Ukraine latest: Ukraine launches major aerial assault on Russia | DW News

Ukraine latest: Ukraine launches major aerial assault on Russia | DW News

Ukraine’s President vadir zalinski says his forces have quote stabilized the northern front near harke where Russia has advanced in recent days Ukraine’s Army Chief says Russian gains have expanded the combat area by almost 70 kilometers and are forcing Ukraine to throw additional Reserve brigades onto the front line authorities are trying to evacuate the last remaining residents in vunk just 5 kilomet from the Russian border let’s bring in Frank lewi he’s a former UK Military Intelligence officer and now lectures in military strategy at Portsmith University good to see you again Frank and Russian President Putin said today that he has no plans on capturing harke what is his strategy then good morning or good afternoon Nicole yes that that seems clear they simply don’t have the scale of forces to take on the task of a city of over a million people like kiv what they have is essentially One Division which is between 7 and 10,000 people so right now they haven’t the capability to do that but okay so what are they doing then well two things first of all uh the avowed objective is to create a cordon sanitary uh for the oblasts of belgrad and we soon see perhaps KK as well in Russia to avoid Ukrainian artillery fire and also incursions by Ukrainian backed forces and the second thing of course is to draw away Ukrainian reserves in as far as they have them from other parts of the front uh that those are the purposes or the primary purposes of these operations as far as I can see and let’s talk about how this is affecting other areas of Ukraine this fing back the Russian Onslaught um whatever reason might be behind it and whatever thinking might be behind it on the Russians part um how is it affecting Ukrainian operations in other parts of the front well Nico I said there’s one division facing facing KV now but behind that of course there are tens of thousands of other troops and what the ukrainians can’t do is assume that those won’t be won’t be brought into operation as I said it’s unlikely they’ll be going for KV but of course there are other potential uh points of trouble as it were particularly Sumi in the west and the ukrainians are quite concerned that the the Russians will will have a go there which they may well do but uh what the ukrainians have done of course this PS the Ukrainian Army and it stretches them so you heard on the report there the ukrainians have taken two brigades and that’s quite a force to reinforce that front and that’s the whole point here it’s stressing once again the Manpower stresses the size differential between Ukrainian and Russian forces and it’s exploiting Ukraine’s uh deficiency in that respect and it’s stretching them and it will continue to do so I think ukrainians will hold but they are going to be seriously challenged I think particularly in that Northeastern reg or Northwestern region of the country sorry northe Eastern region Frank I want to bring up something else because Ukraine launched a wave of drone attacks on Russia overnight and what might well be the biggest aerial assault on Russia since the War Began now Moscow says it shot down more than a 100 drones and reported two deaths in the belgrod region um we’re seeing footage now of the aftermath of a drone strike on an oil refinery in the Black Sea city of tuap fire Crews have extinguished The Blaze but uh the extent of the damage is still not clear now Frank to what extent are these drone attacks debilitating the Russian war machine I think it’s fair to say that the oil refin the attacks on the oil refineries are are achieving effect at that sort of strategic level economic level and they’ve reduced Russian capacity According to some reports by between five well around five 5 six 7% who knows but they’re having some effect the question is are they worth the effort and worth the uh the sort the the downside which is the appearance of of attacking civilians much more effective and we saw this over the last couple of days are assaults on Russian military targets such as on belbeck Airfield a couple of days ago which is really really did damage uh the uh the Russian naval and Aviation there using attack’s missiles interestingly and right now they do seem to be having some effect the Drone attacks on Russia though I would assess less so at the moment you know they’re not of a scale that really going to damage Russian military efforts uh at this moment and nothing like the effect of course that the Russians are having on Ukraine itself with similar attacks and of a far greater scale both from the air and using drones yeah the Ukraine is still very much on the back foot how do you see the summer going for them we will see the Russian summer offensive which I think everybody’s predicting we may we may have that that may have begun that will stretch Ukrainian for and what some analysts are saying is this that this will move from an attritional phase to a maneuver phase where we may see breakthroughs and so forth I’m not so sure about that but let’s watch and see what happens in Sumi District next and the scale of forces that apply there nobody’s expecting vast numbers of of Russians to appear out of nowhere of course Western intelligence knows full well the scale of Russian threat Frank ledwich from Portsmouth University always great speaking to you thanks

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy says his forces have ‘stabilized’ the northern front near Kharkiv where Russia has advanced in recent days.
Ukraine’s army chief says Russian gains have expanded the combat area by almost 70 kilometers, and are forcing Ukraine to throw additional reserve brigades onto the frontline. Authorities are trying to evacuate the last remaining residents in Vovchansk, just five kilometers from the Russian border. Thousands more have already fled. Today, Russia’s President Putin said he has no plans to capture Kharkiv. What is his strategy then?

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