Ukraine 'Holds the Initiative' in Most Areas Amid Heavy Fighting—U.K.

Ukraine "holds the initiative" in most areas amid heavy fighting across several parts of the front line, the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) tweeted Thursday.

The MoD's intelligence update came shortly after Yevgeny Prigozhin, chief of the Russian paramilitary outfit the Wagner Group, said a Ukrainian offensive has "broken through" Russian defensive lines around the war-torn city of Bakhmut in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region.

Reports also emerged on Monday morning that Ukraine has attacked several points along the front line, while Russia said it had repelled an attack in Donetsk.

In a video posted on his official Telegram channel on Tuesday, Prigozhin called on the Russian government to provide the Wagner Group with no less than 200,000 troops, or else "the Luhansk-Donetsk front line will not cope."

Prigozhin had heated public spats with Russia's military leadership over a lack of ammunition in Bakhmut, prior to the withdrawal of his troops from the city on June 1. He said Ukraine has "broken through the line of defense" in several areas including near Bakhmut and in the Zaporizhzhia region. He added that the situation was a "catastrophe."

The British defense ministry said Thursday that, amid a "highly complex operational picture," heavy fighting continues along multiple sectors of the front line. "In most areas Ukraine holds the initiative," it added.

Ukraine has urged operational silence on its long-anticipated counteroffensive.

"Plans love silence. There will be no start announcement," Ukrainian Defense Deputy Minister Hanna Maliar said on her social-media channels Monday.

Hours later, in the early hours of Tuesday morning, the critical Soviet-era dam in southern Ukraine on the Dnieper River, part of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant, was breached.

Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of being behind the dam's destruction. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russian forces of blowing up the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Station from inside the facility as part of a "terrorist attack." Russia has blamed Ukraine for the damage, saying it was done to distract attention from a "faltering" counteroffensive.

Retired Army Lieutenant General Stephen Twitty told Newsweek that Russian President Vladimir Putin may have ordered the attack to slow down Ukraine's forces.

"I've seen this happen before in wars. What's really going on with the flooding of the dam—the water flows out into farmland and hinterlands and makes the terrain muddy and prevents armored vehicles from traversing through them when they get stuck in the mud," Twitty said.

Ukraine's military therefore "can't really use the ground and so it limits them to the roads," Twitty said. "If you flood the dam, then the Ukrainians cannot attack throughout the farmlands. It will limit them in the way that they come."

Elina Beketova is an in-residence fellow with the Democracy Fellowship program at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington DC. She told Newsweek she believes the attack could signal that Russia is attempting to "stop Ukraine's liberation of territories temporarily occupied by Russia in such a way that Ukrainian soldiers couldn't go on the left [eastern] bank of the Dnieper River."

Retired U.S. Marine Corps Colonel Mark Cancian agreed. He told Newsweek his assumption is that the Russians blew up the dam to expand the water barrier in the face of a possible Ukrainian attack across the Dnieper River.

"This would be a classic defensive move that countries have frequently done in the past," Cancian said.

Newsweek has contacted the Russian Foreign Ministry via email for comment.

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