Over the weekend, conflicting reports emerged from Russia and Ukraine regarding the situation along the frontlines in the Zaporizhzhia region. Moscow claimed to have halted Kyiv’s counteroffensive, while the Ukrainian army insisted it continued.
Since the commencement of its counteroffensive in June, Ukraine has retaken a few small villages in the southeast Zaporizhzhia region; however, the vast frontline in the east and south of the country has not changed much over the past year.
In statements released Monday, Yevgeny Balitsky, the top Moscow-installed official in the Zaporizhzhia region, stated, “The enemy has been stopped, and their counteroffensive, which has been so hyped, has been completely halted.”
Small-scale fighting was reportedly taking place close to the villages of Robotyne and Shcherbaky, which are roughly 22 kilometers northwest, according to Balitsky.
It has been challenging to determine who has been making significant progress and how intense the fighting has been because both sides are in control of the dissemination of battlefield intelligence and are asserting victories in small areas of territory.
The General Staff of Ukraine reported on Sunday night that several attempts at attack by Russian forces were made close to Robotyne and Verbove, a village located a few kilometers (miles) east of the country.
In its daily briefing on Sunday, the Russian Ministry of Defense stated that Russian forces had repulsed Ukrainian attacks near Verbove and Robotyne. However, experts at the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank located in Washington, claimed that Ukraine had made “limited advances west of Verbove.”
Additionally, according to General Stuff of Ukraine, Ukrainian forces carried out offensive operations in the western Zaporizhzhia region, “exhausting the enemy all along the frontline” in the direction of Melitopol. Over the weekend, Russia said that its air defense forces had repulsed air strikes from Ukraine.
General Valery Zaluzhnyi, his Commander-in-Chief, refuted President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s claims over the weekend that the war with Russia was at a “stalemate,” saying that the fighting was becoming more static and attritional.
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