Ukraine military advancing on southern front, claims general

One of Ukraine’s top generals claimed on Tuesday that his country’s forces were making progress in the south, one of the two theatres of their counteroffensive to drive out Russian occupiers, but he provided few other details.

General Oleksander Tarnavskyi used the military term for the southern front—”the Tavria sector”—in a Telegram post to describe an advance by the defending forces.

The commander of the southern group of forces, Tarnavskyi, reported that troops had completed 1,198 missions on the previous day with 261 men lost for the Russian forces and an additional 10 taken prisoner.

In its evening report, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces stated, without going into any detail, that offensive operations were taking place in the east and south.

The focus of the journey south to the Sea of Azov was the southeast Zaporizhzhia region, where reports of Russian airstrikes were made. According to the report, Ukrainian forces also resisted Russian assaults in regions of the Donetsk region that Kiev had already reclaimed as well as in and around the long-disputed town of Maryinka to the west.

Over the past week, military analysts have reported that Ukrainian forces have consolidated their positions near the settlement of Verbove as they advance south.

The drive in the east has focused on recovering land around the devastated town of Bakhmut, seized by Russian forces in May after months of heavy fighting.

The Institute for the Study of War, in an assessment issued on Monday, said Ukrainian forces had made marginal gains in the area straddling Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.

(With agency inputs)