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By Brendan Cole
Senior Reporter
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Kyiv has said it has liberated a total of eight settlements in its ongoing counteroffensive amid reports that it was pausing operations to reassess tactics.
The counteroffensive is part of a long-awaited push to recapture Russian-occupied territory.
On Monday, Ukrainian deputy defense minister Hanna Maliar reported that the village of Piatykhatky in the southern Zaporizhzhia region had been retaken by Ukrainian troops.
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Video shared on social media taken on Sunday purports to show by the 128th Jaeger Brigade and the 2nd Separate Rifle Battalion holding Ukrainian flags in the village.
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As they then chanted "Glory to Ukraine," one of the troops says that Russian forces had "run, dumping vehicles, ammunition, and weapons."
Maliar wrote on Telegram that after "two weeks of offensive operations in the Berdyansk and Melitopol directions, eight settlements have been liberated."
Ukrainian troops touted gains last week and have flown flags in the settlements of Novodarivka, Levadne, Storozheve, Makarivka, Blagodatne, Lobkovo, Neskuchne and Pyatikhatky.
Maliar said that in two weeks, Ukrainian forces had retaken 43 square miles and advanced more than four miles.
She also described other aspects of the war, saying that additional units had advanced in the direction of Bakhmut and that last week Russia continued to attack in the Lymano-Kupyansk, Avdiivka and Mariinka directions.
"We did not lose a single meter of ground in these directions thanks to the professionalism and courage of our fighters," she wrote, according to a translation.
"Over the past week, the enemy suffered significant losses," she added, saying that Russia had lost 4,600 killed and wounded and that 400 pieces of equipment, including tanks, helicopters and howitzers had been destroyed.
Newsweek has contacted the Russian defense ministry for comment.
Nicolò Fasola, a research fellow at the University of Bologna in Italy, whose research focuses on Russia's military strategies, said it was too early to assess the effectiveness of Ukraine's counteroffensive.
"Given the overall character of this conflict it is really difficult to forecast the outcome of this new counteroffensive by Ukraine on the basis of the limited gains which are being made so far," he told Newsweek.
"I would say that [Ukrainian forces] are probing the Russian defense lines. They've managed over the last few days to make some limited territorial gains in Zaporizhzhia Oblast mainly— maybe Russian defense lines are weaker there," he said.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said that Kyiv's forces may temporarily be pausing the counteroffensive "to reevaluate their tactics for future operations," suggesting that it has not yet launched its main effort.
"These reports are consistent with ISW's recent observations of the scale and approach of localized Ukrainian counterattacks in southern and eastern Ukraine," the think tank said.
"On the one hand, it can be seen as something completely normal," said Fasola of the reported pause. "This is part and parcel of these kinds of operations which take place along a very long, well-defended frontline."
He said the Ukrainians "might have found a soft spot in Zaporizhzhia and having gathered certain data about Russian capabilities and Russian problems along these extended frontlines, they might be readjusting their operational tempo.
"On the other hand, the alternative interpretation is that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is not going at all as they expected and so they need time to partially readjust."
British defense officials said on Monday that Russia is likely to have started relocating some of its forces from the eastern bank of the Dnieper River to reinforce the Zaporizhzhia and Bakhmut sectors.
This potentially involves several thousand troops from the 49th Army, including its 34th Separate Motorized Brigade, as well as Airborne Forces and Naval Infantry units, the U.K. Ministry of Defense said in an update.
This redeployment likely reflects Moscow's view that a major Ukrainian attack across the river "is now less likely" in the aftermath of the collapse of the Kakhovka Dam, which caused extensive flooding.
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