Ukraine warned of a 30-day window for progress in counter-offensive

Rain pours outside a workshop where battalion soldiers repair cars in Liman, Ukraine Photo: Jose Colon/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

U Ukraine may have just 30 days of fighting left to counter-offensive, the head of the US military has warned, before bad weather halts its advance.

General Mark Milley told the BBC there was «a fair amount of time, probably about 30 to 45 days of bad weather» before conditions stopped Kiev's advance.

But looking ahead, he warned: «There will be rain, there will be very muddy and it will be very difficult to maneuver, and then deep winter will come.”

General Milley's statement came just a few hours after Lieutenant General Kirill's speech. Budanov, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, insisted that Ukraine would continue the counteroffensive, although bad weather would soon turn the plowed fields into mud and then cover them with snow.

“The fighting will continue one way or another. It is more difficult to fight in the cold, damp and mud, but the fighting will continue,” he said at a conference in a Kiev hotel.

The apparent divergence in positions between the allies comes as some NATO members continue to criticize Ukraine for the slower than expected pace of its counter-offensive.

General Milley, for his part, said it was too early to judge whether the counteroffensive would be a success or a failure after weeks of gradual growth.

“The battles are not over… they have not completed the combat part of what are trying to achieve,” he said, adding that Ukraine “is moving along the Russian front line at a very steady pace.”

Ukraine had hoped to retake the occupied city of Melitopol in the southern Zaporozhye region when it launched a NATO-backed counteroffensive in May, but its soldiers captured only a few villages 10 miles from where they began offensive Melitopol is still 50 miles away, behind the multi-layered and heavily fortified Russian defense lines.

Russian military bloggers reported several battles in the region on Sunday, including near the village of Novoprokopovka, about a mile south of Robotin, which Ukrainian troops recaptured last month.

“Recently there have been (Ukrainian ) success. chapter. In response to the Ukrainian positions, the long-range weapons of the Russian Armed Forces fired powerfully,” said WarGonzo.

The American Institute for the Study of War confirmed reports of fighting in the Robotain area and said that elite Russian paratroopers were used for the counterattack, including two regiments of the 76th Guards Air Assault Division, which were sent to Tokmak, located a few miles away in the south. .

However, further west along the southern front line, Ukrainian troops said they had made more progress and reached the village of Tavria.

“We are moving forward! Defense forces in the Tavria region have advanced more than 1 km,” said Brigadier General Alexander Tarnavsky, a Ukrainian military commander.

Separately on Sunday, the UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) said it believed a drone attack was taking place. last month, an air base near Pskov, hundreds of miles from Ukraine, was launched from inside Russia.

“Due to the limited range of quadcopters [drones], attacks on the base were almost certainly launched. from within the Russian Federation,” the report says.

The Defense Ministry’s assessment increases the likelihood that people inside Russia will actively fight against the Kremlin. In the past few months, Ukrainian drones have also regularly carried out strikes on Moscow, other Russian cities and energy infrastructure.