A senior presidential adviser has told Ukrainians not to expect rapid gains, after his country began what it said was a long-awaited counteroffensive aiming to retake the southern province of Kherson from Russian forces.
Ukrainian troops had broken through Russian defences in several areas of the frontline near Kherson city, Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, claimed.
However, in a Telegram post, Arestovych cautioned against any expectations of a quick win, describing the offensive as a “slow operation to grind the enemy”. “Of course, many would like a large-scale offensive with news about the capture by our military of a settlement in an hour,” he wrote. “But we don’t fight like that … Funds are limited.”
The offensive was first announced on Monday by a spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern command, Natalia Humeniuk, who said it was taking place in “various directions”. Humeniuk said the operation needed “silence” as media attention could affect the results.
So far, Ukraine’s authorities have not issued detailed information about the counteroffensive. At a press briefing on Tuesday, Humeniuk said Ukraine’s forces had succeeded in damaging bridges that join Kherson across the river, rendering them “impassable for heavy machinery”.
Two Ukrainian fighters on the frontlines in Kherson, who have oversight of events, described a situation that differed from the Ukrainian officials’ statements. According to them, fighting is taking place in Kherson region, but it is not the major counteroffensive being touted by Kyiv.
Ukraine’s authorities first announced the beginnings of a broader counteroffensive in July and since then, they have gained relatively little ground. Ukraine has reported capturing 40 villages – a village in Ukraine can be several streets or just one. Ukraine has, however, reported successfully destroying several ammunition depots and Russian headquarters in the Kherson region.
CNN reported on Monday, quoting a Ukrainian military source, that four villages in Kherson region had been recaptured. The Ukrainian news site NV said it had only managed to confirm the liberation of one of the villages. NV reported that two were still occupied and it was unable to confirm the status of the fourth village.
Unverifiable videos of explosions have been posted on Telegram groups in Kherson city and the neighbouring occupied town of Nova Kakhovka. Ukraine’s southern command, meanwhile, said Russia had suffered heavy losses in the last 24 hours, both in terms of fighters and equipment.
The US state department cited an anonymous Pentagon official saying he did not want to “characterise the actions there as a counteroffensive just yet” and that it would take 24 to 36 hours for the clarity to emerge.
The soldiers on the frontline in the Kherson region who spoke to the Guardian asked to remain anonymous because they are not allowed to talk to the media without permission. One soldier said there was no counteroffensive, the other said that battles were taking place but to halt a Russian offensive launched last week.
Humeniuk said the fighters are not qualified to give assessments about operations and that such public comments should be left to high-level commanders.
The soldiers’ accounts could not be verified but they appear to be in line with reports by the Wall Street Journal earlier this month that neither Ukraine nor Russia has what it needs for a decisive offensive. Instead “both are preparing for positional warfare”.
“There is no counteroffensive and there won’t be,” said a fighter who has been serving on the frontlines in Kherson region since March. “There might be an imitation of one but there won’t be a real one. We absolutely do not have the weaponry for one.”
“The Russians feel completely comfortable in their positions … they are not scared of us; there’s no reason to be scared of us,” the fighter said.
“For each missile that we launch, they launch 50, 40, 30. Of course, the proportions can change depending on the situation,” he said. “We don’t have offensive equipment. You can’t launch an offensive with [US-made rocket system] Himars.”
A commander also serving on the frontlines in Kherson said there were currently battles going on north of Kherson city and in the Beryslavskyi district to halt a Russian offensive that had started last week.
“These are planned actions to hinder the enemy’s actions,” he said.
He added, however, that efforts by Ukrainian forces over the last few days had yielded some successes.
“It has been noticed that [Russian] units have retreated closer to the [River] Dnipro. Some [of their units] are crossing to [Ukraine’s left bank].”
The commander said the Russians were now trying to regain their positions using missile strikes, including on Mykolaiv, the main city next to the frontlines. He said that the Russians did not have enough strength for a ground operation but could change the situation with a “missile terror”.
“They are preparing to strike right now from Skadovsk and Oleshkiy,” he added, two towns in the occupied Kherson region.
Zelenskiy did not address the counteroffensive specifically during his Monday evening address, but said: “The occupiers should know: we will oust them to the border. To our border, the line of which has not changed.”
Shortly after the announcement of the counteroffensive, on Monday afternoon, advisers to Ukraine’s presidential administration appeared to roll back on the announcement, asking for restraint from the media and commentators in order not to raise public expectations.
One, Mykhailo Podolyak, warned politicians, experts and opinion leaders not to speculate about the progress of a military operation before Ukraine’s defence ministry and army issued official statements.
“I understand our wishes and dreams … But war is not ‘content’. Let’s filter information and work professionally out of respect for our defenders,” he wrote on Telegram.
The deputy head of the Russian-installed administration in the occupied Kherson region, Kirill Stremousov, said in a telephone interview that “everything in Kherson was under control”, claiming that Ukrainian spies and saboteurs were killed near Kherson’s Tavriiskyi neighbourhood on Tuesday.
Earlier in the day, reports emerged that Stremousov had left Kherson after a video he posted appeared to indicate that he was in Voronezh, a Russian city 600 miles from Kherson.
When asked by the Guardian about his location, Stremousov said that he was “travelling around Russian cities, meeting different people for work”.
“I don’t have to sit [in Kherson]. I am the deputy head of the region and have the opportunity to move around … These are working trips.”
“Kherson will remain my base,” he added, denying that he left Kherson out of safety concerns.
Stremousov became the most senior Russian-appointed official in Kherson, after the local governor, Volodymyr Saldo, was taken to hospital amid a suspected poisoning earlier in the summer.
Stremousov’s apparent departure from Kherson comes after another Russian-appointed official in the region, Alexei Kovalev, was shot dead in his home over the weekend.
In the past months, a number of Ukrainian nationals appointed by Russian forces in occupied territory have been killed or wounded in apparent partisan attacks.
Russia’s defence ministry acknowledged a Ukrainian offensive had been launched in the Mykolaiv and Kherson regions but said it had failed and the Ukrainians had suffered significant casualties, the RIA news agency reported. The “enemy’s offensive attempt failed miserably”, it said.
A Ukrainian barrage of rockets left the Russian-occupied town of Nova Kakhovka just east of the city of Kherson without water or power, officials at the Russian-appointed local authority later told the outlet. The Guardian could not confirm their claims.
The Kremlin press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said on Tuesday that Russia’s “special military operation” was going to plan, when asked at a press briefing to respond to news of the counteroffensive.
On Monday, a mission from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) arrived in Kyiv, according to Ukraine’s foreign ministry. The mission was to travel to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Russian-occupied territory for an inspection and to give technical assistance. The plant has been damaged by fighting. Russia captured it in early March but it is still run by Ukrainian staff.
The world was on edge last week when fighting cut off vital electricity supplies to the plant, disconnecting it from the grid for the first time in history.
The IAEA mission will spend four days at the plant, leaving on Saturday, according to the Wall Street Journal. It remains to be seen if the mission will be able to travel, as shelling continues in and around the nuclear plant. Both sides trade blame for the attacks. Ukraine claims they are false-flag attacks.
