In the South, Ukrainian soldiers was fighting on a rough terrain, flat farmland with little hiding place for troops trying to advance.
Sixty miles away, they are attacking across the plains in a coal mining area littered with slag piles, pushing toward a strategic railroad junction.
Farther east, they targeting Russian locations in the hills outside Bakhmut, a ruined city that fell to Russian forces last month after the longest and bloodiest battle of the war. Ukrainian forces have advanced about a mile in some areas of the front line there, the military said on Saturday.
In the fierce battles along the front lines over the past week, Ukraine’s attempt to regain lost territory is taking shape, representing a major axis in the war. With each clash, Ukraine is trying to show that it can strike anywhere, while at the same time trying to get Russia to defend everywhere.
After days of silence on the scale of the fighting, President Volodymyr Zelensky gave his strongest confirmation on Saturday that the long-awaited counter-offensive had begun.
“Counter-attack and defensive actions are being taken in Ukraine,” he told a news conference in Kyiv with the visiting Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau. “At what stage, I won’t reveal the details.”
The multi-pronged assault, concentrated along the southern and eastern fronts, was a test of Ukraine’s new arsenal of Western tanks and armored vehicles as well as tens of thousands of newly mobilized troops. trained in Europe for months in preparation for war. Kyiv, as expected in the early stages, will suffer casualties, will need to show significant progress in its counterattack to keep money and weapons flowing from the West.
In the past 24 hours, Ukrainian forces have fired rockets and artillery at four Russian command centers, six areas where troops, weapons and military equipment, three ammunition depots and 5 enemy artillery units in firing positions. The claims cannot be independently verified.
An initial series of attacks, orchestrated by the Ukrainian Army under the guise of secrecy, were intended to probe for weaknesses and lure Russia into revealing its defensive strategies too soon, before the majority of its forces had been deployed. New Ukraine was brought into the war. Beyond the vast farmland, the two armies were mobilizing and stashing hundreds of tanks, armored vehicles and artillery in small villages and bushes, lest the other side guess where their forces were concentrated.
Once in place, the Ukrainian counteroffensive is believed to be one of the largest military operations in Europe since World War II.
Currently, Kiev has deployed soldiers from the 47th Mechanized Brigade, one of nine units created in October specifically to recapture the occupied land and equipped with M16 rifles instead of Kalashnikovs without used by most Ukrainian soldiers. On dusty farm roads, American Humvees hit potholes, Ukrainian flags fluttering over their antennas.
The Ukrainian military deployed the German Leopard 2 tank and the American Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, upgrading the aging Soviet armored fleet. In total, Ukraine received hundreds of Western tanks, armored vehicles and machinery to penetrate minefields.
Its forces faced a formidable defense built by the Russians for months with thick layers of mines, trenches and tank barricades. During the intense fighting, a number of new Western weapons were abandoned or destroyed, their bodies left in the dusty fields of artillery shells in Russian propaganda videos.
The Ukrainian government has been mostly silent about its opening moves, citing the need to maintain an element of surprise. The Russian government has been victorious in its claims against the attacks while presenting little evidence.
US officials, who have said in recent days that the counter-offensive appears to be underway, have said it is too early to make broad assessments, though they are generally optimistic about the outlook. Ukrainian counterattack.
Each location has a strategic import for Kiev.
In recent days, fighting has raged both in the Zaporizhzhia region near the agricultural town of Orikhiv and in the eastern Donetsk region, near Velyka Novosilka, once a sleepy rural town with shallow roads The village is surrounded by coal mines and sunflower fields.
Attacking from either of these locations to the south, long seen as the focal point of any Ukrainian counterattack, could allow Ukrainian forces to forge a spearhead into Russian-occupied territory. , severing rail and road lines and dividing it into two areas. Such interests would give them the opportunity to sever Russia’s so-called land bridge connecting their territory to the Crimean Peninsula – which was annexed by Moscow in 2014 – which would jeopardize other countries’ interests. supply route.
Ukrainian officials also say they are stepping up their attack on the eastern suburbs of Bakhmut, now a wasteland of burned and collapsed buildings, and almost completely uninhabited. Fighting raged in the rolling hills west of the city, near an irrigation and drinking water canal, the Donets-Donbas canal.
Because Russia had seen capturing the ruins as a reward in the war, it must now defend them or risk a shameful defeat. By striking there, Ukraine could force Russia to divert resources away from defending to the south.
During this opening phase, Ukrainian forces are essentially probing Russian lines to identify their weakest points. They will then try to pivot and focus on attacks with the highest probability of success.
Any skirmish is expected to be bloody and brutally violent, with high casualties for the Ukrainian side in the attacks.
The attack on the flat farmland in the Zaporizhzhia region is plowing through the dense Russian defenses. On a recent drive through the area, the villages appeared largely deserted. At one point, the only people who got out were two boys who were stepping in a puddle of mud, then rushing out into the street when a military truck sped past.
This area is one of the shortest paths to splitting the Russian-held territory into two zones but also one of the most heavily defended.
Commercial satellite imagery has shown many Russian defenses. Russia spent months laying minefields, digging shelters and erecting concrete barriers for tanks.
American officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the Ukrainians suffered losses in the recent fighting as well as the Russians, but would not quantify the casualties. At least three German-made Leopard 2 tanks and eight American-made Bradley fighting vehicles were recently abandoned or destroyed by the Ukrainian military, based on videos and photos posted by pro-war Russian bloggers and verified by The New York Times.
Mykhailo Samus, deputy director at the Center for Army Research, Transformation and Disarmament, a military research organization in Kiev, said at this stage it is still unclear where Ukraine will deal the main blow. The current attacks, he said, are mainly aimed at forcing Russia to reveal its position and strategy.
As the Ukrainian army attacked, Russian forces moved reinforcements and returned artillery fire, exposing their position and defensive strategy. They turned on the electronic jamming system, revealing how it could be used in combat.
The Ukrainian military is using what they learned in these attacks to attack Russian artillery positions, softening the defenses for a real breakthrough battle, Samus said. Later. The bigger war “is still ahead of us and we still don’t know exactly where it will be.”
The main Russian defense tactic is to deploy a manned thin front line to detect an attack when it is overrun, military analysts say. Behind this line are minefields and then many trenches. Further afield were reinforcements, who charged forward to counterattack the attackers as they tried to break through the minefields.
While the battle could drag on for months, both sides are quickly shaping their own success stories in vague terms and few details.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei K. Shoigu said that Ukraine’s 47th Mechanized Brigade tried to break through near Velyka Novosilka. The attack was repelled, he said.
Other announcements followed a similar pattern, with baseless claims of Ukrainian attacks being dismissed and President Vladimir V. Putin even claiming that the counter-offensive had so far failed. lose. According to the Institute for the Study of War, a US-based analysis group, Russia’s seemingly coordinated message about the attacks suggests that the state is prepared for how the counter-attack will unfold.
The group says Ukraine is attacking in three areas but has only achieved “different results” and that seesaw fighting, when attacking teams advance and are hit back, is possible.
Ukraine was even more cautious, largely keeping quiet about any details of the fighting. And Ukraine has closed media access to the front in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Maria Varennikova Contribution reports from Zaporizhzhia, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.
