AFU Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi. Photo: Office of the President of Ukraine
Russian forces have begun a spring offensive in northeastern Ukraine’s Sumy and Kharkiv regions, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) Oleksandr Syrskyi told Ukrainian news outlet LB.ua on Wednesday.
Asked about comments made last month by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky suggesting that Russia was preparing a fresh spring offensive in Ukraine’s Sumy, Kharkiv, and Zaporizhzhia regions, Syrskyi responded that offensive activities in the area had nearly doubled in the past week.
Speaking to LB.ua in a wide-ranging interview, Syrskyi speculated that the Zapad 2025 joint Russian-Belarusian military exercises due to take place in September might be used as a cover to prepare another offensive against Ukraine, as was the case in February 2022 when the exercises were used to launch Russia’s full-scale invasion.
“The visibility of exercises is the most acceptable way to relocate, redeploy troops, concentrate them in a certain direction and create a grouping of troops,” Syrskyi said.
The AFU launched its first significant incursion into Russian territory in August, sending troops from northern Ukraine’s Sumy region into Russia’s western Kursk region in an attempt to relieve the pressure on the frontline in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region as well as to create a buffer zone to protect its Kharkiv and Sumy regions from constant Russian shelling.
Though the AFU now only controls a small pocket of the Kursk region since a Russian counteroffensive began in early March, Zelensky on Monday confirmed the presence of the AFU in the neighbouring Belgorod region for the first time since the AFU launched a cross-border offensive there in March.
In recent weeks, despite ongoing US-led peace efforts to broker a ceasefire, the Kremlin has signalled its determination to continue fighting throughout 2025, with Vladimir Putin ordering the conscription of 160,000 men on 1 April in Russia’s largest mass conscription since 2011 and the third expansion of its ranks since the war began.
