Ukraine's front line grows bigger as Russia shifts tactics, top commander says

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The front line on the battlefield in Ukraine has grown in length to nearly 1,250 kilometers (800 miles), stretching Kyiv’s defenses, while Russian forces employ a new tactic of sending swarms of small assault groups to infiltrate Ukrainian lines, Ukraine’s top military commander says.

The line of contact has grown by roughly 200 kilometers (120 miles) over the past year, and Ukrainian forces are averaging between 160 and 190 combat engagements every day with Russia’s bigger army, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi said in a review of the battlefield situation.

At the same time, Russian tactics have switched since the start of the summer from costly large-scale offensives to deploying small assault groups in a new approach that Syrskyi called the “thousand cuts” tactic.

His version of events could not be independently verified, and Russian officials made no immediate comment.

Russian forces have been trying to engulf Ukraine with sheer weight of numbers and relentless barrages of drones, missiles, artillery and devastating glide bombs. Though they have slowly pushed Ukrainian defenders back in rural areas, the Russian army has failed to conquer cities that constitute defensive strongholds.

U.S. President Donald Trump, whose efforts to bring an end to the war have made no progress, said Tuesday that he believed Ukraine could turn the tide and win back all the territory it has lost to Russia, equivalent to around 20% of its land.

Syrskyi said Russia is launching large numbers of small assault groups of about four to six soldiers who use the cover of the terrain to penetrate the front line and then strike Ukrainian rear areas, disrupting supply lines and troop rotations. However, those small groups become cut off and are trapped by encircling Ukrainian forces, he said in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

Syrskyi told reporters that Russian forces are firing roughly twice as many artillery shells as Ukrainian units.

But he claimed that a recent Ukrainian push against Russian positions has regained control of 168 square kilometers (65 square miles) of land.

Ukraine’s long-range strike program, meanwhile, has inflicted heavy damage on Russian military and industrial assets in recent weeks, he said.

Ukraine’s newly created Unmanned Systems Forces, which use increasingly sophisticated drones, carried out 85 strikes on targets inside Russia in less than two months — 33 against military sites and 52 on plants that produce weapons, ammunition, engines, rocket fuel and drones, according to Syrskyi.

He credited the strikes with triggering a fuel shortage inside Russia that is hampering logistics and army supplies.

With winter approaching and Russia expected to escalate its attacks on the Ukrainian power grid, Kyiv is enhancing its air-defense system that combines interceptor drones, helicopters, light aircraft and electronic-warfare systems, Syrskyi said.

The improved interceptors take down Russian attack drones at least 70% of the time, he said, adding that Ukraine is now testing light, fixed-wing aircraft armed with machine guns as an additional counter-drone measure.

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Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine