KIEV, Ukraine – Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed on Friday that Ukrainian troops launched a long-awaited counter-offensive and suffered “significant” casualties. His comments came just hours after a series of drone strikes on Russian territory.
It was Putin’s latest attempt to shape the heartbreaking narrative of the invasion he ordered more than 15 months ago, sparking widespread international condemnation and rekindling Cold War-style tensions.
The conflict entered a complex new phase this week when a dam on the Dnieper River ruptured and flooding inundated much of the frontline in southern Ukraine. Tens of thousands of civilians, already suffering the misery of regular shelling, fled to higher ground on either side of the swollen and sprawling waterway.
Kiev has downplayed talk of a counter-offensive, arguing that the less said about its military moves the better. After visiting flood plains on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was in contact with Ukrainian forces “in all the hottest areas” and praised an unspecified “result” of their efforts.
Putin said Russian forces had the upper hand.
“We can unequivocally say that the offensive has begun, as evidenced by the deployment of strategic reserves by the Ukrainian army,” Putin told reporters in Sochi, where he met with heads of other states of the Eurasian Economic Union. “But the Ukrainian troops have not fulfilled their declared tasks in any combat zone.”
Kiev has not indicated whether reservists have been mobilized to the front lines, but its western allies have sent firepower, defense systems and other military assets and advice to Ukraine, upping the ante for the expected counteroffensive.
“We see that the troops of the Ukrainian regime are suffering significant casualties,” Putin said without giving details. “It’s well known that the offensive team suffers losses of 3 to 1 – it’s a kind of classic – but in this case the losses clearly exceed the classic level.”
On Friday, Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Russia is on the defensive in the southeastern province of Zaporizhia, although the epicenter of the fighting remains in the east, particularly in the Donetsk region. She described “heavy battles” at Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Marinka.
Valerii Shershen, a spokesman for Ukraine’s forces in Zaporizhia, told Radio Liberty that they were looking for weaknesses in Russia’s defenses, which Moscow was trying to strengthen by using mines, building fortifications and regrouping.
Earlier, regional authorities in south-west Russia near the Ukrainian border reported on the recent spate of drone strikes. The attacks exposed weaknesses in Moscow’s air defense systems.
Voronezh regional governor Alexander Gusev said in the Telegram app that a drone crashed into a high-rise building in the city of the same name, injuring three residents who were hit by broken glass. Russian state media published photos of blown windows and damage to the facade.
Gusev said the drone was targeting a nearby airbase but went off course after its signal was jammed. The city is about 250 kilometers north of Ukraine’s Luhansk region, which is largely occupied by Russia.
Separately, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov of the neighboring Belgorod region, which also borders Ukraine, said air defenses shot down two unspecified targets overnight. A residential building and private houses were damaged, he said, without saying how. He also said a drone fell on the roof of an office building in the city of Belgorod. It did not explode, but caught fire on impact and caused “insignificant damage,” he wrote.
The leader of a third region of Russia, Kursk Governor Roman Starovoit, said a drone crashed to the ground in front of an oil depot and near water reservoirs in the local capital, causing no casualties or damage.
The Ukrainian authorities have basically denied any involvement in attacks inside Russia. Such drone strikes – there was even one near the Kremlin – as well as cross-border attacks in south-west Russia, have brought war to the Russians’ minds.
In Ukraine, Kherson region governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on Friday that the water level on the west bank of the Dnieper, which had been flooded since Tuesday after the Nova Kakhovka dam ruptured, fell by about 20 centimeters (8 inches) overnight be upstream.
Officials from both sides said about 20 people died in the flooding. United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Ukraine Denise Brown visited the flood-hit town of Bilozerka on Friday, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
“MS. Although initial estimates suggest that 17,000 people have been affected in the Ukrainian-controlled areas alone,” Brown said, “it is important to understand that the crisis has not stopped and continues to evolve rapidly,” Dujarric said .
Kiev accused Russia of blowing up the dam and its hydroelectric power station, which was controlled by Russian forces, while Moscow said Ukraine bombed it.
Norway’s earthquake center NORSAR said Friday that a seismological station in neighboring Romania registered tremors near the dam at 2:54 a.m. Tuesday, around the time Zelenskyy said the rupture occurred.
“Our data shows that there was an explosion in the area of the dam at the same time the dam ruptured,” NORSAR research director Volker Oye told The Associated Press.
The Norwegian center is part of a global monitoring system that helps verify compliance with the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.
Experts assumed that the consequences of the dam rupture would last for months. Continued fighting in the region would inevitably slow recovery efforts.
Viktor Vitovetskyi, a representative of Ukraine’s emergency services, said 46 communities in the Kherson region were flooded, 14 of them along the Russian-held east bank of the river.
Although efforts were underway to rescue civilians and provide them with fresh water and other services, he said two civilians were killed and 17 injured in the last day’s Russian shelling in the area.
Further developments on Friday:
1. Air raid sirens and alarm systems went off overnight across Ukraine, warning of further long-range Russian drone and missile attacks. Falling debris from a launched Russian missile killed one civilian and injured three others in the western town of Zviahel, the regional governor said.
2. Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, said Ukrainian shelling injured three civilians in the border town of Shebekino.
3. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said that “various indicators” suggested Ukraine’s counteroffensive had begun. It was said that the new phase of the war “could also bring the highest Ukrainian losses”.
4. Andriy Yermak, head of Zelenskyi’s office, said two hospital workers, a nurse and a plumber were killed and two others wounded in Russian shelling of a hospital in Hulyaipole, Zaporizhia region.
___
Kozlowska reported from London. Jon Gambrell in Kyiv; Hanna Arhirova in Warsaw, Poland; Edit M. Lederer at the United Nations; and David Keyton in Stockholm, Sweden, contributed to this report.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine