"The most dangerous [area] for the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation remains the southeastern direction (near Ugledar), where the Armed Forces of Ukraine have achieved the greatest success so far," Volya Media reported, claiming it based its assessment on discussions with Russian and Ukrainian military personnel. "Heavy fighting is going on along the entire line, the Russian command has already activated up to 70% of the reserves in the south."

Ukraine has yet to use the main strike units assembled for the offensive, Volya Media said.

Ukraine Situation Report: Putin Chimes In On 'Intense Fighting'

The latest intelligence update from the UK's Ministry of Defence said over the past 48 hours "significant" Ukrainian operations have taken place in several sectors of eastern and southern Ukraine.

Ukrainian forces have "likely made good progress" and "penetrated the first line of Russian defences", the MoD added. However, in other areas "Ukrainian progress has been slower".

Meanwhile, Russian performance has been "mixed", with some units "likely conducting credible manoeuvre defence operations while others have pulled back in some disorder, amid increased reports of Russian casualties as they withdraw through their own minefields".

The update added: "The Russian Airforce has been unusually active over southern Ukraine, where the airspace is more permissive for Russia than in other parts of the country. However, it remains unclear whether tactical airstrikes have been effective."

These past days have been nerve-wrecking. And it took a couple of videos of destroyed equipment for these "Ukraine lacks training & their leadership is the same level as Russia's" talks to surface again.

Come on now, we've seen them surprise us and do the impossible many times before, let's trust their abilities. This is only the beginning of counter offence, we don't even know where the biggest push will happen. It's inevitable plenty of western equipment will be destroyed/damaged. And yet internet isn't flooding with videos so I'd say things are moving quite favorably.

It's exactly the same as the Kherson offensive, a few videos came out of destroyed Ukrainian equipment and some idiots in the Western media started dooming Ukraine and saying Kherson was a failure, we saw how that turned out. People have forgotten what an actual war is like, if there was Twitter during the times of countless Western wars then we'd see the same reactions.

People seem to have a sense that an offensive will be like America vs Iraq where America absolutely fucking blitzed Iraq, a massively weaker country than them, with tons of air support and captured Baghdad in a month. Ukraine isn't America, and even America lost a few Abrams and Bradley's during that, against a far, far weaker enemy, with complete air dominance, something Ukraine doesn't have the luxury of.

Not to mention Russia has had months to prepare and the battlefield is literally littered full with mines everywhere you go.

We have images only but not what led up to those events, as I posted a couple pages back, we now have a video of Ukraine retreating on that Bradley loss and it actually looks very professional and orderly, not a single soldier appeared to have been killed so the Bradley did its job in saving them against a mine, that is more important than a lost Bradley which America has 6,500 of.

Going to be some screw ups during the offensive probing stage, they need to remain calm and keep pushing. We've actual US Military officers telling us that it's expected to lose 25%+ of armour in the best case scenarios. It's going to hurt to see the losses but it's to be expected and we're going to have to just trust in Ukraine's plan.

I'd say it's a good sign that Russia is only spreading 2-3 videos of the same losses, even spreading the same loss but at a different angle to try to trick people, in those same losses, it looks as though all Ukrainians got out alive, and in some cases, the Bradley's and Leopard 2's have been recovered and in a Leopard 2's case, repaired already. All whilst Ukraine is still making minor advances across multiple frontlines.

And "damaged" can be recovered later as long as they get back to it in time before Russia bombs it, the mines aren't enough to destroy a Bradley or Leopard 2 going by the videos we've seen. Ukraine will unfortunately keep hitting mines as they advance ahead, even if they have a bunch of mine clearing vehicles, it only takes one mine to go unnoticed.

People are going to lose their f*cking minds when Ukraine loses an Abram. Speaking of, I wonder where the Challenger 2's are. Some Ukraine brigades have yet to show their face, Imo they're waiting for one of the current brigades to find a hole and then they'll go flooding in. I wonder if those ones have the Challenger 2's.

Not sure how many are left but I read 3-4 defensive lines to Tokmak in the replies...

Probably too good to be true in that case then.

Apparently NOT Zaporizhzhia though, likely Bakhmut area.