Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs
- Recently, Ukraine has launched a lightning counter-offensive in the country’s northeast that saw surprising territorial gains.
- Its forces have pushed back Russian soldiers from most of Kharkiv Oblast, retaking thousands of square kilometres of territory.
- This is the first time that Ukrainian troops have pushed back the Russians through combat since the Russia Ukraine conflict began.
- After capturing Lysychansk in July 2022 and taking the whole of Luhansk province coming under its control, Russia’s battlefield combat came to a halt.
- Russia was controlling almost 25% of Ukraine at this time.
- The halt of Russian forces opened a window opportunity for Ukraine to move ahead with its counter-offensive plans.
Help from US:
- Advanced mid-range rocket systems such as High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS).
- Military assistance worth more than USD 14.5 billion.
- S. intelligence agencies also provided information to Ukraine on the weak links of the Russian defence.
Sanctions on Russia:
- Russia was being faced with sanctions which made it difficult to make sure their supply was intact and they had to turn to Iran and North Korea.
- Ukraine started attacks in southern Ukraine in Kherson and sabotage hits in Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.
- Russia, faced with the Ukrainian attacks in the south, bolstered the defences of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
- Ukraine broke into the relatively weaker defence lines in the northeast and successfully pushed the Russians back.
Russia Ukraine Conflict
- In 2014, Russia had annexed Crimea from Ukraine following a hastily called referendum, a move that sparked fighting between Russia-backed separatists and government forces in eastern Ukraine.
- Ukraine urged the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to speed up the country’s membership in the alliance.
- Russia declared such a move a “red line”, and worried about the consequences of the US-led military alliances expanding right up to its doorstep.
- This has led to the present war between Russia and Ukraine.
Invasion of Ukraine:
- The conflict is now the largest attack by one state on another in Europe since the Second World War, and the first since the Balkan conflict in the 1990s.
- With the invasion of Ukraine, agreements like the Minsk Protocols of 2014, and the Russia-NATO Act of 1997 stand all but voided.
SOURCE: THE HINDU,THE ECONOMIC TIMES,MINT
