Ukrainian Troops Counterattack In The South And East

After retreating from northern Ukraine in late March and early April, the battered Russian army—having lost as many as 15,000 soldiers killed and tens of thousands wounded—reorganized and redeployed. East.

For a month now, the Russians have focused their efforts on one small sector of the battlefield in the Donbas region. Their goal: to surround and cut off the Ukrainian garrison in Severodonetsk, the last city under Kyiv’s control on the eastern bank of the Siverskyi Donets River.

It’s not going great for the Russians. The Ukrainians reportedly have counterattacked and reversed some of the Russians’ recent gains in the increasingly devastated industrial city with a pre-war population of 100,000.

Inasmuch as capturing Severodonetsk has become the Kremlin’s biggest near-term goal in Ukraine, the Ukrainian counteroffensive could spell disaster. Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently was hoping for a decisive, if small-scale, win in order to shore up flagging domestic support for his costly war. As the Ukrainian army holds on in Severodonetsk, a quick and easy win for Russia is looking increasingly unlikely.

For a couple weeks in late May and early June, it seemed like the Russians were winning the battle for Severodonetsk. Russian army battalions, reinforced by Ukrainian separatists and mercenaries from The Wagner Group, attacked northwest from Popasna, 15 miles south of Severodonetsk.

Relentless Russian artillery barrages cleared a path for the attackers. As many as a hundred Ukrainian troops died every day as the Russians advanced nearly halfway across the 30-mile-wide—north to south—pocket of Ukrainian territory anchored in the east by Severodonetsk.

Meanwhile, Russian and allied troops directly assaulted Severodonetsk’s residential outskirts from the north, east and south. The Metolkine settlement southeast of the city quickly fell. Around May 30, the Ukrainian garrison retreated. Some troops dug in around a sprawling chemical plant in northern Severodonetsk. Others retreated across the last intact bridge connecting Severodonetsk to Lysychansk, its twin city on the river’s higher western bank.

For the Kremlin, victory was imminent. Or so it seemed.

In fact, the Russians had failed to set the conditions for enduring gains in Severodonetsk. An effort to cross the Siverskyi Donets River on the northern side of the pocket ended in disaster for the Russians in early May when Ukrainian artillery caught two or three Russian battalions on the riverbanks and destroyed them, killing as many as 400 Russians.

The Russian attack along the Popasna axis soon ground to a halt. That left open a critical road for the Ukrainians. That road, connecting Kramatorsk to Severodonetsk via Siversk, has allowed Kyiv to reinforce and resupply its troops in and around Severodonetsk.

The Ukrainian army shifted some of its best artillery east to counter the more numerous Russian guns. In a dramatic display of artillery “counterbattery,” Ukrainian gunners pinpointed and knocked out one of the Russians’ most powerful weapons—a 2S4 240-millimeter mortar—after Russian media circulated a video of the mortar in action.

“Ukrainian forces are slowing down Russian operations to encircle Ukrainian positions in Luhansk Oblast and assault Severodonetsk through prudent and effective local counterattacks and defense of the western Siverskyi Donets,” the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C. explained.

The turning point came last week. Ukrainian forces occupying the high ground in Lysychansk fired down on the Russian troops in Severodonetsk. Ukraine’s volunteer foreign legion—foreign veterans fighting for Kyiv—targeted occupied Metolkine.

“Over the last 24 hours, Ukrainian forces have counterattacked in the contested city of Severodonetsk in eastern Ukraine, likely blunting the operational momentum Russian forces previously gained through concentrating combat units and firepower,” the U.K. Defense Ministry reported on Sunday.

In a surprise move this weekend, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky slipped into Lysychansk to meet with the troops. That Zelensky and his security detail safely could move into and out of the city underscores the durability of Ukraine’s lines of communications across the Severodonetsk pocket.

The battle for Severodonetsk grinds on. The momentum might be with the Ukrainians but that easily could change. It’s important to note, however, that Severodonetsk is more important to Russia than it is to Ukraine.

In fact, the Ukrainian army deliberately did not deploy all its available forces to the Severodonetsk pocket. It held back some of its battalions—and waited. Once the Russians had shifted all their own best battalions east, those Ukrainian forces counterattacked in the south.

On May 27, Ukrainian troops crossed the Inhulets River near Davydiv Brid northeast of Russian-occupied Kherson on the Black Sea coast. In a week of hard fighting, the Ukrainians slowly established a lodgment on the far bank of the river.

It’s a long way from there to Kherson—40 miles. But for the Ukrainian army, crossing the river is the first and arguably hardest step in any eventual march on Kherson with its pre-war population of nearly 300,000.

The Kremlin has gambled big on a maximal effort to achieve a minimal goal: capturing Severodonetsk. It’s debatable whether taking the eastern city truly would be worth the cost for the Russians—especially if it means risking their hold on Kherson.