The goal of this phase of the counteroffensive is to cut off Russian forces on the river and force them to surrender the city of Kherson, they said. At that point, crossing the river would be “very difficult to do,” one of the officials said.
Ukrainian officials on Monday announced the operation to liberate Russianheld territories in the south of the country, after weeks of counterattacks on cities in the Kherson region. Armed Forces of Ukraine they claimed they had infringed Russia’s “first line of defense” near Kherson.
The United States is supporting the counteroffensive with visual intelligence on the battlefield from satellites and advice on how to best use the weapons systems, one of the officials said.
John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, would not confirm the start of the counteroffensive and referred questions to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. But he stressed that Kyiv has been carrying out a more “localized” counteroffensive for weeks.
“The idea of going on the offensive is not new to the Ukrainians, and they have been taking the fight to the Russians within their country,” Kirby said, noting that HIMARS in particular has made a difference. significant in the fight.
The system, along with precisionguided rockets, has allowed Ukraine to strike behind Russian lines and pushed Moscow into defensive positions, Kirby said.
The conflict has offered the US a rare opportunity to assess the capability of HIMARS and Russian defenses in action, one of the DoD officials said. U.S. officials are “somewhat surprised” at how well HIMARS is performing and how poorly Russian defensive capabilities are performing against attacks, the person said.
“The Ukrainians are very good at what they’re doing with them and how they’re using them, but we’re also learning that they’re able to get through a lot of Russian systems,” the person said.
The next question, one DoD official said, is whether Russian forces decide to surrender captured territory in the south or reposition fighting units in the east.
Kirby said Moscow has already had to pull resources away from the fight in the Donbas, where Russia has concentrated most of its forces, because of reports that Ukraine may be on the offensive in the south.
“They have had to deplete units from certain areas in the east and Donbas to respond to what they clearly believe was an imminent threat of a counteroffensive,” Kirby said. “From a strategic perspective, it has already had an effect on Russian military capability inside Ukraine.”
Upriver from Kherson, a team from the United Nations nuclear watchdog is expected to inspect the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which was seized by Russian forces in March and has become a dangerous front in the conflict
Russia has “essentially militarized” the power plant, which is still manned by Ukrainians, by installing weapons and soldiers there, Kirby said.
“We continue to believe that a controlled shutdown of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear reactors would be the safest and least risky option in the short term,” Kirby said.