Dhe Ukrainian armed forces have countered the impression that the Russian side has struck a heavy blow against them. At the beginning of the week, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that Russian troops had used rockets to destroy a command post in Ukraine in the Dnipropetrovsk region. “More than 50 generals and officers” were killed, the spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry said. The Ukrainian army told the FAZ on Monday that the information did not correspond to the facts. It is a “false report”.
However, the Ukrainian side has confirmed further territorial losses in the extreme east of the Donbass front arc. Near the city of Severodonetsk, which has been heavily contested for weeks, Russian troops have succeeded in taking the village of Metjolkin. The governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Gaiday, announced on his Telegram channel on Monday that the enemy was further strengthening its reserves and continuously firing on the Azot chemical plant, where hundreds of civilians are said to have sought shelter. The Russian Ministry of Defense had already reported the capture of the town adjacent to Severodonetsk on Sunday, when the Ukrainian general staff was still talking about a partial Russian success. The city’s mayor reported on 24-hour street fighting on Ukrainian television on Monday. Most of the city’s residential areas are now in Russian hands, but Ukrainians still control more than a third of the city area, according to Oleksandr Strjuk.
Why is the Russian advance halting?
Experts from the American Institute for War Studies (ISW) assume that the Russian forces in the Severodonetsk area, despite the massing that has taken place and multiple superiorities, are still not sufficient to completely capture the last center of Ukrainian forces in the Luhansk region on the east side of the Seversky Donets River to take According to the latest assessment of the situation by the ISW, this is due to the fact that apparently undermanned Russian infantry units could hardly capitalize on the clear artillery superiority in urban combat.
British intelligence experts blame weaknesses in the Russian air force for Russia’s difficulties advancing in Ukraine. So far, this dangerous maneuver could have been avoided and not yet able to gain air supremacy, the British Ministry of Defense said in the morning update on Twitter. This has increased the pressure on the increasingly exhausted Russian ground forces.
London sees the reason for the reticence of Russian fighter pilots in the lack of training for modern war missions. However, in the four months since the beginning of the war, numerous Russian military aircraft have apparently also been destroyed during the flight maneuvers that have been carried out. Ukraine put the number of enemy aircraft destroyed on Monday at 216. The information cannot be verified.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expects Russia to step up its attacks again this week. A “historic week” begins, according to Zelenskyj, “when we hear the answer from the European Union about Ukraine’s candidate status”. Because of her, Russia will “demonstratively intensify its hostile actions”, targeting not only Ukraine but also other European countries. The Ukrainian defenders, however, held their ground.