‘Expect Surprises’ – Ukraine Outlines AFU’s Key Winter Objective

Ukraine’s military has said its “main task” this winter will be to disrupt Russia’s logistics “so that they are hungry, cold, and have no desire to fight.”

Speaking on national television, Spokesperson for the Ground Forces Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), Volodymyr Fitio, said everything possible was being done to make Russian troops on Ukrainian land as uncomfortable as possible.

He added: “Our main task is to ensure that everything happening now helps the Armed Forces of Ukraine and, vice versa, harms Russian occupiers.”

Fitio said special efforts were being made to disrupt logistics routes to prevent Russian forces from delivering weapons, food, and other necessary goods.

He also added that operations to take out enemy artillery, infantry, and trench shelters would necessarily continue.

“Thus, the enemy should expect surprises from the sky,” Fitio added.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian army also said on Sunday that it has pushed Russian forces back "three to eight kilometres" from the banks of Dnipro river.

Ukrainian and Russian forces have been entrenched on opposite sides of the vast waterway in the southern Kherson region for more than a year, after Russia withdrew its troops from the western bank last November.

Ukrainian forces have staged multiple attempts to cross and hold positions on the Russian-controlled side – with officials in Kyiv finally reporting a “successful” breakthrough last week.

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“Preliminary figures vary from three to eight kilometres, depending on the specifics, geography and landscape design of the left bank,” army spokeswoman Natalia Gumenyuk told Ukrainian television Sunday, without specifying whether Ukraine's military had complete control of the area or if the Russians had retreated.

“The enemy still continues artillery fire on the right bank,” she said, estimating that “several tens of thousands” of Russian troops are in the area.

“We have a lot of work to do,” she added.

It comes after Kyiv's much-awaited counteroffensive launched last June had largely fizzled, with Ukraine retaking just a handful of villages in the south and east.

The last significant success claimed by Kyiv was the retaking in August of the village of Robotyne in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia.

A bridgehead on the left bank of the Dnipro could allow a deeper offensive in the south, though it would require deploying more men and armour into the challenging marshy region.

Pushing Russian troops back would also offer protection to Ukrainian towns and villages on the river's western shores that have faced constant shelling over the past year, Ukrainian officials say.