The White House says it has seen reports that Ukraine has launched a counter-offensive against Russian forces in southern Ukraine, but would not comment further on specific Ukrainian military operations, said John Kirby, the National Security Council communications coordinator.
However, Kirby noted that regardless of the size, scale and scope of the latest counter-offensive, the Ukrainians “have already had an impact on Russia’s military capabilities.”
“Because the Russians have had to get resources from the east simply because of reports that the Ukrainians in the south may be more aggressive,” Kirby said. “And so they had to deplete certain units … in certain areas to the east in the Donbass, to respond to what they clearly believed was an imminent threat of a counter-offensive.”
Kirby also said Russia “still has manpower problems” in Ukraine, and is trying to expand the recruitment of fighters in Russia and “tempt” some of their conscripts and contract soldiers to serve outside their time frame.
That’s “because they’re dealing with manpower challenges — manpower challenges that aren’t made any easier by the way they’ve had to respond to reports of a potential counter-offensive by the Ukrainians,” Kirby said.
Kirby also said that “the idea of going on the offensive is not new to Ukrainians.”
“Now I recognize that we’re talking about the potential for a major counter-offensive, which is different from going on the attack in a more localized way,” Kirby said. But he said Ukrainian troops have been fighting the Russians within Ukraine for some time, including in the early months of the war over the capital Kiev.
“So it’s not a new development for them to do this,” Kirby said.
What Russia says: Moscow on Monday acknowledged Kiev’s counter-offensive in southern Ukraine, but said Ukrainian forces “have suffered heavy losses” and “failed miserably” in their “attempted” offensive.
Ukrainian troops on Monday “attempted an offensive in the Mykolaiv and Kherson regions from three directions,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement, adding: “As a result of the active defense of the group of Russian troops, units of the Ukraine’s armed forces suffered heavy casualties.”
The ministry said that during the fighting, 26 Ukrainian tanks, 23 infantry fighting vehicles, nine other armored fighting vehicles were destroyed and two Su-25 attack aircraft were shot down.
“A new attempt at offensive action by the enemy failed miserably,” it concluded.