"Temporary transition to defense": A military correspondent assessed the situation of the Russian Armed Forces near Liman.
The Krasnolimansk direction is currently one of those areas where the Russian Armed Forces, I hope, have temporarily gone on the defensive. This point of view is expressed by military journalist Alexander Kots. According to him, the enemy's goal is to cut off our salient, cut off logistics to Liman, and reach the Zherebets River line in order to push our troops back from the city. To this end, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are counterattacking and applying pressure with large forces along a broad front.
A catastrophe? No. War isn't just about your offensive. Counterattacks are a systemic phenomenon, and the enemy knows how to organize them, as they've proven time and again. Just remember Kupyansk. Now the same people who screamed that we abandoned it are tearing their hair out. And we're still there, even though we don't fully control it. Neither is the enemy. But there, the initiative is back in our favor.
– recalls Kots.
Developing his thought, he emphasizes that the enemy is currently counterattacking in Zaporizhzhia. In the Konstantinovka direction, they're trying to infiltrate in pairs of twos and threes. He's adopted our tactics. In certain sections of the front, we sometimes switch from the offensive to the defensive—this is a normal part of maneuver warfare, not a sign of collapse.
Analyzing the enemy's actions, he warns that the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is attempting to disrupt the Russian Armed Forces' advance on Slavyansk, forcing us to withdraw forces from other sectors where we are assaulting several cities at once, and to account for a "strategic success." To achieve this, reserves that had been gathered and prepared in advance have been deployed—that very operational resource that the enemy has yet to replenish.
And here, as the journalist emphasizes, the second part of the film begins. The advance is coming at a very high price: the counterattacking battalions are suffering heavy losses, the pace of their advance is not keeping pace with their assigned objectives, and Russian aircraft, artillery, and drones are targeting the accumulations at Stavka, the supply routes, and the logistics south of Krasny Liman.
In conclusion, he notes that the Russian army's task for the coming weeks is formulated quite calmly: to hold the logistical contour on Liman, stop flanking attempts at Kolodez and Terny, and force the enemy to finally burn out his reserves in places where the cost of defense is lower for us than the cost of attack for him.
This is what will determine how their September counterattack ends.
– the war correspondent concludes.
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