Ukraine’s troops have gotten close enough to Russian forces in Kherson and Kharkiv that it’s reduced the use of HIMARS, the Pentagon says.
Ukraine is continuing to make “small gains” in its counteroffensives in both the east and the south, with the biggest advances in the Kherson Oblast, a senior U.S. military official told reporters Friday. The advances are allowing Ukrainian forces to spare their expenditures of Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, or
GMLRS rounds fired by
High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) and
M270 launchers. But there’s been a “pretty high impact” in terms of troop losses for both sides.
The Russians, meanwhile, have fired "hundreds" of missiles at Ukraine
in retaliation for the Kerch Bridge attack last week, said the official, speaking to reporters, including from
The War Zone, on condition of anonymity.
"The use of precision-guided munitions in a very imprecise way, has continued over the course of the week," the official said. "In most cases, they have been used at civilian targets either indiscriminately or in a deliberate way as it relates to infrastructure targets like electricity or bridges or otherwise."
On the battlefield, "there is probably more movement in Kherson than anywhere else on the battlespace,” said the official.
Ukrainian forces “continue to advance…just north of the city of Mylove and then extending essentially to the north and west, with a number of small towns and villages that the Ukrainians have been able to clear of the Russians.”
The Russians “have moved back from their reestablished frontlines after the beginning of this [Ukrainian counteroffensive] six weeks ago, and are establishing defenses further south.”
The Ukrainians are also making “incremental gains in that central access,” the official said. “Not a lot of advancement - we're talking kilometers as they move.”
That’s resulted in “two coinciding axis that are starting to force the Russians to make some decisions in terms of how they want to choose to defend.”
There has not been “a huge number of movements outside of Kherson City in terms of the Ukrainians, but certainly not any Russian gains in that portion of the battlespace,” the official said.
Ukraine had been making tremendous gains since launching its Kharkiv counteroffensive in the east.
But things have slowed down for Ukraine, which has made “limited” gains there over the last week, the official said. The Russians, however, “continue to strengthen their defenses” there. There are some “very minor incremental gains, really all the way from the northern portion of the Kharkiv area of operations down towards Lyman,” the official said. “But really limited in terms of movement this week.”
In Donetsk, “it is similar but the other way. We've seen the Russians continue to work to attack the Ukrainians around Bakhmut. Those gains have also been very small for the Russians. And at times, we've seen the Ukrainians counterattack with effectiveness to retake land that the Russians had previously taken.”
“All of those attacks on both sides are coming with pretty high impact in terms of the employment of artillery and the losses to the sides who are making those advances.”
There were no real changes to the Russian advances in the Zaporizhzhia region, the official said.
“Like you all, we continue to watch this operation with added care, just
given the nuclear power plant. We have seen artillery that's landed in and around the Zaporizhzhia area, but nothing that's caused us a great concern this week” with regards to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Europe's largest.
Though Ukraine has only made incremental advances this week, their counteroffensives have gained enough ground that they don’t have to use GMLRS, which has a greater range and is far more accurate than standard howitzer rounds.
While the Pentagon has closely guarded the number of GMLRS it has provided Ukraine, they have received orders of magnitude more howitzer rounds, according to Pentagon records. You can read our previous report on concerns over the supply of GMLRS rockets
here.
Ukraine’s counteroffensives “have placed a good portion of that battle space under artillery range of standard artillery, not GMLRS, and so you've seen them employ fewer GMLRS recently because they just don't need to,” the official said. “They can range the Russian targets they want to hit with standard artillery."
In the maritime area of operations, the Russians have about a half dozen ships in the Black Sea, including about three that are capable of firing
Kalibr cruise missiles, the official said.
Those ships fired four Kalibrs on Thursday, all of which the Pentagon believes were intercepted by Ukrainian air defense systems, according to the official.
Since Russia began its missile and drone barrage on Ukraine in the wake of last week’s attack on the Kerch Bridge, Ukraine's air defenses were able to shoot down about half of the 80 incoming missiles in the first 24 hours the senior Pentagon official said.
What’s unknown, the official said, is how many air defense missiles Ukraine had to expend to do that.
Pentagon leaders spent a good part of this week in Brussels with NATO allies working on plans to improve Ukraine’s air defenses, which you can read more about
here.
Given how many high-precision missiles Russia has fired this week alone, questions have arisen about how many they have left.
Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, told Ukrainian media that Russia has less than 30% of its stock of high-precision missiles left since launching its full-on invasion Feb. 24.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said Russia has a little more than 600 high-precision munitions left in its arsenal.
The U.S. official could not confirm those figures but said “the numbers of precision missiles that the Russians have fired since the beginning of the fight are pretty extensive.”
The fact that
Russia has turned to Iran for drones “speaks to their concerns associated with precision munitions. So every one of them fired is probably a very careful consideration for the Russians.”
Economic sanctions placed on Russia since its all-out invasion have likely reduced its ability to regenerate its precision-guided missile stocks, the official added.
“We have to believe that the sanctions are having an impact on their defense industrial base and the ability to regenerate in particular those precision munitions.”
As for the precision of Russia’s missile strikes, “I would love to think that missiles that are going into the side of apartment buildings are not meant to hit apartment buildings,” the official said. “I don't know that you can make that assertion because we've seen pretty indiscriminate attacks [by] the Russians."
www.wionews.com
t.me
liveuamap.com
www.politico.eu
