Ukraine Slowing Counterattacks Ahead of Main Blow: ISW

Ukrainian troops may be taking a temporary pause in their counteroffensive after almost two weeks of intense fighting at multiple points along the 800-mile front with Russia, according to the latest update from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

The ISW and Western officials deemed Ukraine's long-awaited counteroffensive to have begun in early June, after several weeks of shaping operations and months in which Kyiv accumulated new Western weaponry and trained fresh combat units. Offensive operations began at multiple points along the front, in what appeared to be attacking probes to find Russian weak points.

Kyiv has reported significant success so far, though early signs indicate high casualties too. Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar has reported advances around the devastated Donetsk city of Bakhmut, and the liberation of eight settlements and 43 square miles of territory on the southern Zaporizhzhia front.

Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry by email to request comment.

There is no sign yet of the kind of massed armored columns that experts expect to form the main force of Kyiv's main push.

The ISW's Sunday bulletin suggested that Ukrainian commanders may now be "temporarily pausing counteroffensive operations to reevaluate their tactics for future operations."

The head of Estonia's Defense Forces Intelligence Center, Colonel Margo Grosberg, said this week: "We won't see an offensive over the next seven days." The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, reported that Kyiv's units "have mostly paused their advances in recent days."

The ISW said such reports "are consistent with ISW's recent observations of the scale and approach of localized Ukrainian counterattacks in southern and eastern Ukraine.

"ISW has previously noted that Ukraine has not yet committed the majority of its available forces to counteroffensive operations and has not yet launched its main effort. Operational pauses are a common feature of major offensive undertakings, and this pause does not signify the end of Ukraine's counteroffensive."

Offensive operations though, are ongoing, and the ISW said Ukrainian forces made limited gains in at least four sectors on Sunday.

In his nightly address on Sunday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said the country had come to the end of "a very important week," adding: "Our troops are advancing, position by position, step by step, we are moving forward."

"The main thing is the speed of supply," Zelensky added, referring to Western weapon deliveries agreed at last week's Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting at Ramstein airbase in Germany.

"Next week, we will have new important communications with our partners, for the sake of our movement, for the sake of weapons, for the sake of our warriors having everything they need."

Russian political and military officials have repeatedly claimed to have defeated Ukrainian offensive efforts, inflicting severe casualties on Kyiv's units. President Vladimir Putin has framed Ukraine's casualties as "catastrophic."

Pavel Luzin, a Russian political analyst and visiting scholar at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, told Newsweek that Moscow is likely unsettled by the nascent counteroffensive.

"We don't know if the Kremlin has true information towards the current combat situation," Luzin said. "But all the evidence suggests that the Kremlin is nervous about what's going on, and is trying to convince itself and Russians that everything is going fine, trying to calm people."

"I think they realize that they are at the beginning of the summer campaign and that they are doomed to react to Ukraine's actions. So, they waiting for Ukraine's strikes."

Update 6/21/23, 6:55 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to include comment from Pavel Luzin.