Russian Forces Press On With Attacks in Southern Ukraine

Russian forces in recent days have launched multiple attacks around the southern Ukrainian village of Robotyne, military officials and experts said, targeting land hard-won by Ukraine in a rare success of its counteroffensive last summer.

The Ukrainian Army said it had repelled four consecutive days of assaults from Saturday to Tuesday involving armored vehicles and large numbers of troops that had massed in the area.

Open-source maps of the battlefield compiled by independent groups analyzing combat footage suggest that Russia has made marginal gains to the west and south of Robotyne. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research group, said on Monday that Russian forces had advanced to the western outskirts of the village.

“Pay attention to the village of Robotyne,” Dmytro Lykhovii, a spokesman for Ukrainian forces fighting in the area, said on national television last week. “It seems that the Russians have set a goal of achieving some success there” and planned to try to seize the village, he said.

The weekend assaults around Robotyne came as Russian forces took the frontline city of Avdiivka, about 100 miles to the east, and attacked Ukrainian positions on the east bank of the Dnipro River, more than 130 miles to the west. Military analysts say these near-simultaneous assaults are designed to apply pressure across the front line in order to reduce Kyiv’s ability to withdraw and replenish exhausted troops and to force it to burn through its already scarce stocks of ammunition.

“They are trying in different places, testing the Ukrainian defenses,” said Pasi Paroinen, from the Black Bird Group, which analyzes satellite imagery and social media content from the battlefield. “They are probing and seeking weaknesses.”