WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine reports Russian attacks in east, progress in south

Ukrainian forces are resisting a Russian onslaught in eastern areas of the front and face difficulties in the northeast, but are making progress near the shattered city of Bakhmut and in the south, the deputy defence minister said on Sunday.

Russian accounts of the front line said Moscow's forces had repelled Ukrainian attacks near villages ringing Bakhmut and in areas further south, particularly the strategic hilltop town of Vuhlear. They also reported success in containing Ukrainian troops in the northeast.

Reuters could not confirm any of the battlefield accounts.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, meanwhile, presented awards to troops in the port of Odesa and vowed: "The enemy will in no way dictate its terms in the Black Sea!"

Ukraine's military have been engaged in a counter-offensive to recapture areas of the east and south seized in Russia's 16-month-old invasion. The initial Ukrainian advances have focused on securing clusters of villages in the south.

Deputy Ukrainian Defence Minister Hanna Maliar, writing on Telegram, said "everywhere things are hot" in the east, with Russian forces advancing near the beleaguered cities of Avdiivka and Maryinka in Donetsk region.

"In addition, the enemy has started an attack in the Svatove area," she said, referring to a region of northeastern Ukraine where Russian forces have been active. "Fierce fighting is taking place...The situation is quite complicated."

Maliar reported "partial success" south of Bakhmut, taken in late May by Russian forces after months of fierce fighting.

And on the southern front, where Ukrainian forces have recaptured several villages, Maliar said there had been "gradual advances" in two areas.

"Our troops are facing intense enemy resistance, remote mining and the redeployment of enemy reserves, but are tirelessly creating the conditions for the fastest possible advance," she wrote.

General Oleksander Tarnavskiy, responsible for the southern front, said Ukrainian forces were "systematically destroying the enemy" and reported the deaths of several hundred Russian forces over then last 24 hours.

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Zelenskiy and Ukraine's commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhniy, have reported steady, if slow, advances in the campaign. The president acknowledges progress is limited, but says the drive is "not a Hollywood movie" with instant success.

Ukraine has also had to endure persistent Russian air attacks on Ukrainian cities, though the Kremlin denies attacking civilian targets.

Russia launched an overnight drone attack on Kyiv and the surrounding region on Sunday after a 12-day break, with air defence systems destroying all the weapons on their approach.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

CIA sees Ukraine crisis as unique ‘opportunity’

America’s top intelligence official has openly cheered the alleged internal discord that he claims is rising in Moscow because of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, saying the CIA has been given an historic opportunity to recruit spies and undermine President Vladimir Putin’s government.

CIA director William Burns claimed on Saturday at a Ditchley Foundation lecture in the UK that “disaffection with the war will continue to gnaw away at the Russian leadership beneath the steady diet of state propaganda and practiced repression.”

“That disaffection creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity for us at CIA, at our core a human intelligence service. We’re not letting it go to waste,” he added.

Burns noted that the CIA launched a Telegram channel in May to recruit military officers, government officials and scientists who can provide intelligence on the Russian leadership and economy. “We had 2.5 million views in the first week, and we're very much open for business,” he said.

Moscow insisted at the time that the spy agency was simply “wasting American taxpayers’ dollars” as attempts to divide Russian society from abroad won’t work, according to Ambassador Anatoly Antonov.

Washington is betting that the Ukraine crisis will stir enough division to help turn potential Russian intelligence sources against President Putin. Burns made his speech one week after private military contractor Evgeny Prigozhin ended his brief rebellion against Russia’s top generals. The aborted mutiny was far less “bloody” than US officials had expected, according to CNN.

Burns has insisted that Washington played no part in the uprising, but argued that Prigozhin’s short-lived revolt was “a vivid reminder of the corrosive effect of Putin's war on his own society and his own regime.”

Putin said last week that the Russian people reacted to the crisis by showing unity, spoiling the hopes of foreign enemies that the nation would be “split asunder and drown in a bloody feud.”

Putin’s approval rating among Russians was little changed at 81% after the aborted insurrection, even according to the independent pollster Levada Center, which had been listed as a foreign agent in Russia since 2016.

** Ukrainian commander complains about French tanks – AFP

A Ukrainian military commander has reportedly raised concerns that light combat tanks supplied to the former Soviet republic by France aren’t suitable for attacks against Russian defensive lines because their thin armor can easily be pierced by artillery shells and other weapons.

Touted earlier this year by Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov as a “sniper rifle on fast wheels,” the French AMX-10 RC armored fighting vehicle has proven “impractical” during Kiev’s current counteroffensive against Russian forces, Agence-France Presse (AFP) reported on Sunday. One four-man crew has died because of the tank’s thin armor, which can easily be pierced by Russian weaponry, a Ukrainian battalion commander told the media outlet.

“Unfortunately, there was one case when the crew died in the vehicle,”said the 34-year-old Ukrainian major, whom AFP identified only by his call sign, Spartanets. “There was artillery shelling, and a shell exploded near the vehicle. The fragments pierced the armor, and the ammunition set detonated.”

Reznikov was filmed in April riding in an AMX-10 RC, which was among the Western weaponry rushed to Kiev this spring for a long-awaited counteroffensive that finally began in June. “These fast, modern machines with powerful guns will aid us in liberating our territory,” Reznikov said in a Twitter post thanking French President Emmanuel Macron and Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu. “This is what liberty, equality and brotherhood look like.”

However, Spartanets said the French tanks have proven to be ineffective in front-line assaults. “The guns are good, the observation devices are good, but unfortunately, there is thin armor, and it is impractical to use them in the front line,” he said.

Just sending out the vehicles so they get destroyed, I consider it is impractical and unnecessary because it’s primarily a risk for the crew.”

The Ukrainian commander added that the AMX-10 RCs also has been plagued by breakdowns in their gear boxes, possibly because of their use on dirt roads. Kiev’s troops received one month of training in France, which wasn’t adequate to master operating the vehicle, he said.

The 20-ton AMX-10 RC travels on wheels, rather than tracks. It was developed in the 1970s for armed reconnaissance and attacks on tanks. The French military is in the process of replacing its fleet of AMX-10 RCs with the more modern EBRC Jaguar.

Thousands of Ukrainian troops have been killed in the counteroffensive, which has failed to breach Russia’s defensive lines. Dozens of Western-supplied armored vehicles have been destroyed, including German-made Leopard tanks and AMX-10 RCs, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. The New York Times reported last week that 17 of the 113 Bradley fighting vehicles supplied to Kiev by the US have been damaged or destroyed.

Reuters/RT