Ukraine launches new push and claims gains against Russians in south

ODESSA, Ukraine - Ukrainian forces have launched a new push in their counteroffensive against Russian invaders and made advances south of Orikhiv in the country’s Zaporizhzhia region, officials said Wednesday.

Kyiv’s goal is to reach the Sea of Azov, which would sever Moscow’s land bridge to occupied Crimea, a key conduit for moving Russian troops, equipment and supplies into Ukraine.

Ukrainian forces remain far from the sea, which lies about 60 miles south of Orikhiv, according to a Ukrainian official familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Ukrainian forces are “gradually advancing” in the direction of the coastal cities Melitopol and Berdyansk, but she did not say how far they had moved.

Russian and Ukrainian officials acknowledged intense fighting around the town of Robotyne, but they gave different accounts. Russia’s Defense Ministry said a Ukrainian attack on the Russian-held area was repelled. The ministry said it had destroyed 20 Ukrainian tanks and 10 armored personnel carriers and killed 100 Ukrainian soldiers.

A Ukrainian official said the country’s forces had suffered some casualties but denied that Russian artillery volleys had pushed them to retreat.

The Russian pro-war military blog Zapisky Veterana (“Notes of a Veteran”), meanwhile, reported more modest Ukrainian losses: “Several destroyed enemy vehicles and more than a dozen prisoners.”

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry claimed to have blunted Russian attacks at several locations along the 600-mile-long front and to have made some gains in retaking occupied territory in the Zaporizhzhia region as part of “an offensive operation in the Melitopol and Berdyansk directions.”

Kyiv said its advancing forces were “entrenched at the reached boundaries” and inflicting “fire damage.”

A U.S. official expressed caution in drawing conclusions from initial battlefield movements that the main thrust of the counteroffensive has begun.

“We are seeing signs of preparatory moves for additional forces in the Zaporizhzhia area to come into the fight. But it’s not clear what the purpose of those moves may be,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive and ongoing operations.

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It could be that units were sent there for shaping operations, the official said, which are missions that help set favorable conditions for a larger battle, such as finding weaknesses to exploit or destroying enemy defenses. It could also be that fresh troops are coming in to replace soldiers exhausted from the hard fight against dug-in Russian forces, the official said.

“There is not a high sense of confidence that this is the big move,” the official said.

Separately, Russia’s Federal Security Service on Tuesday arrested left-wing sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky on a charge of “justifying terrorism” for comments on social media in October — the latest move in a widening wartime crackdown on dissent by the government of President Vladimir Putin.

The former Soviet dissident, a Marxist author and activist, was transferred by authorities to the northern city of Syktyvkar, more than 800 miles from his Moscow home.

The prominent pro-Kremlin analyst Sergei Markov called the arrest a “gross political mistake” — rare criticism from the pro-war camp about action against an antiwar figure.

“Stay away from Kagarlitsky!” Markov warned on Telegram. Imprisoning him, he said, would cause “huge harm to Russia in the world.”

The arrest highlighted the deepening fractures in Russian society as Putin persists in his war in Ukraine despite signs that his military is largely stalled and slowly losing ground amid a grinding Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Heavy fighting, artillery and airstrikes were reported throughout the day in the Zaporizhzhia region in the south and near Bakhmut and Avdiivka in the east. On Wednesday evening, Moscow unleashed a barrage of missile strikes on targets across Ukraine, including an airfield in the Khmelnytskyi region.

The Ukrainian air force said Russia fired 39 cruise missiles Wednesday. It said 36 were shot down by the country’s air defenses.

“The missiles entered the airspace of Ukraine from the southeastern direction (and) went to the west, constantly changing the direction of flight,” the air force said on social media.

The barrage also included four Kinzhal hypersonic ballistic missiles. The air force said it was “clarifying” details.

Publicly, Putin has bristled with confidence that Ukraine’s counteroffensive has “failed” and that the West’s cautiously calibrated weapons supplies will not help Ukraine win the war. But there were signs Wednesday that the Russian military continues to face personnel challenges as lawmakers in Moscow passed a law to expand compulsory conscription.

The conscription parameters, which are expected to be signed into law, would raise the maximum age at which men may be conscripted from 27 to 30.

“The State Duma smells ‘a big war,’” reported Nezavisimaya Gazeta, a Russian newspaper. Influential lawmaker Andrei Kartapolov, head of the defense committee in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, said the legislation was drafted “for a big war, for a general mobilization.”

“And now it already smells like the biggest war,” Kartapolov continued, according to the newspaper, a sign that Putin’s regime is preparing to fight an extended, ruthless, bloody war for as long as necessary, with the conviction that Western military support will eventually dissipate as political pressure on Western politicians grows.

Kartapolov warned that the legislation was too sensitive for public debate, underscoring official wariness of public opposition to conscription and mobilization.

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In an unusual show of dissent in a parliament that is generally a rubber stamp for Putin, several lawmakers expressed opposition. The influential Viktor Bondarev, head of the defense committee in the upper chamber, said he was bewildered by the abrupt change, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported. He said it was not discussed in his chamber.

Another prominent senator, Andrei Klishas, head of the chamber’s legal committee, strongly backed Bondarev, a reflection of the disquiet over the secrecy and haste surrounding the bill.

The arrest of Kagarlitsky, the left-wing sociologist, followed the detention days earlier of the nationalist pro-war blogger Igor Girkin on charges of promoting extremism. Girkin, who had harshly criticized Putin and his commanders, was the first pro-war figure to be arrested under new laws that bar criticism of the military.

Kagarlitsky, a prominent critic of the war, was held in Lefortovo prison for more than a year during the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev for “anti-Soviet propaganda.” He founded a left-wing think tank, the Institute for Globalization Studies and Social Movements, in Moscow in 2007. It was declared a “foreign agent” by Russia’s Justice Ministry in 2018, and Kagarlitsky himself was branded with the label in May 2022.

“Boris Kagarlitsky today is probably the most influential Russian politician and expert of the left camp in the world,” Markov said. He called on the Kremlin to “actively work with him,” not jail him.

Kagarlitsky was arrested after the head of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, in the northern Komi Republic found that an item posted on social media constituted justification of terrorism.

Kagarlitsky’s lawyer, Sergei Yerokhov, told the Russian news outlet Agentstvo that the post at issue concerned an attack on the Crimean Bridge in October. The comment, which appeared to have been carefully worded to avoid breaching Russia’s strict laws banning criticism of the war, said the damage to the bridge would create military supply issues.

“From the moment of its grand opening, the Crimean Bridge has been not only a strategic, but also a symbolic object, the main achievement of the Putin era and material proof that in our country, even against the backdrop of total theft and inefficiency, it is still possible to achieve practical results if you invest some 400 to 500 percent of technologically necessary funds,” the post read.

In court on Wednesday, Kagarlitsky was ordered held at a pretrial detention center for two months, pending trial. Such detentions are often extended.

Kagarlitsky said the decision to charge him was political. “Why, by whom and how - I can’t say,” he said. “I categorically disagree with the charges I am facing. . . . The statement I am accused of dates back to October last year. That is, it took 10 months to incriminate me, although it was all over the internet.”

Kagarlitsky has argued often that Russians, alienated by the war, disillusioned with corruption and barred from expressing their opinions, have retreated into their own personal worlds, avoiding politics, protests and talk about the invasion.

His arrest was unusual in that prosecutions normally occur in the city where defendants reside. It raised the specter that, if regional FSB bosses in far-flung outposts make a habit of acting on comments on social media, anyone can be arrested.

The proposed changes to the conscription law suggest Russia is continuing to seek reinforcements to send to Ukraine even after an aggressive recruiting campaign in prisons that allowed convicts to earn pardons in exchange for enlisting.

Russia has been recruiting intensively to boost forces in Ukraine and has taken measures to expand the pool of men who can be conscripted.

On Monday, Putin signed a law increasing the upper age limit at which military reservists may be mobilized from 50 to 55. For officers, it increased from 55 to 60. The average life expectancy for Russian men is 67.

A separate law would allow the formation of people’s militias, which would enable Russian governors to form and arm their own forces “to strengthen the protection of public order and ensure public safety during the period of mobilization, during martial law, in wartime.”

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Dixon reported from Riga, Latvia. The Washington Post’s Natalia Abbakumova in Riga contributed to this report.