Sao Paulo
After weeks of speculation and drills, one of Ukraine’s top security officials told the BBC that the country’s counteroffensive into areas currently held by Russian forces was imminent.
In an interview published this Saturday (27), Oleksi Danilov avoided setting a date for the start of the operation, but indicated that it could start “tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week”.
Also on Saturday, Ukraine’s top military commander signaled that the country’s armed forces were ready to attack. “It’s time to take back what is ours,” General Valerii Zalujnii said in a statement. However, like Danilov, he did not give a date or place for the start of the operation.
According to the New York Times, there was no evidence of largescale troop movements along the warfront after the declaration.
In April, NATO, the USled military alliance, said it had already sent 230 tanks to Ukraine’s promised counteroffensive. Another 1,550 tanks are also in Kiev’s hands. At the same time, Ukrainian soldiers undertook several weeks of training with Western armed forces.
This preparation has inspired optimism in the West, which is banking on this moment as the beginning of defeat for Vladimir Putin’s forces in Ukraine. Nevertheless, Danilov knows that his soldiers have to live up to expectations: “We understand that we have no right to make mistakes,” he told the British broadcaster.
“We must understand that God has given us this historic opportunity so that we can truly become a great independent European country,” he added.
In the interview he also confirmed that some soldiers of the Wagner mercenary group are withdrawing from the town of Bakhmut, the scene of the fiercest fighting at that point in the war. “It doesn’t mean they will stop fighting us,” he said.
According to the group’s leader, Ievgueni Prigojin, the organization lost more than 20,000 men in the city. In recent weeks he has been recording videos urging the Russian army to send its soldiers ammunition and weapons some of them along with dead bodies.
Danilov also dismissed criticism that the Ukrainian army should have withdrawn its troops from the city, now largely occupied by Russian forces, to avoid further casualties. “Bachmut is our country, our territory, and we must defend it,” he said.
Also on Saturday, two drones attacked a station supplying Russia’s Drujba oil pipeline in the Tver region, 500 kilometers from Ukraine. According to Russian media, the plant is one of the largest in the world and is responsible for transporting West Siberian oil to Europe.
The Drujba, which means friendship in Portuguese, was built when Russia was part of the former Soviet Union. It has the capacity to fill more than 2 million barrels a day but is underutilized since Europe took steps to reduce its dependence on Russian energy.
At the same time, two drones in the Pskov region of western Russia caused an explosion that damaged the administration building of an oil pipeline, local governor Mikhail Vedernikov said. The incident happened near the village of Litvinovo, less than 10 kilometers from Russia’s border with Belarus.
In the Russian region of Kursk, a few kilometers from the border with Ukraine, a construction worker was killed this Saturday, according to local authorities, after a rocket that would have come from the Ukrainian side hit the region. A similar bombing occurred in Belgorodo, killing another person and injuring three.
The Ukrainian government has not commented on any of the attacks.
The Russian Defense Ministry, in turn, said in its daily statement that in the past 24 hours it had destroyed 12 Ukrainian drones and intercepted two longrange Storm Shadow cruise missiles supplied by the UK to Ukraine.