Ukrainian forces inflicted a heavy defeat on Putin’s army in fierce battles in the Sumy region. Russia’s army launched a cross border offensive from Kursk into Ukraine’s northern region in May.
The Kremlin’s generals claimed they were trying to create a “buffer zone”, and hoped to pull Ukrainian forces from the eastern and southern fronts. Latest estimates by both Ukrainian and Western intelligence suggest that some 50,000 Russian troops are gathered just across the border in the Kursk region, ready to support the ongoing assaults. However, Zelensky’s army pulled off a major victory over the weekend, recapturing a key village and wiping out at least three Russian battalions.
Soldiers from Russia’s 30th, 40th and 155th Separate Motorised Rifle Battalion were cut off while trying to defend the settlement of Kindrativka.
Putin’s army was unable to deploy reserves to help the stranded units due to a serious shortage of troops. The encircled battalions were then systematically bombed by artillery and FPV kamikaze drones from Ukraine’s 225th Separate Assault Battalion.
During the intense aerial onslaught, the commander of the 30th battalion was killed, according to the independent Ukrainian intelligence service DeepState. The Ukrainian unit went on to liberate Kindrativka, the second village it has driven the Russian army from in recent days.
The fighting in Sumy region remains intense with Ukrainian troops continuing to erode Russian positions and holding ground despite relentless pressure from across the border.
Ukrainian soldiers are cutting through the Russian flanks along the main axis of the Russian assault, according to the military analyst Bohdan Myroshnykov.
Ruslan Mykula – the founder of Deepstate – believes the main target for Putin’s army in region is the strategically important village of Yunakivka.
He said that this would clear the way into a large adjacent forest area, from where Russian drone operators could rain terror down from the skies on civilians in towns and cities in the region.
“We could experience a situation such as in Kherson, Nikopol or Kostyantynivka, where the Russians have used such drones to hit buses and civilian trucks,” he told the website Deutsche Welle. “That is why we must not allow the enemy to reach Yunakivka,”