Ukraine is “pushing Russia back” and is “making progress” across the frontline, Britain’s most senior military officer, has said.
Sir Tony Radakin, speaking at the DSEI arms fair in London on Thursday (September 14), rejected growing suggestions that Ukraine’s counteroffensive was failing.
His comments came as Ukraine’s deputy defence minister Hanna Mailar reclaimed this morning that Kyiv’s forces had liberated the small settlement of Andriivka, six miles south of Bakhmut, the battered city that has gathered huge symbolic value in both Ukraine and Russia after the Wagner Group won a brutal 10-month battle for its occupation in May.
The fight for Bakhmut is not the main axis of Ukraine’s attack, rather it is more of a fixing operation, drawing away Russian troops from the aggressive Ukrainian advances further south. But the liberation of villages around it and the liquidation of Russian forces consequently is an undeliable success, one better than simply fixing Vladimir Putin’s men, one source told Express.co.uk.
Ukraine’s General Staff announced this morning that their forces had “consolidated new positions” in Adriivka, southwest of Bakhmut, adding that the liberating soldiers had “inflicted significant losses in manpower”.
Express.co.uk is yet to see any visual confirmation of the claims made earlier this morning. Russian military bloggers remain adamant the area is still contested.
Sir Tony, who is closely involved with advising Ukraine’s most senior commander Valerii Zaluzhnyi, reiterated comments among the wider Western military community that war is not “neat and tidy” and that success in Ukraine’s counteroffensive should not be held to a timeline.
Effective fixing operations, he suggested, are evidence of success outside the timeline of a simple advance forwards. Ukraine, he said, still “holds the initiative”.
The senior British officer said Ukraine’s forces were “making progress between 10 and 20km” in the south, particularly in the advances towards Melitopol and Berdyansk on the Sea of Azov.
He added that “in the north they are holding and fixing Russian forces there”, a reference both to the Bakhmut battle and further east in the defence of Kupyansk and along the Svatove-Kreminna line. He suggested that the successes north and south are interlinked.
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