Junta making concerted push to regain lost territory: AA

By Admin 15 Jul 2025

DMG Newsroom

15 July 2025, Sittwe

The Arakan Army (AA) said on July 15 that the military regime is making serious efforts to regain territory lost to revolutionary forces across Myanmar.

The regime has lost numerous military bases across Myanmar and is making desperate efforts to retake them from the rebel forces, the AA said in a statement.

The junta, as in previous years, is facing heavy casualties in several parts of the country, and its troops are reluctant to fight and are trying to flee, the AA added.

"New military recruits, who have been given intensive training by the military regime, are losing their will to fight due to the brutality and torture of their superiors and are deserting the army every day," the AA's statement said.

The AA has reported that the military regime is violating the conscription law, forcibly recruiting young people, and sending them to frontline battlefields to bolster its forces.

The AA said that new recruits or militia members of the military regime who are being sent to frontline battlefields are reluctant to fight and are trying to defect to nearby ethnic resistance groups.

"There are many conscripts who escape from the frontline battlefields. Many of the conscripts who escape are not free and are recaptured. The Myanmar military shoots the captured conscripts in the legs and thighs. I have seen four people who were shot in this way," said Nay Lin Aung, a junta conscript who defected to the AA via the Ann-Padan battlefield on July 9.

The AA has said that those who were forcibly recruited into the Myanmar military can defect at any time if they wish, and that the life and safety of all defectors are guaranteed.

A military and political observer said that the regime is conducting counteroffensive operations using ground forces as well as airstrikes to regain lost territory before the elections scheduled for the end of this year.

"With only conscripts and those with little experience in combat on the ground arriving on the frontline battlefields, the military regime is desperately trying to regain lost territory, but the reality on the ground is that it is unlikely to be as successful as expected," the observer explained.

The military regime, which lost large swaths of territory to anti-regime forces across the country during "Operation 1027" beginning in late 2023, has been launching counteroffensives since late May of this year.

The military regime is conducting offensives against areas held by resistance forces in Shan, Kachin and Kayah (Karenni) states, and Mandalay and Sagaing regions.

The military regime will launch major offensives to quickly recapture lost territory, and airstrikes will continue during the rainy season, junta chief Min Aung Hlaing said at a military meeting in Naypyidaw in May.

Since the Three Brotherhood Alliance launched Operation 1027 on October 27, 2023, revolutionary forces have seized control of at least 96 cities and towns across the country, as well as military headquarters, battalions, and hundreds of military camps and bases.