CNN
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Bankir and his men have been trying to repel Russian attacks on the Ukrainian front for over two years, but only now have they been able to Hitting a sore spot: Within Russian territory.
New authorization from the U.S. and other allies to use Western weapons to attack countries inside the country Russia “We have destroyed targets inside Russia and launched several successful counterattacks. Russian forces can no longer feel impunity and safe,” Bankil told CNN, asking to be identified only by his call sign for security reasons.
After months of being outnumbered by a lack of ammunition and manpower, Kyiv The country is finally able to make the most of the Western military aid that began flowing into it last month. Months of delay.
Soldiers on the front lines say the arms supplies are beginning to pay off, especially as they enable them to use the weapons to attack specific military targets across the border in support of Russia’s offensive in Ukraine.
“We see the impact of the support every day: artillery, long-range multiple launch rocket systems with different types of munitions and submunitions… it is affecting the overall situation on the battlefield,” Ivan, an officer with the 148th Artillery Brigade, told CNN, asking that his name not be used for security reasons.
“We are deploying our most effective weapon systems in areas where Russian forces are trying to break through our defenses, significantly slowing their advance,” he added.
Although Kiev was unable to recapture large swaths of territory, it managed to avert a potentially disastrous capture of Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv.
Valentin Ogilenko/Reuters
Ukrainian servicemen from the 148th Separate Artillery Brigade of the Ukrainian Air Force Assault Forces prepare to fire an M777 howitzer near the front line in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, May 1, 2024.
Parts of the region north of Kharkiv, including the cities of Izhim, Kupyansk and Balaklya, fell into Russian hands shortly after Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The occupation was brutal. Scheduled for release in fall 2022Ukrainian forces have found evidence of war crimes allegedly committed by Russian forces, including mass graves and torture chambers.
Russia launched new cross-border attacks into the region in May this year, seeking to exploit a shortage of ammunition in Ukraine ahead of the expected arrival of the first Western weapons.
The results were fatal. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) stated that at least 174 civilians In Ukraine, 6 civilians were killed and 690 injured in May, the highest number of civilian casualties in a year.
More than half of the civilian casualties occurred in Kharkiv, despite the region’s relatively small size compared to the country as a whole.
Oleksiy Melnyk, a former Ukrainian defense official and international security expert who is co-director of the Foreign Affairs and International Security Program at the Razumkov Center in Kyiv, told CNN that the reoccupation of previously liberated areas north of Kharkiv is a “tragic moment” for Ukraine.
But it also marked a major turning point.
“This has caused a change in the position of Western countries, prompting them to at least partially remove restrictions on the use of Western weapons,” he said.
The United States and other Western allies, fearing escalating tensions, have long banned Kiev from using the weapons to attack anything inside Russia, limiting their use to Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.
This allows Russia to use the border areas as safe bases for offensive and missile attacks.
“(Russia) knew that Ukraine did not have the capabilities to attack these targets on Russian territory,” Melnyk said.
“If the decision had not been made and we had lost the U.S. support and military assistance, the situation would have been completely different.”
But the growing likelihood that Russia would reoccupy parts of the Kharkiv region led some of Ukraine’s key allies, including the United States, to lift restrictions, allowing Kiev to attack and destroy or severely damage key targets inside Russia.
According to Ukrainian defense officials, these include a regimental headquarters in Belgorod Oblast, an ammunition depot in Voronezh, a drone facility and airfield in Krasnodar, a communications center in Bryansk, and several naval facilities in the occupied Crimean Peninsula.
Melnyk said the arrival of the long-range ATACMS missile system in particular has been a game changer: Ukraine has previously been able to strike targets inside Russia using Ukrainian-made drones, but ATACMS has made those attacks much more effective.
“Speed is key,” Melnyk explained. “In a drone attack, Russia would detect the Ukrainian drone early enough that it would have hours to react. A Russian pilot could have a coffee and a cigarette before hopping in the cockpit and taking off to shoot down the drone. With ATACMS, it’s a matter of minutes,” he said.
Konrad Muzyka, an independent defense analyst and director at Roshan Consulting, who recently returned from eastern Ukraine, said Russia can no longer target the Kharkiv region with its S-300 and S-400 missile systems.
“Ukraine launched the Himalas attack on targets in the Belgorod region, forcing Russia to move the S-300 systems it was using to attack Kharkiv much further away, so that Kharkiv is now out of range of Russian S-300 systems,” he said.
While Russia has switched to air-to-air glide bombs, guided missiles with pop-up wings that are dropped by fighter jets from about 60-70 kilometers away, outside the range of Ukrainian air defenses, the elimination of the S-300 threat has provided at least some relief to Kharkiv.
Reuters
People gather after part of a high-rise apartment building collapses in the Russian city of Belgorod on May 12, 2024.
But while the new weapons are proving somewhat effective, Ukraine is still a long way from being able to expel Russian forces from its territory.
Another officer with the 148th Separate Artillery Brigade, who goes by the call sign “Senator,” told CNN that Ukraine still needs a lot.
“It’s not enough to turn the tide on the front. It’s enough to deter the enemy, but not enough to dramatically change the situation,” he said.
“The enemy is weakened, but not destroyed,” he said, pointing to the fact that Russia still has complete air superiority over Ukraine.
Kiev is now looking forward to the imminent start of deliveries of F-16 fighter jets, with the first Ukrainian pilots due to complete their training in the United States this summer.
But Muzyka said it was by no means certain that the fighter jets would make a major difference to Ukraine’s fortunes.
“The F-16 is a fighter jet from the 1980s and 1990s and its capabilities are inferior to modern Russian fighter jets,” he said, adding that the latest Russian jets would likely win in an aerial battle against an F-16.
But Ukraine could still use the F-16s to thwart Russian control of the skies and scare off Russian planes dropping bombs.
But new weapons are only part of the puzzle.
“Ukrainians would be in a much worse situation now if there hadn’t been additional aid, but at the same time, the current situation is not only the result of the lack of action by the U.S. Congress, but also the result of decisions that were and were not made in Kyiv, especially regarding mobilization,” Muzyka said.
“The decision to introduce wider mobilization was probably just as important, if not more so, but it came too late,” he said. The new mobilization law, which requires all men between the ages of 18 and 60 to register for the Ukrainian army, came into force in May.
He said Ukraine had managed to recruit a significant number of soldiers over the past month and a half, but it would take time for these recruits to be trained and ready for the front line.
“The Ukrainian military will be in a very difficult position until August and September, when the first mobilized units are sent to the front line. If they can get to that stage, there is a good chance they will be able to stabilize the situation after August, but until then, the Russian military is likely to gain even more superiority.”
Muzyka said that with the new weapons arriving and battalions and brigades soon to be reinforced with new recruits, Ukraine needed to decide on its next steps.
“It is unclear what the plans are. What is the strategy for a counterattack? The problem is that Ukraine is waiting to see what equipment the West can supply and the West is trying to determine what plans Ukraine has for the future,” he said.
Time is of the essence here: experts estimate that the $60 billion U.S. aid package approved earlier this year will last only a year or 18 months, at best.
Ukraine’s allies made new arms pledges this week, while at a NATO summit in Washington DC, President Volodymyr Zelensky called for all restrictions on arms use to be lifted.
He has little leeway, given the possibility that former US President Donald Trump will win a second term in November.
Maria Kostenko and Daria Tarasova-Markina contributed reporting.
