According to the Russian military, it has fended off a major Ukrainian attack on the Donetsk region. A Russian commander rejects this account – and speaks of a success for the Ukrainians.
The message from the Russian Ministry of Defense came in the middle of the night and made people sit up and take notice: A major Ukrainian offensive in the Donetsk region had been repelled. Supposedly carried out on five front sectors.
Spokesman Igor Konashenkov emphasized that this attempt had failed: “The enemy wanted to break through our defense lines in what he believed to be the most endangered section of the front.” That didn’t work.
Konashenkov: Heavy losses for Ukraine
Six mechanized battalions with armored personnel carriers and armored personnel carriers and two tank battalions were involved in the attack on the Ukrainian side. In the end, they would have had to accept heavy losses, Konashenkov continued.
According to him, 900 soldiers were killed on the Ukrainian side. “The enemy has not achieved its goals,” Konashenkov said at a press conference. He had previously spoken of more than 250 Ukrainian soldiers killed. Kyiv did not want to confirm the information. The information cannot be checked independently.
conflicting parties as a source
Information on the course of the war, shelling and casualties provided by official bodies of the Russian and Ukrainian conflict parties cannot be directly checked by an independent body in the current situation.
chief of staff in the right place at the right time
What was striking, however, was that Konashenkov emphasized that Chief of Staff Valeri Gerasimov was at the scene at that time. According to Konashenkov, he was “at one of the foremost command posts in this direction.” Only rarely does Russia report the presence of its army leaders in military operations.
The head of the Wagner troupe, Yevgeny Prigozhin, had repeatedly criticized Gerrasimov and Defense Minister Shoigu for inaction and incompetence.
Khodakowski: Only a limited operation by the Ukrainians
What at first glance looked like a success for the accused army leadership was doubted again a short time later. The Russian field commander Alexander Khodakowski – on duty in the Donbass – contradicted the statement by the Ministry of Defense that it was a Ukrainian counter-offensive. On his Telegram channel he spoke of a limited tactical operation by the Ukrainians. For the rest, the actions of the enemy were crowned with success.
In fact, the Ukrainian military reported that their own troops had managed to advance further at Bakhmut. However, there is no talk in Kiev of the start of a major offensive.
However, observers consider it possible that this has already begun. The ongoing attacks on the Russian border region of Belgorod could be an attempt to tie up Russian units there in order to attack elsewhere.
Russia downplays situation in Belgorod
The head of the Duma’s defense committee, Andrei Kartapalov, tried to downplay the situation in Belgorod – Ukraine and the West aimed to unsettle the Russian population. Therefore, everything that happens in Belgorod is primarily an “information attack”, an attack on “our public consciousness, on the population of our country”. According to Kartapalov, this is only of minor military importance.
The governor of Belgorod Vyacheslav Gladkov reported today that a power supply facility caught fire as a result of a drone attack. Most recently, villages in the Belgorod region had been evacuated. At the weekend, sustained shelling from the Ukrainian side resulted in deaths and injuries.