“On the left flank [near Verbove] we have a breakthrough and we continue to advance further,” Oleksandr Tarnavsky told CNN Senior International Correspondent Frederik Pleitgen during an interview on Friday, though he conceded his troops were moving slower than anticipated.
Ukrainian forces claimed in recent weeks to have penetrated the “first line” of Russian strongholds in the Zaporizhzia region, in a sign that Kyiv was edging closer to Moscow’s sprawling network of fortified trenches along the southern front.
However, Tarnavsky told CNN he believed the big breakthrough of the counteroffensive would be if Ukraine could take Tokmak, a strategic hub for Russia, which is its first major target in its fight in the south.
When asked about rising resistance in the West to continuing weapons supplies to Ukraine, especially in the US, where some have voiced doubt about Kyiv’s chances of success, Tarnavsky said he respected their view.
He said Wagner fighters still pop up “here and there” on the front line following the death of the group’s former boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died in a plane crash last month after leading a failed insurrection that posed the biggest threat to the rule of Russian President Vladimir Putin in decades.
Ukraine recently launched a missile attack on the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, in the Crimean peninsula, which was illegally annexed by Moscow’s forces in 2014.
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