The U.S. believes the long-expected Ukrainian counteroffensive will involve a combination of air and ground operations. Ukraine reported on Monday morning that the actions were ongoing. “Yes, (Ukrainian forces) have started offensive operations in various directions on the Southern front to liberate the occupied territories,” Natalya Khomeniuk, spokeswoman for Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command, told CNN, adding: “All the details will be available. then the business is complete.” The plans come as Russia’s war in Ukraine has passed its six-month mark, with US estimates showing Russia has been able to deploy fewer front-line units than first estimated, according to a senior US official . The official said many of the existing units — which Russia organizes into Battlefield Tactical Groups, or BTGs, which include infantry, tanks, artillery and air defense — are deploying under strength, some even at half their normal manpower their. The U.S. is also monitoring Ukrainian forces benefiting from the use of U.S.-NATO-supplied HIMARS mobile rocket launchers, which have allowed Ukraine to strike and destroy targets on Russian-held territory. CNN reported last week that U.S. and European officials say Ukraine has successfully used a counterinsurgency warfare method developed by U.S. special operations forces to strike back at Russia and engage its vastly superior military. The Resistance Operating Concept was developed in 2013 after Russia’s war with Georgia a few years earlier, but its value was only realized after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014. It provides a blueprint for smaller nations to effectively resist and to deal with an older neighbor who has invaded. Neither Ukrainian nor US officials have disclosed the main targets of the expected counterattack. In recent weeks Ukrainian forces have been advancing around the key southern city of Kherson, which is currently held by Russian forces. Kherson is considered vital for control of Ukraine’s southern coast and access to the Black Sea. Ukrainian and Russian forces have also been engaged in heavy fighting in recent days around the nuclear power plant — Europe’s largest — in the city of Zaporizhzhia. Ukraine’s nuclear operator Energoatom said on Friday that the plant had been reconnected to Ukraine’s electricity grid a day after the plant was shut down for the first time in its history. CNN’s Oleksandra Ochman, Kostan Nechyporenko, Hira Humayun, Darya Tarasova, Michelle Velez, Oren Liebermann and Julia Kesaieva contributed to this report.
