heard us. Who provide us with exactly what we asked for. Because we know for sure that with these weapons we will be able to save the lives of thousands of people. And we will be able to show the occupiers that the day when they will be forced to leave Ukraine is approaching.”



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