The Russian army in Ukraine has gone on the offensive in the Zaporizhzhia region, which the Kremlin incorporated into Russia in 2022, although troops control only just over 70 percent of its territory.
On Monday, March 17, the Russian Defense Ministry said it had taken the village of Stepovoye, 43 kilometers from the regional center. Assault actions in the Zaporizhzhia direction began in the first days of March, when the Russian group received replenishment, the Ukrainian OSINT project DeepState wrote. According to its data, at the moment the Russian troops are trying to storm Pyatykhatky and Mali Shcherbaky, and they managed to gain a foothold in the latter settlement.
Z-channels confirm advancement in the area of Shcherbaky and Mali Shcherbaky. Yurii Podolyaka, a military correspondent, claims that both settlements have already come under Russian control. According to his data, the first line of the AFU defense managed to break through to a width of 10 km and a depth of 5 km. “This was facilitated, among other things, by the fact that the day before, as a result of problems on other parts of the front, the enemy transferred some of its reserves from here,” Podolyaka writes.
Russian troops are now about 25 km away from Zaporizhzhia, and Ukrainian defenses “lack the depth” to effectively deter a possible offensive, experts at the US-based ISW wrote.
The new push in southern Ukraine, where the front has been de facto “frozen” for many months, came on the eve of phone talks between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump scheduled for Tuesday, March 18. Late last week, Putin did not give a definite answer to the U.S.-voiced proposal for a 30-day ceasefire, which the U.S. delegation agreed with Kiev at talks in Saudi Arabia.
Russia generally “agrees” but “there are nuances,” Putin said on March 13.
