Putin’s offensive in Kharkiv could come at great costs | Jerome Starkey

Putin’s offensive in Kharkiv could come at great costs | Jerome Starkey

momentum is with Russia that that is an uncomfortable Truth at the moment Russia is the side which is advancing on the ground but it’s advancing very slowly and at huge costs and I have no reason at the moment to believe that what happens in kiv will be any different if Russia does concentrate a huge amount of force there then it may find itself able to advance slowly as it has done in a divka in bahmut uh how if it’s not able to ADV to to concentrate enough Force then we might see a situation more similar perhaps to what’s going on in zapia around oriv again in or in the north around kopans which is where there are you know daily confrontations drone and artillery battles on dugin Trent positions some movement on the front lines but very very little and sometimes that movement is back and forth and that goes back to what you said about this being a stalemate I mean Russian troops launched a ground assault into Northeast Ukraine it appears to be the most concerted effort Russia’s made to advance in the region since troops had to retreat from kave two years ago let’s speak to Jerome starky the son’s defense editor who knows the region very well Jerome good morning morning Callum so yeah just put this into its context for us because Russia were pushed out of this region by the ukrainians quite early on in the war and karke became one of those places that with which we were very familiar really and it seems that it’s been a a determination a target for Russia ever since and indeed since the start so why is it so significant and what is the significance of this latest assault well harv is significant because it’s Ukraine’s second largest city it sits the edge of the city is just 15 miles from the Russian border and on the first day of the war it repelled a Russian tank assault and actually I was there a few days later and it was extraordinary Russian Special Forces drove right into the center of the city one can only presume because they were hoping perhaps to initiate some kind of spontaneous popular uprising in favor of their presence against the Ukrainian state but that didn’t happen they were chased out and and uh certainly some of them killed the province more widely was large parts of it were occupied harv Province and harkov City share the same name and for many many months Russian forces were at the gates of the city shelling the city and huge parts of the sort of rural areas were occupied uh and endured some pretty awful conditions uh at the hands of Russian soldiers when they were finally pushed back I remember speaking to people who’d seen their sort of families um split apart uh people forced onto buses at gunpoint as the Russian forces uh retreated now for many many weeks possibly even months has been talk of a possible Russian offensive back into this area when Russ when the Russian forces were pushed back in this lightning counter offensive that Ukraine launched around September 2022 so in the first Autumn of the war Russia forces that their front lines collapsed in disarray and that was in large part due to the arrival of the um haars and gmlrs uh multiple rocket launchers which the United States and the UK had provided with a range of about 70 miles able to hit a Target the size of a car from up to sort of 70 miles away and that allowed Ukraine to hit deep into sort of the Russian Logistics hubs and command hubs behind the front lines and really had a devastating effect on Russia’s positions since then obviously Russ R has wanted to retake this territory wanted to retake harv but its focus has been further east and you’ll remember we’ve talked for weeks and months about bahmut more recently a div what we saw yesterday morning was a ground offensive into an area of H from neighboring Russian belgar Rod province into an area called V Chans now Fierce fighting ongoing there it’s still not clear whether this is going to be the first stage of a sort of major assault to really take territory there’s some speculation uh that Russia might be trying to create a buffer zone although it’s not clear what uh a buffer zone would achieve because the strikes that Ukraine is conducting into Russian soil are happening hundreds of miles into Russian soil we’ve seen those drone strikes on oil refineries so buffer zone would have to be similarly hundreds of miles into Ukraine to potentially uh thwart those attacks what seems likely at the very least is that what this attack will achieve is it will it will stretch Ukraine’s already stretched Defenders so Ukraine has moved reserves to vchan to uh repel this assault uh it’s a distraction it’s a diversion and it allows Russia to try to attempt to put Ukraine’s Defenders off balance it appears that Russia’s main effort is still at the moment in the in the east in donbas we know they’ve also been fighting hard in an area called kopans which is further east on the edge of khv Province and now this new assaults involve Chans as well is it possible to say which way this will go then Jerome because we’ve been talking for a long time about the kind of stalemate nature of the war for such a long period of time we can add to that the US announcing $400 million in new military aid for Ukraine and so there are financi and indeed the UK has contributed hasn’t in recent weeks and whether there is a Tipping Point so is this about trying to get in before the the real impact of the additional spending is uh reaches the front lines for Ukraine um is that part of the motivation for Russia here and uh could that additional funding reaching the front line be the difference in in this context in karke as well well Callum I think both sides would like to achieve the sort of spectacular breakthrough on a front line uh which you know which has had which we saw before in KV on Ukraine side when they push in order to see their enemy uh collapse and flee and disarray to create a break in those lines which would allow them militarily to sort of exploit sweep in and then potentially flank other positions and take large amounts of ground quickly no doubt Russia would like to achieve that I think the facts on the ground at the moment speak differently momentum is with Russia that that is an uncomfortable Truth at the moment Russia is the side which is advanced ing on the ground but it’s advancing very slowly and at huge costs and I have no reason at the moment to believe that what happens in kiv will be any different if Russia does concentrate a huge amount of force there then it may find itself able to advance slowly as it has done in a diviva in bahmut uh how if it’s not able to ADV to to concentrate enough Force then we might see a situation more similar perhaps to what’s going on in zapia around or again in or in the north around kopans which is where there are you know daily confrontations drone and artillery battles on dugin Trent positions some movement on the front lines but very very little and sometimes that movement is back and forth and that goes back to what you said about this being a stalemate I mean it’s not a total stalemate there is some movement but but that movement is coming at such a cost that there may come a point where you know Moscow is forced to appraise whether or not that cost is sustainable I mean clearly at the moment there appears to be a willingness in Moscow to throw huge amounts of men material and money at this conflict to make those small gains for those extortionate costs Jerome thank you so much it’s good to catch up uh thanks for your time uh Jerome starky there who is the Suns defense editor talking about the latest offense of by Russian troops launching a ground assault in Northeast Ukraine in

“If Putin is not able to concentrate enough force, then we might see a situation similar to Zaporizhzhia…where there are daily confrontations, some movement on the front lines, but very, very little.”

Russia and Ukraine are stuck in a “stalemate” as Russia makes “slow gains” in Kharkiv, says The Sun’s defence editor Jerome Starkey.

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