Since August 6, Ukrainian soldiers have managed to capture dozens of Russian villages in more than 620 square miles, following the surprise attack they launched in Kursk.
However, after the deadly attack in Poltava, Ukraine appears to have lost the advantage it had gained, as Russian military forces threaten major cities.
Poltava was hit twice by rockets and mourns 51 dead. “This is a shocking tragedy for all of Ukraine. The enemy hit an educational institution and a hospital,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
As the Ukrainian Defense Ministry reported, so little time passed between the air raid siren and the strike that several people were injured on the way to shelters.
Poltava regional leader Filip Pronin announced three days of mourning and called the attack “a great tragedy for the region and the entire country.”
Poltava, a military training center that was filled after 2 missile strikes by Iskander pic.twitter.com/o1grumsAu4
— 🇺🇦 EuroMaydan 🇪🇺 (@EuroMaydan) September 3, 2024
“Russia’s priority”
According to military analyst Sean Bell, the strike in Poltava shows that Moscow’s priority is inside Ukraine, not Kiev’s invasion of Russian territory.
“It’s not a big surprise that Russia is responding by firing as many missiles as it can into Ukrainian territory, not all of them aimed at military targets,” he argued, speaking to Sky News.
“Despite the fact that the Ukrainians are pushing towards Kursk and that they are firing a lot of long-range missiles at Russia, it is quite clear where the priority is at the moment, namely the ‘special military operation’ and the seizure of the Donbass region.” he added himself.
The invasion of Kursk by Ukrainian forces was welcomed by the majority of Ukrainians, with the hope that this surprise move would force Russia to deploy forces to a new front, thereby shifting the war’s correlations in Ukraine’s favor.
Critics argue, however, that the redeployment of thousands of troops for the Kursk operation has weakened Ukrainian positions.
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