Russian advance stalls in Ukraine's Sumy region — military expert

Vladyslav Selezniov, military expert and former spokesperson of the Ukrainian General Staff, said this on Espreso TV.

He believes that this summer, Russia will try to implement the plan of creating a 'buffer zone' in the territory of Sumy region.

"In case of success, they will try to extend these processes to the Chernihiv and Kharkiv regions. I have my doubts about this, because 50,000 troops is far too few to achieve such an ambitious goal. Moreover, Ukrainian forces are not lagging behind—they are conducting certain operations on Russian border territory, particularly in the settlement of Tyotkino. The coming weeks will be very telling in terms of what the enemy is capable of. In the past few days, the Russian advance in the Sumy region has stopped. I suspect they have run into our engineering fortifications, which are built along a line 8–10 km from the state border. Now they are wandering around there, trying to break our resistance," Selezniov noted.

In the expert’s opinion, Russia will focus its efforts this summer specifically on the territory of Donetsk region.

"Their attempts to enter the Dnipropetrovsk region are just a byproduct of the processes taking place to the west and southwest of Pokrovsk. In fact, Russia is trying to form the jaws of an operational encirclement of the Pokrovsk-Myrnohrad urban agglomeration. From the west, they are operating on the border of Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk regions, and from the east, they are trying to envelop our group defending Myrnohrad with a wide sweep. This group is also forming a strike bridgehead from the southwest to attack Kostiantynivka. This summer, the enemy will try to use as many forces and resources as possible to attack the urban agglomeration in Donetsk region—Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, and Kostiantynivka. The dynamics of the fighting in the areas of Chasiv Yar and Lyman are also very telling," Selezniov summarized.

• Since the beginning of Wednesday, June 11, there have been 99 combat clashes on the Russian-Ukrainian front. In particular, 33 battles were recorded in the Pokrovsk direction: the Ukrainian Armed Forces repelled 31 enemy attacks.