Ukraine shoots down 4 missiles and 10 drones during Russian bombing

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said today, Thursday, that his forces repelled last night large-scale attempts by Ukrainian forces to penetrate the front line in the southern Zaporizhia region, inflicting heavy losses on them.

There was no statement on the situation from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. However, CNN quoted two US officials today, Thursday, as saying that the Ukrainian forces suffered heavy losses in lives and equipment during their counterattack on Russian forces in eastern Ukraine during the past few days. The two US officials added that the Ukrainian forces encountered “more than expected” resistance from Russian forces in their first attempt to break through the Russian lines.

One US official described the losses, which he said included armored vehicles provided by the United States to Ukrainian forces, as “significant”. The two officials stated that the Ukrainian forces managed to invade some lines of the Russian forces in the east of the country in the vicinity of the city of Bakhmut, but the Russian forces showed “fierce resistance”. And “CNN” indicated that the Russian Ministry of Defense announced last Wednesday that it had thwarted the Ukrainian forces’ attack near Bakhmut.

NBC News also quoted a senior officer and a soldier near the front lines on Thursday as saying that Ukraine had begun its counterattack against Russia. Some Russian and Western officials suggested that Ukraine launched its long-awaited counterattack against Russian forces this week, which Ukraine did not publicly confirm.

Shoigu, who is close to President Vladimir Putin, said that his forces repelled four separate Ukrainian attacks along the southern front, and that the Russian side forced Kiev forces to retreat with “heavy losses.” “Our reconnaissance forces detected the enemy in time, and our artillery and air force carried out a preemptive attack using anti-tank weapons,” he added. Shoigu claimed that Ukraine lost 30 tanks, 11 armored infantry vehicles and up to 350 soldiers. He gave higher figures for the losses Ukraine supposedly incurred over the course of 24 hours yesterday.

The Zaporizhia region, 80 percent of which is controlled by Russia, is part of the so-called “land bridge”, which is an extended land linking the Ukrainian region of Donbass in the east, which is under Russian control, and the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014.

It has long been widely considered that cutting the land bridge is a primary objective for Ukraine in its counter-offensive. An official installed by Russia in the part of Zaporizhia it controls, Vladimir Rogov, said that the Ukrainian forces tried to penetrate the Russian lines using drones, armored vehicles and multiple rocket launchers.

An intelligence assessment by the British Ministry of Defense on developments in Ukraine said on Thursday that, in light of a very complex operational picture, heavy fighting continues along multiple sectors of the front, and that Ukraine has the initiative in most areas. The assessment, which was posted by the British Ministry of Defense on its Twitter account, added that it was likely that Russian forces were continuing to receive orders to return to the offensive as soon as possible. Chechen units led an unsuccessful attempt to take the town of Marivka, located near the city of Donetsk, where the front line has not changed much since 2015.

On the other hand, the former Secretary General of NATO, Anders Rasmussen, said that there may be a group of NATO countries ready to deploy troops on the ground in Ukraine if member states, including the United States, do not provide tangible security guarantees to Kiev in The upcoming NATO summit in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.

Rasmussen, who worked as an official adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is touring Europe and Washington to gauge the changing mood ahead of the start of the crucial summit on July 11, according to the British newspaper, The Guardian. He also warned that even if a group of countries provided security guarantees to Ukraine, other countries would not allow the issue of Ukraine’s future membership in NATO to be left out of the Vilnius agenda.

Rasmussen made his remarks at a time when the current Secretary-General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, said that the issue of security guarantees would be on the Vilnius agenda, but added that the alliance, under Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, provides full security guarantees only to full members.

“We are looking at a range of options to signal that Ukraine is progressing in its relationship with NATO,” said US Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith. “If NATO cannot agree on a clear path forward for Ukraine, there is a distinct possibility that some countries will take unilateral action,” Rasmussen said. And we know that Poland is very much involved in providing concrete assistance to Ukraine. And I will not rule out the possibility that Poland will participate more strongly in this context on a national basis and that the Baltic states will follow suit, perhaps including the possibility of the presence of troops on the ground.

In a related context, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Wednesday that talks on resolving the conflict with Russia cannot begin only with a cessation of hostilities. “If anyone thinks they should freeze the conflict and then look for a way to solve it, he doesn’t understand,” he said in a press statement on the Internet, addressing African journalists after a tour of countries on the continent. He said that more than 100 rounds of consultations and attempts to reach a ceasefire since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 had only resulted in an all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. A delegation of African heads of state is expected to visit Ukraine and Russia in the few days. In the hope of persuading them to stop the fighting, a spokesman for South African President Sercil Ramaphosa told Reuters last month.

The freeze proposal would mean Russian forces would remain on Ukrainian soil even as peace talks begin. Ukraine said earlier that Russian forces must withdraw first before negotiations begin, while Moscow wants Kiev to recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea as a precondition for negotiations.

The initiative is being led by Senegalese President Macky Sall, who chaired the African Union last year, and whose country was not present at the last United Nations vote condemning Russia in February.

The initiative also includes Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and the presidents of Zambia, the Republic of the Congo and Uganda, and the President of the Comoros Islands, the current chair of the African Union, was added to the delegation recently.

Kuleba is campaigning to mobilize support in Africa, where 30 of the 54 member states of the United Nations voted in favor of a UN resolution condemning the Russian invasion.