A senior Pentagon official said on Friday that Ukrainian forces had launched a counter-attack on the southern city of Gershon, the only major urban center to be completely captured by Moscow forces.
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“The Ukrainians are trying to capture Gerson,” an unnamed official told reporters. “We can not say exactly who’s under Gerson’s control, but the truth is, it’s not as firmly under Russian control as it used to be.”
Taken by Russian forces on March 3, the strategic city is located at the mouth of the Dnieper, where protests were violently suppressed, he said, “again a disputed territory.”
He said that if the Ukrainians were able to regain control of the city, the Russian situation around Mikhail would “sandwich” themselves between the Ukrainian forces guarding Mikhail and those in Gershon.
He noted that the Russians “will have a hard time advancing on the field towards Odessa.” “This will be a significant development” on the Southern Front.
According to the Pentagon, Russian forces are resisting Ukrainian opposition in Pucha and Irfin, a northwestern suburb of Kiev.
We noticed heavy fighting in this area, he said. “Ukrainians are trying to drive the Russians out of Pucha and Irfin.”
Although the Russian military’s advance on the ground appears to have stalled, its air force is increasing its bombardment, especially around the separatist areas of the Kiev region, Chernivtsi (north) and Donbass, according to a Pentagon official.
He noted that the bombings were increasingly destructive as the Russian military’s precision missile stockpile dwindled, but that Russian forces still had 50% of the missile stockpile.
A senior U.S. official said Russia was also mobilizing to send Russian troops to Ukraine from Georgia’s separatist territories.
“We have early indications that they are trying to send reinforcements from Georgia,” he said.
“We have observed the movements of many players from Georgia and we do not have the exact number,” he said, adding that they could not provide details on the date they could come to the theater. Ukrainian.
Following the Flashpoint conflict with Georgia in 2008, Russia unilaterally recognized the independence of two pro-Russian separatist territories, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and established military bases there.
