Vladimir Putin’s Debacle in Lyman, Ukraine, as a Test of Russian Forces Capabilities in the Prevalence of the Crimean Blitz
IZIUM, Ukraine — Russian forces in Ukraine were on the run Monday across a broad swath of the front line, as the Ukrainian military pressed its blitz offensive in the east and made gains in the south, belying President Vladimir V. Putin’s claims to have absorbed into Russia territories that his armies are steadily losing.
Two days after President Vladimir V. Putin held a grandiose ceremony to commemorate the incorporation of four Ukrainian territories into Russia, the debacle in the city — Lyman, a strategic railway hub in the eastern region of Donbas — ratcheted up pressure on a Russian leadership already facing withering criticism at home for its handling of the war and its conscription of up to 300,000 men into military service.
Russian forces in Lyman were plagued by desertion, poor planning and delayed reserves in the last days of their occupation, according to an article published on Sunday by Komsomolskaya Pravda.
Russia has been increasing the number of forces situated on its border and inside Russian-held territory in Ukraine, some of the forces drawn from a partial mobilization ordered in September last year. Despite the increased numbers, Western allies have not seen evidence of sufficient changes to those forces’ ability to carry out combined arms operations needed to take and hold new territory.
The war has been brought to many Russians’ attention, as a consequence of the military constuction Mr. Putin ordered on September 21. Men with age or disability have been drafted who were not eligible.
The aftermath of the Kerch Bridge explosion in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine: A crisis in the early days of the Russian-Ukraine war
Editor’s Note: Michael Bociurkiw (@WorldAffairsPro) is a global affairs analyst. He is an associate fellow at the Atlantic Council and formerly spoke for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He is a regular contributor to CNN Opinion. The opinions he expresses are his own. CNN has more opinion.
Even amid irrepressible jubilation here in Ukraine in the aftermath of a massive explosion that hit the hugely strategic and symbolic Kerch Straight bridge over the weekend, fears of retaliation by the Kremlin were never far away.
The war between Russia and Ukraine has been going on for nine months. It’s only when you descend into the town that you really get a sense of the devastation and destitution that Vladimir Putin’s invasion has wrought on this city.
Unverified video on social media showed hits near the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and close to Maidan Square, just a short stroll from the Presidential Office Building. Five people were killed as a result of strikes on the capital, according to Ukrainian officials.
As of midday local time, the area around my office in Odesa remained eerily quiet in between air raid sirens, with reports that three missiles and five kamikaze drones were shot down. At this time of day, restaurants would be crowded with customers and chatter about weddings and parties.
The attacks on Zaporizhzhia occurred just a few hours after the city was hit by multiple strikes on apartment buildings. At least 17 people were killed and several dozens injured.
In a defiant video filmed outside of his office on Monday, President Zelensky said that many of the missiles that hit the country were meant for the country’s energy infrastructure. At least eleven important infrastructure facilities in eight regions and the capital have been damaged, according to the Ukrainian prime minister.
The early days of the war between Russia and Ukraine were recreated when some media outlets moved to underground bomb shelters. In one metro station serving as a shelter, large numbers of people took cover on platforms as a small group sang patriotic Ukrainian songs.
In response to the call of officials, millions of people will spend most of the day in bomb shelters, and businesses have been told to shift work online as much as possible.
Just as many regions of Ukraine were starting to roar back to life, and with countless asylum seekers returning home, the attacks risk causing another blow to business confidence.
The attacks on the Russian positions on Monday may have achieved a goal: Sending a signal of strength to the growing list of Putin’s internal critics.
dictators seem to love hardwiring newly claimed territory with record-breaking infrastructure projects. In 2018, Putin personally opened the Kerch bridge – Europe’s longest – by driving a truck across it. That same year, one of the first things Chinese President Xi Jinping did after Beijing reclaimed Macau and Hong Kong was to connect the former Portuguese and British territories with the world’s longest sea crossing bridge. The $20 billion, 34-mile road bridge opened after about two years of delays.
The response of Ukraine to Putin’s attack on the Kremlov-Kohn-Mills – an urgent message for the West and the need for Security and Security
The reaction among Ukrainians to the explosion was instantaneous: humorous memes lit up social media channels like a Christmas tree. Text messages were used to share their jubilation.
For Putin, consumed by pride and self-interest, sitting still was never an option. He reacted in a way that he knows how, by unleashing more death and destruction with the force of a former KGB officer.
It was also an act of selfish desperation: facing increasing criticism at home, including on state-controlled television, has placed Putin on unusually thin ice.
The expectations increased Ukrainian war aims. President Volodymyr Zelensky was once a member of the peace-deal camp in Ukraine. “Security guarantees and neutrality, non-nuclear status of our state. He said that they were ready to go for it one month into the conflict. He wants to reconquer all of the Russian-occupied territory, including the peninsula. Polls indicate that Ukrainians will settle for nothing less. As battles rage across Donetsk and Luhansk, Ukraine’s leaders and some of their Western backers are already dreaming of Nuremberg-style trials of Mr. Putin and his inner circle in Moscow.
The ability of the United States and other allies to use phone diplomacy to urge China and India to resist the urge to use more deadly weapons is very important.
The most important thing for the West right now is to show unity and resolve against a man who probes for weakness and tends to exploit divisions. Western governments also need to realize that rhetoric and sanctions have little if no impact on Putin’s actions. They need to continue to arm Ukrainians and provide urgent training, even if it means sending military experts closer to the battlefield to speed up the integration of high technology weapons.
There are high tech defense systems that need to protect important energy infrastructure around the country. The need to protect the heating systems is urgent as winter nears.
The Ukrainian War with Ukraine and the Kremlin: Implications for the United States and for the Security and Security Situations in the Middle East
The time has also come for the West to further isolate Russia with trade and travel restrictions – but for that to have sufficient impact, Turkey and Gulf states, which receive many Russian tourists, need to be pressured to come on board.
Not for the first time, the war is teetering towards an unpredictable new phase. “This is now the third, fourth, possibly fifth different war that we’ve been observing,” said Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme.
Though wary of making precise predictions, American and Ukrainian officials say the fighting is likely to continue for months more despite the fact that the war has favored Ukraine recently. And a number of variables could become particularly pertinent in shifting the trajectory of the conflict: more difficult fighting conditions in December, the extent to which President Vladimir V. Putin is willing to escalate the fight, whether Europe’s unity can be maintained this winter as energy prices soar and the potentially changing political environment in the United States that could result in a decrease of military support to Ukraine.
As winter approaches, the stakes have been raised again in the war. Giles said that Russia would like to keep it up. But the Ukrainian successes of recent weeks have sent a direct message to the Kremlin, too. Giles said that they are capable of doing things that take us by surprise.
The strikes of Monday and the rest of the week were proof that Putin was angry at what he had been through in the war.
The Ukrainian military also reported Wednesday that more than 30 settlements in the regions of Kharkiv and Sumy came under fire, with some of the shelling directed from Russian territory.
“Kherson is returning under the control of Ukraine, units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are entering the city,” the Ukrainian military intelligence agency said in a statement.
During the summer there was a suggestion that the war could be lost if the West and Russia thought that the Ukraine could defend its territory.
“The Russians are playing for the whistle – (hoping to) avoid a collapse in their frontline before the winter sets in,” Samir Puri, senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the author of “Russia’s Road to War with Ukraine,” told CNN.
If they get to Christmas with the frontline looked roughly as it is, that will be a huge success for the Russians.
A successful counter-attack by Ukrainian forces, especially with a thrust southwards through Zaporizhzhia towards Melitopol, would raise the stakes for the Kremlin still higher.
Landing a major blow in Donbas would send another powerful signal, and Ukraine will be eager to improve on its gains before temperatures plummet on the battlefield, and the full impact of rising energy prices is felt around Europe.
But there has been a regular, and costly, lag between what the Ukrainians badly need and when it gets delivered. As one Ukrainian official told CNN this month, “We need help yesterday and we are promised it tomorrow. The lives of our people are different between yesterday and tomorrow.
NATO leaders have vowed to stand behind Ukraine even after the war is over and many European countries rely heavily on Russian energy which could endanger the public’s trust in them if there isn’t signs of improvement on the battlefield.
Much of the country’s electricity supply was disrupted on Monday and Tuesday by Russian missiles but Ukrenergo says it has been restored to normal. But Ukrainian Prime Minister has warned that “there is a lot of work to do” to fix damaged equipment, and asked Ukrainians to reduce their energy usage during peak hours.
As Russia begins a new offensive in eastern Ukraine, the US and its allies are skeptical Moscow has amassed the manpower and resources to make significant gains, US, UK and Ukrainian officials tell CNN. “It’s likely more aspirational than realistic,” said a senior US military official.
Jeremy Fleming, the UK’s spy chief, says that Russian commanders on the ground know that their supplies are running out.
That conclusion was also reached by the ISW, which said in its daily update on the conflict Monday that the strikes “wasted some of Russia’s dwindling precision weapons against civilian targets, as opposed to militarily significant targets.”
The Ukrainians’ agility has been reinforced by infusions of Western hardware, much of it a generation better than Russian armor. To start with, it was British and US anti-tank weapons and Turkish attack drones that helped halt the Russian drive toward Kyiv by hammering the flanks of exposed columns, ambushing vulnerable points along their telegraphed avenues of approach.
The occasional bombardment of missile strikes is going to be a feature used for shows of extreme outrage, since the Russians don’t have enough precision weapons to maintain that kind of high-tempo missile assault into the future.
The effects of such an intervention on manpower is limited, as the number of active duty troops in Belarus is less than that of Russia. It would endanger another assault on the northern part of the country.
“The reopening of a northern front would be another new challenge for Ukraine,” Giles said. It would provide Russia a new route into the Kharkiv oblast (region), which has been recaptured by Ukraine, should Putin prioritize an effort to reclaim that territory, he said.
Zelensky hopes for more supplies soon so he can drive his gains home. The leader wants to highlightUkraine’s success in intercepting Russian missiles, saying over half of the missiles and drones launched at Ukraine in a second wave of strikes on Tuesday were brought down.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday that Ukraine needed “more” systems to better halt missile attacks, ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels.
Later came pinpoint accurate HIMARS multi-launch rocket systems, long-range artillery from France, Poland and elsewhere, that enabled Ukraine to degrade Russian command posts, ammunition stores, and fuel depots. Real-time intelligence collection and fusion (supported by NATO), was integrated, creating a battlefield where Ukrainian units detected targets more quickly than the cumbersome Russian force.
Ukraine “badly needed” modern systems such as the IRIS-T that arrived this week from Germany and the NASAMS expected from the United States The person said that, Bronk said.
Exploiting Russian Forces in Donetsk: The Case of the Shock-Induced Shell Outburst in Kiev
Giles said that Russia could try to make the war personal for people of Ukraine, and around Europe as a way to force governments to stop supporting them.
Exploited forces will be used in some way. They could be used in support roles to help lighten the load on parts of the army that are exhausted. They could also fill out depleted units along the line of contact, cordon some areas and man checkpoints in the rear. Although they are unlikely to become a capable fighting force. Already there are signs of discipline problems among mobilized soldiers in Russian garrisons.
Russia would need to destroy an area the size of Connecticut if they captured the part of Donetsk still in Ukrainian hands. Western and Ukrainian officials agree that there are issues with the delivery of weapons to Russian front lines.
On Wednesday, a thunderous boom of incoming shells from the critical Eastern Ukrainian town changed that idea out of the system, as Ukrainian soldiers embarked on offensives to try and wrest control of Russian positions.
Our guide is Ukrainian military medic, who goes by her nom-de-guerre “Katrusya.” She throws our convoy into the city at a fast pace, wearing tinted sunglasses and fatigues.
She took us to see a building that had just been shelled. Our car stopped in the middle of another shell hitting nearby. We scrambled for cover as more artillery rained and whizzed down nearby for around 20 minutes.
The Russian army in Bakhmut, Ukraine: the battle against Russia is on the way… the rabble is going to be killed
A handful of residents are still on on the streets of Bakhmut. There are no windows, the streets are pockmarked with craters and industrial garbage bins have merged into small pools of trash.
Those who remain appear to be in a parallel universe. They’re out on their bikes, running errands and elderly women drag their shopping trolleys behind them, though which shops are open seems a mystery.
The chief military commanders were all in his meeting with him yesterday and all told him that we have to stand strong in Bakhmut. It’s important that we think about the lives of our military. But we have to do whatever we can whilst we’re getting weapons, supplies and our army is getting ready for the counter-offensive.”
Katrusya says that the intense fighting has cost the lives of numerous soldiers and civilians here. “I cannot give you the number, but it is a lot… there are lot of injured from both sides and also lots of dead.”
Russian forces are trying to capture the small town of Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine. The town that has become a symbol of resistance in Ukraine has been defended by top generals.
The city of Bakhmut lies at a fork that leads to two other Donestk towns: Slovyansk to the north and Kramatorsk to the south-west. All three are important to Putin’s control of the region.
Sources on Ukrainian social media “previously claimed that Ukrainian forces completely pushed Russian forces out of the eastern outskirts of Bakhmut” around Dec. 21, the report added.
However, he said Russian tactics have remained the same with small tactical groups “trying to deplete our defenses.” He said soldiers from the Wagner mercenary group are near Bakhmut, with Russian troops providing reinforcements where necessary.
Russian airborne troops are sometimes reinforced by infantry when there is no force in the direction of Bakhmut, according to Serhii Cherevatyi. We knocked them out. In fact, there will be no more Wagner fighters in a little while if they continue the same dynamics.”
“They are a rabble. There a few very well-trained professional fighters, but the majority of them have found themselves accidentally fighting in this war looking for money or for the ability to get out of jail,” she said.
Prigozhin has acted unilaterally to shame the Russian military and burnish his own reputation. The fighters taken prisoner by the Ukrainians told CNN they were sent forward in their hundreds and thousands into the Ukrainian line of fire, with no coordination with regular Russian forces.
She admits that the price for Ukraine will be very high. We will lose some of the best and the most motivated, but we will definitely win and it’s our land. We will win absolutely.”
The trouble is that Ukraine has only one surefire way of accomplishing this feat in the near term: direct NATO involvement in the war. Only the full, Desert Storm style of deployment of NATO and U.S. troops and weaponry could bring about a comprehensive Ukrainian victory in a short period of time. It is most likely that such a deployment would shorten the odds of Russia resorting to nuclear weapons, because they would have less chance of success if they lost.
Grisly videos filmed by Ukrainian drones showing Russian infantry being struck by artillery in poorly prepared positions have partly supported those assertions, as has reporting in Russian news media of mobilized soldiers telling relatives about high casualty rates. The videos have not been independently verified and their exact location on the front line could not be determined.
Russian forces are staging up to 80 assaults per day, General Zaluzhnyi said in the statement, which described a telephone conversation with an American general, Christopher G. Cavoli, the supreme allied commander in Europe.
General Zaluzhnyi said they talked about the situation at the front. Ukrainian forces, he said he had told his U.S. colleague, were beating back the attacks, “thanks to the courage and skills of our warriors.”
The increase in infantry in the east did not result in Russia gaining new ground according to the assessment from the Institute for the Study of War.
“Russian forces would likely have had more success in such offensive operations if they had waited until enough mobilized personnel had arrived to amass a force large enough to overcome Ukrainian defenses,” the institute said in a statement on Thursday.
The Russian forces shelled Ukrainian-held areas of the partially occupied Kherson region 71 times over the past 24 hours, including 41 attacks on the city of Kherson, the region’s Ukrainian governor Yaroslav Yanushevich reported on Sunday.
With Russian and Ukrainian forces apparently preparing for battle in Kherson, and conflicting signals over what may be coming, the remaining residents of the city have been stocking up on food and fuel to survive combat.
The Ukrainian soldiers began entering Kherson on Friday after Russian forces retreated from the strategic city.
The move puts Kyiv on the cusp of achieving one of its most significant victories of the war and deals a bitter blow to President Vladimir V. Putin, who just a month ago declared Kherson a part of Russia forever.
Since early Friday morning, unconfirmed videos and photos have surfaced online of the Ukrainian flag being raised atop the Kherson city administration building and police headquarters, as well as jubilant locals in nearby villages celebrating liberation. Several videos appeared to show Ukrainians tearing down Russian billboards signs that read “Russia is Here Forever.”
The residents of the region who had been through nine months of occupation were overjoyed as the soldiers moved through their towns.
Chaotic conditions in Kherson, Ukraine, during the night of the Russian occupation, said Oleh Voitsehovich, commander of a Ukrainian Drones unit
The commander of a Ukrainian Drones unit, Oleh Voitsehovich, said that there had been no equipment or troops from the Russians in his area.
“The Russians left all the villages,” he said. “We looked at dozens of villages with our drones and didn’t see a single car. We don’t see how they are leaving. They retreat quietly, at night.”
The apparent final hours of the Russian occupation overnight Thursday to Friday featured several explosions and were chaotic and disorienting, according to residents of Kherson reached by telephone on Friday morning.
Serhiy, a retiree living in the city who asked that his last name not be published for security reasons, said in a series of text messages that conditions in the city had unraveled overnight.
“At night, a building burned in the very center, but it was not possible even to call the fire department,” he wrote. There was no phone signal, no electricity, no heating, and no water.
Four residents reported seeing Russian soldiers in civilian clothes moving around parts of the city on Friday while there was no military presence.
At least 34 places in the Kherson region came under attack from Russian positions, according to the General Staff. The Russians are searching houses and taking boats and other watercraft, it was claimed.
Zelenskyy shared videos on social media of people chanting “ZSU!” and celebrating in the middle of the street.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian Army, and the Battle of Kyiv: After the Ukrainian Revolutionary War, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Receipts
Russian officials insisted that there is a legal hold over the territory after the withdrawal. Peskov said Friday that there can be no changes.
In his speech Zelenskyy stated that the people of Kherson are already removing Russian symbols from the streets and buildings even if the city is not yet completely cleansed of the enemies presence.
Under a program called “I want to live,” theUkrainian Defense Intelligence agency said it would guarantee the rights of Russian soldiers who surrendered.
The Russian withdrawal came amid reports of heavy damage to the Antonivsky Bridge — the area’s only road crossing over the Dnipro. Satellite images released by Maxar Technologies appeared to show a section of the bridge was completely sheared off.
In what appeared to be carefully staged remarks, Surovikin called the decision to withdraw to the eastern bank of the Dnipro River “difficult,” but one that would allow Russia to save the lives of military personnel and preserve Russia’s combat capability.
The initial announcement drew skepticism from Ukraine’s government, which previously voiced concern that a troop withdrawal there could be a Kremlin ploy to lure Ukrainian forces into the city.
Russian forces still have 40,000 soldiers in the region, and it would take about one week for them to leave, according to the defense minister of Ukraine.
The greatest mistake President Putin has made is giving the West the impression that Russia could lose the war. The early Russian strike on Kyiv stumbled and failed. The Russian behemoth seemed not nearly as formidable as it had been made out to be. The war was suddenly turned on its head by a mass of Russian incompetence and smart Ukrainians.
Putin said in a state television interview, excerpts of which were released on Sunday afternoon that Russia is “prepared to negotiate some acceptable outcomes with all the participants of this process.”
He said that “it’s not us who refuse talks, it’s them” — something the Kremlin has repeatedly stated in recent months as its 10-month old invasion kept losing momentum.
Putin’s remarks come as attacks on Ukraine continue. The city of Kramatorsk was hit with missiles in the afternoon on Sunday after a country wide air raid alert was announced.
After Bakhmut, we know that they could go further. They could go to Kramatorsk, they could go to Sloviansk, it would be open road for the Russians after Bakhmut to other towns in Ukraine, in the Donetsk direction,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an exclusive interview from Kyiv. “That’s why our guys are standing there.”
Bakhmut, the Soviet city that is now the site of the breaking of the defense, according to the head of Russia’s Wagner military company
A total of 16 people have been killed, according to the official, including three emergency workers killed in the process of demining the Berislav district of the region. 64 more people have been wounded, according to Yanushevich.
In the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region, the city of Nikopol was shelled overnight from heavy artillery, Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said. No casualties have been reported.
The head of Russia’s Wagner private military company has attempted to explain his group’s failure to capture the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, which has for months been the scene of intense fighting.
During a visit with fighters on the front line, Yevgeny Prigozhin stated that there is a fortress in every house, and that only clowns can predict these things.
“They say, ‘the combined forces have advanced into Artyomovsk and broken the defense,’” he said, referring to Bakhmut by its Soviet name. The name was changed back in the year 2011.
“Then they say: ‘What does it mean to “break through the defense?”’ ‘Breaking through the defense’ means breaking through the defense of one house this morning, then you have to go break the defense of the next house, right?” he said.
The Second Kremler Missile Attack on Kramatorsk, Ukraine: CNN Sees the First Arrival and the First Day of Operation
“Therefore the question is: “Who is going to take Artyomovsk? Which combined forces? He said it will be the combined forces. “And who else? It’s not the only one, who else is there?
A fresh burst of missiles ripped through the city of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine on Thursday, and sent flames and thick smoke into the air as screaming civilians scrambled to find shelter.
A CNN team had just arrived at the scene and heard the first incoming strike on Kramatorsk. CNN saw the second attack, with two impacts about one minute apart. Two women jumped from their car and ran shouting as other people took shelter. Shrapnel went off the protective glass of the CNN vehicle.
Paramedics rushed to the scene to treat at least one wounded civilian. Kramatorsk Mayor Oleksandr Honcharenko also confirmed that there had been a strike on the city, and urged residents to stay in bomb shelters.
Thirteen two-story buildings, three four-story buildings, a children’s clinic and school, garage and cars were damaged by them. Russians confirm their status as terrorists every day.
At least three people are dead and another eight are wounded after a Russian missile hit a residential neighborhood in Moscow. Two of the people wounded are in a critical condition.
Rescue workers tried to find survivors in the aftermath of Wednesday’s attack on eight apartment buildings. People were evacuated to a local school for shelter.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/02/europe/russia-ukraine-kramatorsk-missile-attack-intl/index.html
Operational Command North of the Ukraine-Sweik conflict: Shelling attacks in Kramatorsk, Sumy and Luhansk
“A country bordering absolute evil. And a country that has to overcome it in order to reduce to zero the likelihood of such tragedies happening again. We will find the culprits and punish them. They don’t deserve mercy.
Moscow’s attack in Kramatorsk came after a top Kyiv official said Russia is gearing up for a “maximum escalation” of the nearly years-long war in Ukraine.
“These will be defining months in the war,” Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told Sky News in an interview broadcast Tuesday.
Russian shelling appears to be increasing in parts of Kharkiv region recaptured by Ukrainian forces last September, as well as in other areas of northern Ukraine.
Kharkiv, Sumy and Luhansk regions: Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration, said two civilians were killed in Dvorichna, a village east of the city of Kharkiv. Russian forces are located on the bank of the Oskil River.
The town of Vovchansk has come under fire from the Russian side many times and five people were injured. “At least seven apartment buildings and two private residential buildings were damaged by artillery fire in Vovchansk,” he said on Telegram.
“The occupiers continue to shell the border of Sumy region with mortars” 12 times on Wednesday evening in the area of Seredyna-Buda — which is right near the Russian border — according to Operational Command North. No casualties were reported.
The Russian Defense Ministry said it has carried out attacks with aviation and shelling along the Luhansk-Kharkiv region border and that it has defeated enemy units in the areas of Masyutovka, Ivanovka and Nov.
Russian troops will have “open road” to capture key cities in eastern Ukraine if they seize control of Bakhmut, President Volodymyr Zelensky warned in an interview with CNN, as he defended his decision to keep Ukrainian forces in the besieged city.
Kherson region: There was heavy shelling of towns and villages recently liberated in the south of Kherson, according to the Ukrainian military. The city of Kherson was included on the list of areas that had been shelled.
In occupied parts of Kherson, Russians are “conducting filters against civilians” according to the military. The measures include the deportation to Russian territory.
“It’s unlikely Russian forces will be particularly better organized and so unlikely they’ll be particularly more successful, though they do seem willing to send more troops into the meat grinder,” a senior British official told CNN.
The US military had assessed it would take as long as until May for the Russian military to regenerate enough power for a sustained offensive, but Russian leaders wanted action sooner. The senior US military official told CNN that they now see that Russian forces are moving before they’re ready because of political pressures from the Kremlin.
On top of that, they have exhausted men and materiel that might have been badly needed as and when the Ukrainians eye counteroffensives in the months to come.
Austin said in Brussels that the US didn’t see Russia massing its aircraft before a planned air operation against Ukraine.
The Battle of Mariupol, Severodonetsk and Lysychansk: I Need Nothing Standing to Defend the First Ukrainian Army Regime
The rugged mass inflicted a lot of losses on Ukrainian units in the last few months, and some commanders have questioned the wisdom of clinging to both Soledar and Bakhmut.
By contrast, Ukrainian units have proved nimble and adaptive, harnessing drone technology, decentralized command and smart operational planning to exploit their enemy’s systemic weaknesses.
One of the most impressive examples of Ukrainian agility was when the Russian helicopter force seized the airfield on the outskirts of the capital, threatening to turn it into a bridge for further reinforcements.
This action underscored Zelensky’s determination (“I need ammunition, not a ride,” he said as he rejected an offer from the United States of evacuation from Kyiv), as did the defiance of a small detachment on Snake Island with their vernacular retort to a Russian warship, a gesture that became a national meme within hours.
But on this first anniversary of the Russian invasion Ukraine has more pressing needs than main battle tanks. The CNN team repeated the phrase repeatedly during their two week tour of frontline positions.
One lesson the Russians have learned is to place logistics hubs beyond the reach of strikes, so the timing of GLSDB deliveries and of longer-range systems promised by the UK to Ukraine is all-important – to defeat mass with precision.
The Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies expects “the first GLSDBs won’t arrive until this fall, likely missing widely expected Russian and Ukrainian offensives that will determine the war’s future trajectory.”
The never category has been frustrating for Ukrainian officials, which currently includes F-16 fighter jets and US Army Tactical missiles with a range of over 200 miles.
They still rely on massive bombardments of indirect fire to destroy defensive positions. This was the tactic in the cities of Mariupol, Severodonetsk and Lysychansk last year. In short: leave nothing standing that can be defended.
Ukrainians will need time to integrate tanks, fighting vehicles, and other hardware in order to break through the Russian lines.
The conflict could end up being a violent stasis with little ground changing hands amid relentless attrition and high casualties.
Prigozhin and the Russian withdrawal from Mariupol in August-September 2004: The road to a small, abandoned city? Comment on a letter by Johnson
The Ukrainian military said that Russia launched 70 rocket attacks and 27 airstrikes, in addition to the 27 they had already launched.
The fighting has been shown in a similar way in unofficial Ukrainian military accounts, with most access routes to the city cut off from the north and west.
The Mariinka area, which has been nearly obliterated by the fighting, is one of the areas reported to have offensive actions in.
The ministry said Russian forces carried out a series of attacks on Ukrainian positions, causing heavy losses for the Ukrainians.
For the first time in eight months, the Russians are on the cusp of taking a Ukrainian city, albeit a small one already abandoned by more than 90% of its prewar population.
But a Ukrainian withdrawal does not equal disaster if carried out in an orderly way. “It should be treated as a routine tactic rather than a harbinger of disaster,” Ryan says.
For sure, the end game in Mariupol and other cities taken last year ultimately involved men advancing street by street. Most of the time, they were Chechen units, militia from the self-declared Luhansk and Donetsk Republics, small numbers ofWagner operatives, and Russian regulars.
Bakhmut has become an obsession for the Russians in the absence of progress elsewhere, far beyond any strategic rationale. Anxious that Prigozhin was taking the bouquets while it was taking the brickbats, the Russian Defense Ministry started pouring more forces into the area.
Russia’s mobilization last autumn, recruiting some 300,000 men into uniform, provided a pool of foot soldiers and helped reconstitute units that had suffered heavy losses. At the same time, Prigozhin scoured Russian prisons and converted his military into shock troops for the campaign.
Russian forces have started to move away from relying onBTGs, combined arms formations that have been unable to fight the Ukrainian conflict. Their Achilles heel: a lack of infantry and reconnaissance.
As Rob Johnson wrote in the US Army War College Quarterly: “Basic battle skills (such as alertness, logistics management, and moving tactically across the terrain to avoid casualties) were substandard, and evidence suggests a significant lack of discipline.”
The First Day of the Ukrainian War: From U.S. to Canada, and from the Indian Embassy to the White House – Stay Tuned
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, visits the White House Friday for talks with President Biden, following her trip to Canada.
The top U.S. and Russian government diplomats met for the first time since the invasion began, in a brief walk and talk alongside meetings of the Group of 20 nations’ foreign ministers in India.
China’s president and Alexander Lukashenko from Belarus met in Beijing and said their nations’ friendship was unbreakable. China has been trying to end the war in Ukraine.
Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, one of Europe’s staunchest supporters of Ukraine, is set to remain in her post after her center-right party overwhelmingly won Sunday’s election.
You can read about previous recaps here. You can find NPR’s more in-depth coverage here. Also, listen and subscribe to NPR’s State of Ukraine podcast for updates throughout the day.
“This is tactical for us,” Zelensky said, insisting that Kyiv’s military brass is united in prolonging its defense of the city after weeks of Russian attacks left it on the cusp of falling to Moscow’s troops.
He said that if Russia is able to “put their little flag” on top of Bakhmut, it would help “mobilize their society in order to create this idea they’re such a powerful army.”
A rising number of casualties and a growing risk that hundreds or even thousands of Ukrainian troops may get cut off have some commanders questioning the usefulness of holding Bakhmut.
Iryna Vereshchuk, the country’s Vice Prime Minister, said on Tuesday that nearly 4,000 people remain inside the battered city. “We have special evacuation teams, who help, and armored vehicles. She said in a televised address that people often stay in the basement with no information about where they are. “This makes evacuation much more difficult.”
NATO intelligence meanwhile estimates that for every Ukrainian soldier killed defending Bakhmut, Russian forces have lost at least five, a military official with the alliance told CNN on Monday. The official warned that the 5 to 1 ratio was not an accurate estimate.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian Presidency, told CNN on Monday that they wanted to buy time to replenish their forces, and cause heavy losses on the Russians.
After Zelensky persuaded the US, the UK, Germany and a group of other European countries to increase their military aid to Ukraine, it is now racing to integrate Western weapons systems into its operations.
In recent days, a video emerged that Zelensky said showed the execution of a Ukrainian soldier by Russian forces, though Moscow has consistently denied accusations that it or its soldiers have committed war crimes.
According to the video, the man identified by the army as Tymofii Mykolayovych Shadura said “Glory to Ukraine” before he was executed.
“For us, it’s war for our freedom, for democracy, for our values. They believe that terrorism is their attitude. And they post this video…. This is the story of the war. This is the face of the Russian Federation,” he added.
Zelensky and the Ukrainian Army: a counter-offensive against the Kremlov-Stimolorow regime
One of the top generals in the Ukrainian Army has said that a counter-offensive could be launched soon in order to regain lost ground in Bakhmut.
Zelensky handed out awards to troops defending Bakhmut during a morale-boosting trip on Wednesday. He later said that he was honored to support the warriors who were defending the country.
The lengthy resistance of Ukrainian troops could yet vindicate his decision to ignore some Western calls to tactically retreat from Bakhmut as the Russian offensive closed in.
The spokesman for the Eastern Group of the armed forces said that the eastern city of Bakhmut is the focus of the enemy’s main attack.
It is not possible to tell if the intensity of Russian attacks around Bakhmut has dropped, because of factors such as weather, the rotation of units and the emergence of reserves by the Russians.
Cherevatyi stated there was a distinction between the battle for Bakhmut and fighting elsewhere. Further north, it wasn’t as clear if the North was under the influence of regular Russian forces, or if they were supported by the Luhansk militia.
The main task now is to replenish the enemy’s forces while units are being trained both in Ukraine and abroad, and equipped with new defense equipment.