Forces continue to advance

Ukrainian military says forces continue to advance on southeastern front

Olga Voitovych and Lauren Kent

Ukrainian forces on the southeastern front continue to advance and take back territory, according to Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, the commander of the Tavria Joint Forces Operation.

"We are moving forward, knocking out the enemy, returning our land," he said in a Thursday update, adding that Ukrainian forces have destroyed 47 units of Russian military equipment within the last day.

A spokesperson of the Tavria forces said in a Thursday briefing that despite heavy mining in the south of the Zaporizhzhia region, "we have thorough plans to continue our offensive, and our strike units continue to entrench themselves on the achieved frontiers."

"We have effective aerial reconnaissance of the area. We inflict artillery fire on the identified enemy targets. We are carrying out counter-battery measures," said spokesperson Valerii Shershen. 

"The Tavria defense forces are conducting offensive operations in the Melitopol and Berdiansk directions and defensive actions in the Avdiivka direction," Shershen said. "The trend is that we are creating systemic pressure through our offensive actions. There is significant progress in these two vectors."

Shershen also said the Russian military occasionally redeploys its units to reinforce different areas because it "does not know and does not guess where a major breakthrough in our offensive actions may take place."

"In this way, it tries to calculate our actions, and this creates a certain chaos, which we take advantage of," Shershen added.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said in a statement on Telegram that the armed forces have destroyed six ammunition depots in the Tavria sector. 

"This is our response to the enemy's frontal assaults. We are launching effective, painful surgical strikes, exhausting the occupiers, for whom the lack of ammunition and fuel will sooner or later become fatal," Maliar said. "In modern warfare, logistical targets are key."

Regarding strikes on the Makiivka district of Russian-occupied Donetsk region earlier this week, Maliar added, "This is a vivid example of the effective work of Ukrainian artillery, which delivered the fire damage, and aerial reconnaissance, which corrected the strike."

She said a large warehouse that stored artillery shells and missiles for BM-21 Grad MLRS was destroyed.