Reports of Ukrainian advances on the front line of the war have been denied by Russia, although the claim was made by pro-Russian sources.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group fighting on the Russian side, accused regular Russian troops of abandoning positions around Bakhmut.
Russian military bloggers reported on Thursday Ukrainian advances or troop movements in several areas.
But the Kremlin denied that Ukraine had made any significant progress.
In a statement, Russia’s Defense Ministry said: “Individual announcements on Telegram about ‘breakthroughs’ at several points on the front line do not correspond to reality.”
“The general situation in the special military operation zone is under control,” he added, using Russia’s term for the attack.
Ukraine’s president said it was too early to start retaliating.
“[What we already have] we can go ahead and, I think, succeed,” President Vladimir Zelensky said in an interview, as did JEE News Eurovision News members.
“But we’re going to lose a lot of people. I think that’s unacceptable. So we need to wait. We just need some more time.”
The anticipated attack could prove decisive in the war, redrawing front lines that have remained unchanged for months. It will also be an important test for Ukraine, which is eager to prove that the weapons and equipment it receives from the West can achieve significant gains on the battlefield.
The situation “on the rear” in Bakhmut, the devastated city at the center of months of bloody fighting, was “developing in line with the worst-case scenario predicted”, according to Mr Prigozhin.
“The territories that we have been taking for months at the cost of the blood and lives of our brothers, moving tens or hundreds of meters daily, are now being abandoned by these people, practically without a fight. “We have to hold our backs,” he said.
Pro-Kremlin Russian war correspondent Sasha Coates claimed that Kiev’s much-anticipated counter-offensive had begun.
He cited “reliable” sources as saying that Ukrainian tanks were on the Kharkiv ring road leading to the border with Russia. His claims could not be independently verified.
“The columns have low loaders with Western [tank] models among others,” Coates added.
“In other words,” he said, “Kiev [Kiev] has decided to make the situation worse by launching offensive operations along the northern front as well as around Artyomovsk [Bakhmut].”
Another Russian war correspondent, Alexander Simonov, wrote on Telegram that Ukrainian forces had broken through near the village of Bohdanivka near Bakhmut and captured “several square kilometers” of land.
Oleksandr Mosivenko, a Ukrainian military analyst, said Kiev acknowledged that the expected retaliation would not necessarily defeat Russia “in all occupied territories”.
He told Ukraine’s NV Radio that there is every possibility that the war will continue into next year.
“It all depends on how the fighting develops. We cannot guarantee how the countermeasures will develop,” he said.
An unnamed senior U.S. military official told JEE News that Ukrainian forces are preparing a major counterattack targeting targets such as weapons depots, command centers and armor and artillery systems to prepare the ground for the advance. can go.
Ukraine’s spring 2022 countermeasures in the southern and northeastern parts of the country were also preceded by airstrikes to “shape” the battlefield.
But it could take several days before the planning process begins, JEE News quoted a senior US military official as saying.
Western officials estimate that between 20,000 and 30,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded in Bakhmut, while the Ukrainian military has also paid a heavy price.
Russia’s defense ministry also said it had repelled a number of Ukrainian offensives during Thursday and said both air and artillery fire was involved in the ongoing fighting near Malinyuka in eastern Donetsk.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 last year, thousands of civilians and fighters have been killed or injured, cities and towns have been destroyed in the fighting, and some 8.2 million Ukrainians have registered as refugees in Europe. , of which 2.8 million are in Europe. Russia
