The Kremlin troops showed Friday the desire to tighten the offensive on the Donbass, which they intend to “liberate”. In Kyiv and in the south, the Ukrainian forces keep the artillery at a distance.
From “on the spot”. This is how Moscow’s chief negotiator describes the Russian-Ukrainian talks on the main sticking points, despite a rapprochement on secondary issues. We could use the same expression to talk about the Kremlin tanks. They are even backtracking in some places, notably around kyiv and Mykolaiv to the east, according to Ukrainian propaganda.
For the first time since the beginning of the war, the Russian army therefore announced that it was going to concentrate its offensive on eastern Ukraine, which it “to free”. A strategy visible for almost ten days on the ground, even more palpable since this week when we saw the Russians bury themselves in defensive positions on the other fronts. Note that the Kremlin gave an assessment of its losses, only the second since the start of the war, on February 24. Moscow now reports 1,351 dead and 3,825 injured. A priori a largely underestimated balance sheet: the reality must be halfway between this figure and the 16,000 Russian soldiers whom the Ukrainian army claims to have killed.
In the early evening of Friday, the Ukrainian army admitted that the command center of its air forces had been bombed. A salvo of six cruise missiles caused “significant damage”. Some were shot down by anti-aircraft defense but the others hit several buildings.
It is therefore in the Donbass that the Russian offensive is now officially concentrated. A front line whose course has not changed much since 2014, and which has been slowly evolving in favor of Moscow since the start of its invasion of Ukraine. Military historian Michel Goya speaks of a “continued pressure from Russian forces” over the towns of Izyum and Severodonetsk, northwest of Luhansk, one of the two self-declared breakaway republics. To the west of that of Donetsk, it is the pro-Russian separatist forces which are on the offensive, notably at Avdiivka and Ocheretyne.
To the south, the port of Mariupol has still not fallen. Relentless shelling has been followed by street battles that have lasted for almost a week. The Kremlin soldiers are advancing slowly, “especially by fire” says Michel Goya, which estimates that 10% of the Russian forces deployed in Ukraine are there. Thursday, the leader of the Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, affirmed, video in support, that his men had taken the town hall. It was actually just an official building on the outskirts. In addition, ten days after the bombardment of the theater of Mariupol, where there were a priori more than a thousand civilians, the town hall says today that it fears a balance sheet of at least 300 dead.
The second city of the country, Kharkiv, which had 1.5 million inhabitants before the war, no longer appears in the sights of the Kremlin troops, who have never managed to lead a major offensive there. On the other hand, it remains the target of continuous shelling. A bombardment on a medical center on Friday left at least four people dead and three injured. The day before, it was a post office used to store humanitarian aid that has been targeted. At least six people died, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
It is around the capital that the Russians are most on the defensive. The Ukrainian army has been counter-attacking since the middle of the week. Difficult to know how much it has regained ground, especially in the northwestern suburbs of the capital where fighting is still ongoing. But the objective is clear: to keep the Russian artillery forces out of reach of the center of Kyiv, within a radius of about 25 kilometers. On the eastern flank, at Brovary, the Russians were even pushed back 35 kilometers according to the British Ministry of Defence.
Despite this defensive posture, the Russian army continues to fire targeted at strategic sites. Thursday evening, the Ministry of Defense claimed that one of its cruise missiles had destroyed the main fuel reserve of the Ukrainian army, not far from the capital. The information has not been confirmed by other sources, nor the loss of Ukrainian military equipment (including three anti-aircraft defense systems and four drones) that the Russian army claims to have neutralized.
Main breakthrough of the Russian army at the beginning of the war, the south of Ukraine also freezes in a war of positions. The Russians notably failed to take Mykolaiv, a veritable lock on the road to Odessa, and were even repulsed by the Ukrainians. Further north, they multiply reconnaissance missions, on both sides of the Dnieper River, with a view to an assault on Zaporijia, and possibly Dnipro.
Assault which, in fine, should be pushed back, for lack of troops, and because of this displayed will to concentrate on the east of the country. Especially since the occupation of the invaded cities, in particular the main one, Kherson, is strongly contested by the people who are demonstrating. Michel Goya even points out the appearance “improvised explosive devices”witness according to him of the establishment of a “rear guerrilla”.