KYIV (Reuters) – Ukraine military leader Oleksandr Syrskyi said in a published interview on Wednesday that Russia had launched a new offensive in the northeast of the country, adding that a sharp increase in attacks was already observed.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had warned earlier that Russia was preparing an offensive in the two regions of Kharkiv and Sumy.
“I can say that the president is absolutely right and that this offensive has already started,” said Syrskyi in an interview with the Ukrainian publication LB.
“For several days, almost a week, we have observed almost a doubling of the number of enemy attacks in all the main directions (on the front line),” he said.
Moscow is about to fully push the Ukrainian forces out of their foot in the Kursk region, which they have been held since last August and which is above the border of the Sumy region.
Zelenskiy said on Monday that Ukrainian forces were also present in the adjacent Russian region of Belgorod.
The war, the first year of which was marked by rapid Russian territorial gains followed by Ukrainian counterattacks, has since become much more a dead end on the battlefield, with Moscow crushing relatively small gains by attacking with a wave of infantry waves.
(Report by Max Hunder; edition by Aidan Lewis)
