Ukrainian Forces Reportedly Advance Past Russia's 'Dragon's Teeth' Defenses In Zaporizhzhya

Ukrainian forces in the southeastern Zaporizhzhya region have breached formidable Russian defensive obstacles, according to a U.S.-based research group.

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"Ukrainian light infantry has advanced to positions beyond anti-tank ditches and dragon’s teeth anti-tank obstacles that comprise the current Russian defensive layer" in the west of the region, the U.S. Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said in an assessment of the battleground situation in Ukraine on September 4. "Ukrainian forces likely intend to hold those positions."

The assessment comes as Kyiv has made changes to its war leadership and rebuffed Western criticism of the pace of its nearly three-month-old counteroffensive to retake territory occupied by Russia.

On September 3, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov submitted his resignation in what President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said was a decision to bring in "new approaches and other formats of interaction with both the military and society as a whole."

Reznikov, who played a key role in persuading Ukraine's Western partners to provide billions of dollars in military aid and sophisticated weapons to assist the country after Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, will be replaced by Rustem Umerov, a Ukrainian politician of Crimean Tatar origin.

Unidentified U.S. officials have recently expressed frustration at the progress of Ukraine's counteroffensive and have questioned the tactics being used to overcome Russia's own counteroffensive in the northeast and formidable defenses in the southeast.

Washington later said that the criticism was "not helpful" and that the United States had recently seen "notable success" achieved by Kyiv's military.

in a September 2 Telegram post, Zelenskiy pushed back at the criticism, saying that "Ukrainian forces are moving forward. Despite everything, and no matter what anyone says, we are advancing, and that is the most important thing."

The following day, the Ukrainian military claimed it had breached Russia's first line of defense in the Zaporizhzhya region after weeks of painstaking demining.

The ISW said that Ukrainian soldiers had advanced past Russian defenses southeast of the town of Orikhiv in Zaporizhzhya. Ukrainian forces there are attempting to reach the city of Melitopol in an attempt to cut off a land bridge that links Russian-occupied territory in the east to the Crimean Peninsula, which was illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014.

The research group said that Ukrainian forces had approached Russian defensive lines in other areas of the southeast and were widening breaches at other points in the area.