RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine has taken ‘significant’ losses this week – US

The Ukrainian military has suffered “significant” casualties in its faltering attempt to mount a counteroffensive against Russian forces, US officials told CNN on Thursday. While Kiev has kept quiet about its losses, Moscow estimates that the offensive has already cost Ukraine almost 5,000 lives.

Ukrainian troops hoping to break through Russia’s defensive lines have met “greater than expected resistance from Russian forces,” the American network reported, citing anonymous “senior US officials.”

CNN’s sources described how Russian forces used anti-tank missiles and mortars to put up “stiff resistance” and inflicted “significant” casualties, as the Ukrainians struggled to get their Western-provided vehicles through densely-laid minefields.

After months of delays and mixed messages from Kiev, Ukraine’s counteroffensive began on Sunday with an attack by six mechanized and two tank battalions along five sections of the frontline near Donetsk, and in other regions to the north and south. Further attacks followed, and although pro-Ukrainian sources described these thrusts as “probing” attacks, it was clear by the beginning of this week that the counteroffensive had begun in earnest.

The fiercest fighting took place on Wednesday night along the frontline near Zaporozhye, where the Russian military has spent several months constructing multiple lines of minefields, trenches, gun emplacements, and anti-tank obstacles. The Ukrainian 47th mechanized brigade attacked with a total strength of up to 1,500 troops and 150 armored vehicles, but Russian troops – backed by artillery and air support – repelled the assault, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Thursday.

Key to Russia’s defense has been its suppression of Ukraine’s air defense systems, allowing its fighter jets and attack helicopters to operate with impunity over the frontline.

The minister claimed that during a two-hour battle, the enemy lost 30 tanks, 11 armored personnel carriers and up to 350 troops. According to Shoigu’s daily updates, Ukraine has lost around 4,995 soldiers and almost 100 tanks since Sunday.

Despite the apparently colossal losses, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN earlier this week that Washington believed “that the Ukrainians will meet with success in this counteroffensive.” However, General Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, urged caution, telling the network on Monday that it was “too early to tell what outcomes are going to happen.”

“Everyone knows perfectly well that any counteroffensive in the world without control in the skies is very dangerous,” Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said in a Wall Street Journal interview on Saturday, adding that “a large number of soldiers will die” during the operation.

** Ukraine rejects Türkiye’s Kakhovka dam proposal

Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmitry Kuleba has vehemently dismissed Türkiye’s proposal for an international investigation into the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, calling the initiative a “game to indulge the Russians.”

This comes after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held phone conversations with his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts on Wednesday, offering to organize an international commission to investigate the attack on the dam, which would include experts from all three countries, as well as the UN.

Speaking on the Ukrainian 1+1 news channel, Kuleba stated that he was sick and tired of the UN and others who were proposing to investigate the explosion and accused them of playing a “game of quasi-justice.”

“It’s absolutely clear who’s who,” Kuleba said, dismissing any suggestions that Ukraine could have been responsible for blowing anything up. “Take it easy, gentlemen,” he said. “We've already been there. It's all just a game to indulge the Russians.”

Later in the interview, the minister admitted that some sort of investigation into the dam’s destruction would take place eventually, but that it would not be anytime soon.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has also blasted the UN and the Red cross for failing to act amid the flooding caused by the dam’s destruction.

The Kakhovka dam was partially ruptured on Tuesday morning, causing flooding in multiple towns and villages along the path of the Dnieper River. 

Moscow has insisted that the “deliberate sabotage” of the dam was ordered by Kiev to cut off the water supply to Russia's Crimean peninsula. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has also suggested that the attack might be linked to Ukraine's attempts at launching a large-scale counteroffensive.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has labeled the incident a “barbaric act” that has led to a “massive ecological and humanitarian catastrophe” and accused Ukraine of “committing war crimes” and “openly using terrorist methods.” He also warned Kiev and its Western backers against gambling on a path of dangerous escalation.

** Ukraine was ready to sign peace deal with Russia but gave up under US pressure — Patrushev

The Ukrainian leadership was ready to settle the conflict with Russia but gave up under the US pressure, Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev said on Thursday.

"Had it not been for the US pressure on those whom they installed at the head of Ukraine, this situation would have not happened, Even the Ukrainian leaders themselves were ready for signing a peace treaty and gave Russia written proposals that we, in principle, approved," Patrushev said, obviously referring to the negotiations between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Turkey in March last year.

However, as Patrushev went on to say, "in the morning, they [members of the Ukrainian delegation] gave [the proposals] to us during the negotiations and in the evening they said: ‘No, we give them up.’"

"This happened only because the United States had put pressure on them and said that no negotiations must be held," the secretary of Russia’s Security Council stressed.

As Patrushev pointed out, "there are interested parties in this conflict," first and foremost, the United States and Great Britain.

Istanbul document

The first Russian-Ukrainian negotiations after Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine took place in Belarus in early March 2022 but the talks yielded no tangible results.

A new round of negotiations took place in Istanbul on March 29, 2022, following which Russian Delegation Head, Presidential Aide Vladimir Medinsky announced that Moscow had for the first time received Kiev’s principles of a possible future agreement in witting, stipulating, in particular, Ukraine’s neutral, non-aligned status commitments and its refusal to deploy foreign troops and armaments, including nuclear weapons, on its soil.

Russia pulled out its forces from the Kiev and Chernigov areas. However, the negotiations on the peaceful settlement were totally frozen after that and, as Russian President Vladimir Putin said, Kiev gave up the accords reached in Istanbul.

In October last year, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky enacted a decision by the country’s National Security and Defense Council on banning any talks with Putin.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Hundreds plucked from flooded homes; Ukraine dismisses counteroffensive reports

Hundreds of Ukrainians were rescued from rooftops on Thursday, two days after waters from a huge breached dam submerged villages, fields and roads in the southern region of Kherson, as Kyiv dismissed reports its counteroffensive had begun.

Drone video showed areas where often only the roofs were visible above the flooding. The region's governor said some 600 square kilometres, or 230 square miles, were under water.

The collapse of the Nova Kakhovka dam came as Ukraine prepared a counteroffensive, likely the next major phase in the war in which tens of thousands of people have been killed, millions uprooted and entire cities reduced to ruins since Russia's "special military operation" began on Feb. 24 last year.

NBC news, citing a senior officer and a soldier near the front lines, said the offensive had begun. The Washington Post cited "four individuals" in the armed forces saying the same thing.

Asked about the reports, a spokesperson for the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces told Reuters: "We have no such information."

In its daily Ukraine briefing, Britain's defence ministry on Thursday reported heavy fighting along "multiple sectors of the front", adding that Kyiv held the initiative in most areas.

Ukraine's military said the flooding in Kherson had forced Russian troops to retreat by five to 15 km and had "practically halved" Russian shelling.

A senior Russian commander briefed President Vladimir Putin on how his forces had repelled a large-scale Ukrainian attack in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, the TASS news agency reported.

Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said earlier on Thursday that Russian forces had withstood fierce overnight attempts by Ukrainian troops to break through the frontline in Zaporizhzhia and had inflicted heavy losses on them.

Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield reports.

TRADING BLAME

Russia and Ukraine have traded blame for the bursting of the Soviet-era Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, which sent waters cascading across the war zone of southern Ukraine in the early hours of Tuesday, forcing tens of thousands to flee.

Moscow and Kyiv also accused each other on Thursday of shelling the area as rescue workers in rubber dinghies tried to save people and animals from the still rising flood waters.

Russian shelling wounded at least nine people in Kherson on Thursday as residents were being evacuated, Ukraine's interior ministry said.

The Prosecutor General's office initially said one person had been killed by the shelling but later said no deaths had been reported. A Reuters reporter in Kherson said he could hear what appeared to be artillery fire.

The Kremlin similarly accused Ukraine of shelling Russian rescue workers in the area.

Friends and family of stranded residents posted appeals online with names, photos and GPS locations of residents. The coordinator of a volunteer group on the Telegram messaging app said the appeals were getting more urgent because people were running out of drinking water.

One man, Sergei, told Reuters the last time he spoke with his 83-year-old father-in-law in the Oleshky region was several days before the dam collapse.

"The latest information is that there was a lot of water in the street, as high as a person," he said. "Houses collapsed and went under water."

Ukraine said the floods would leave hundreds of thousands of people without access to drinking water, swamp tens of thousands of hectares of agricultural land and turn at least 500,000 hectares deprived of irrigation into "deserts".

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who has appealed for a "clear and rapid" international effort to help flood victims, held emergency talks with officials in Kherson, one of five Ukrainian regions which Moscow claims to have annexed but only partially controls.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said aid agencies had delivered bottles of drinking water, water purification tablets, hygiene kits and jerrycans.

"Drinking water remains the most pressing need," it said.

MINE HAZARD

The Kremlin said Putin had no plans to visit the region but was monitoring the situation.

Putin, without providing evidence, has accused Ukraine of destroying the Russian-controlled dam at the suggestion of its Western allies.

Kyiv said several months ago the dam had been mined by Russian forces who captured it early in their invasion, and has suggested Moscow blew it up to try to prevent Ukrainian forces crossing the Dnipro river in their counteroffensive.

It is not known how many people may have died as a result of the flooding. The Russian-installed mayor of Nova Kakhovka, near the dam site, said on Thursday at least five people had died but the total death toll is sure to be much higher.

Kherson's Ukrainian governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said 68% of the flooded territory was on the Russian-occupied left bank of the Dnipro River.

The "average level of flooding" in the Kherson region on Thursday morning was 5.61 meters (18.41 ft), he said.

The water level at the Kakhovka reservoir was approaching a dangerous low, the state company overseeing the facility said on Thursday, saying this could affect the nearby Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station and water supply to other regions.

The U.N. atomic watchdog said on Tuesday the plant, Europe's largest, has enough water to cool its reactors for "several months" from a pond located above the reservoir.

Ukrainian and Russian officials have also warned of the danger posed by mines planted during the war and now scattered by the floods.