Ukraine has been planning a counter-offensive for months, but it has wanted as long as possible to train troops and to receive advanced military equipment from Western allies.

The government is deliberately saying little about its plans but its forces are now probing Russian positions at several points along the front line, looking for signs of weakness.

“We’re trying…to conduct strikes on the enemy, we’re counterattacking. We’ve managed to advance up to 1,400 metres on various sections of the front,” the spokesperson for the eastern military command said, when asked about fighting near Bakhmut.

Serhiy Cherevaty, the official, said in televised comments that Russian forces were themselves trying to counterattack but that they had not been successful.

Ukrainian forces, he said, had inflicted heavy Russian troop casualties and destroyed military hardware in the area.

Moscow and Kyiv both reported heavy fighting in Ukraine on Friday, with bloggers describing the first sightings of German and U.S. armour, signalling that Ukraine’s long-anticipated counterattack was under way.

Russian forces halting Ukrainian counteroffensive

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Ukrainian troops have started a long-expected counteroffensive and were suffering “significant” losses in their efforts to punch through Moscow’s defence lines in Ukraine.

“We can clearly say the offensive has started, as indicated by the Ukrainian army’s use of strategic reserves,” Putin told reporters in Sochi on Friday, where he was meeting with heads of other states in the Eurasian Economic Union.

“But the Ukrainian troops haven’t achieved their stated tasks in a single area of fighting,” he said. “We are seeing that the Ukrainian regime’s troops are suffering significant losses,” Putin said, without providing details.

“It’s known that the offensive side suffers losses of 3 to 1 – it’s sort of classic – but in this case, the losses significantly exceed that classic level,” he added.

Ukrainian counteroffensive