HISTORY

Symbols of combat actions on a HIMARS missile launcher of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

wise they would have been surrounded.

This was repeated at several other places

and on September 10 the Ukrainians reached Kupyansk and Izyum. By September

12 the whole Kharkov area was liberated

when the Ukrainian troops reached the

Russian border in the north. On the liberated territory they captured hundreds of

pieces of the military equipment left behind

in panic by the fleeing occupiers. The captured equipment included the undamaged,

most modern Russian T-90M tank which

is supposedly being studied somewhere

in the West at this time.

There has been a lot of speculation if the

Ukrainians just took advantage of the weak

Russian defense lines in the Kharkov area,

or they had planned the attack from the

beginning and the Kherson counterattack

was only a bait which the Russians took.

As usual the truth is somewhere in between. The Ukrainians supposedly wanted

to attack in two places from the beginning

and the Kherson direction was not only

a bait and both attacks were planned as

the full scale operations. Even before the

second operation was launched the information from “secret services community”

leaked into the Western media according to

which the Ukrainians had intended to attack

in two directions but the American allies,

who were consulted, advised to focus on

Kherson. It is clear now that leaking this

information was to confuse the Russians

and divert their vigilance to the other front-line sectors. And it seems to have worked

out. The Russians only managed to react

in their typical fashion – by shelling the

civilian targets far behind the front-line.

After the Kharkov area liberation on Sunday September 11 there were attacks on the

power stations and transformer system.

On September 14 the attack on Karachuniv

dam at the city of Krivyy Rih followed.

November 2022

It was hit by eight rockets launched from

the bombers. It’s damage caused floods

in the surrounding area. 112 houses were

flooded. Article 56 of the Supplementary

Protocol for the International Humanitarian

Law from 1977 forbids the military attacks

on the facilities that release the destructive

forces. Specifically, the dams, levees and

nuclear power stations are listed.

After a short operational break necessary to consolidate the liberated territory,

re-supply and give troops some rest, on

Friday September 23 the Ukrainian troops

on the north-eastern front continued to

advance. The target was city of Lyman. The

Ukrainians repeated the successful scenario from the beginning of September. They

did not waste time re-capturig the strongly

fortified city but by-passed it on both sides

threatening to surround it. This time the

Russian troops did not retreat immediately. They planned to ambush the Ukrainians

While fleeing the battlefield, the Russian soldiers also left behind an undamaged state-of-the-art T-90M tank.

INFO Eduard

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