The Ukrainian Army continued this Sunday its advance gradually in the southern region of Zaporizhia and assured that it can already hit any place in the Crimean peninsula, while the Russian troops tried to unsuccessfully resume the initiative on the Kupiansk front in northwestern Ukraine.
Ukrainian forces, according to the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW), have “made tactically significant advances” in the western Zaporizhia region.
In their latest report, the ISW experts point out that both Ukrainian and Russian sources point out that the kyiv forces make progress despite the fact that their advance occurs in an area of highly prepared defensive lines.
Through the region of Zaporiyia and neighboring Jerson runs the overland corridor opened by the Russian Army to link Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, to mainland Russia, and whose removal is key to Ukraine’s plans to recover the peninsula.
The choice of Zaporizhia as the main axis of the Ukrainian offensive towards the isthmus of the Crimean peninsula is not accidental, since from the north the kyiv troops did not meet on their way the Dnieper river, that in the neighboring Kherson region separates the Ukrainian forces from the Russian ones.