Ukraine gears up: U.S. backing hints shift in Russian conflict

Ukrainian Colonel Oleg Zhdanov claims that with U.S. permission to attack Russian territories, a shift in forces in the war in Ukraine is only a matter of time. He assessed the problems Vladimir Putin is facing.

In an interview with Glavred.info, the expert said Russia is forced to withdraw its reserves from the border. According to him, with the help of the West, Ukraine can still surprise Russia, and Putin has exhausted his deck of trump cards.

“We do not consider nuclear weapons: most likely, there is an unspoken agreement that if the Russian Federation even attempts to use nuclear weapons, the United States reserves the right to defeat the group of Russian troops on Ukrainian territory. Biden and Johnson talked about this back in the spring of 2022,” said Zhdanov.

He claims that now Russia is forced to withdraw its reserves. “This means that the Russian Federation will no longer be able to repeat the invasion of Kharkiv. After all, we will start the battle not at the border pillar when Russian troops cross our border, but at a depth of 50 miles on Russian territory,” he explains.

Zhdanov stated, "The second phase of the offensive in the Kharkiv region may now not happen at all or happen but in a limited form.”

In his opinion, Russia does not have enough armored vehicles, which will lead to Russia's need to switch to defense. “Therefore, Putin is shouting on all platforms about a ceasefire and starting negotiations,” he said.

Russian strike drones attacked targets in four regions of Ukraine last night: Mykolaiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Khmelnytskyi. "Seventeen out of eighteen machines were shot down," the Ukrainian Air Force reported on Thursday. There was also a missile attack.

“On the night of June 6th, Russian occupiers struck the Dnipropetrovsk region with two Iskander-M ballistic missiles launched from the Russian Taganrog area and attacked with 18 Shahed 131 and 136 strike drones, which took off from Primorsko-Akhtarsk and Cape Chauda in occupied Crimea,” stated Air Force Commander General Mykola Oleshchuk.

The general did not provide information on the effects of the missile attack.

In the Khmelnytskyi region, a fire broke out as a result of the drone attack on the premises of an infrastructure facility, the local regional authorities reported. They did not specify where it happened but assured no one was harmed.

Oleshchuk reported that mobile fire groups destroyed most of the attacking drones.

“As a result of air battles, 17 drones were shot down in the Mykolaiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Khmelnytskyi regions,” he wrote on Telegram.