Illustrative photo – Ukrainian soldier in a trench on the border with Belarus in a photo from February 1, 2023.
Kyiv – Russian invasion forces are trying to fully control the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the east of Ukraine, the Ukrainian General Staff said in its operational briefing today. According to him, Ukrainian defenders repelled Russian attacks in 22 villages, including Bakhmut, in the past day, a day earlier he reported repelling attacks in dozens of towns and villages. According to Reuters, the Russians have intensified winter attacks in eastern Ukraine.
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Photo gallery: Russian invasion of Ukraine
“The enemy, who is trying to fully control the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, continues to concentrate his main efforts on conducting offensive operations in the directions of Kupjansk, Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdijivka and Novopavlivka – namely at Kreminna, Bakhmut, Avdijivka, Opytne, Marjinka and Vuhledar, ” states the command of the Ukrainian armed forces, which at the same time informs about the Russian shelling of a number of villages in the east and south of the country, including Kharkiv.
At the same time, the Ukrainian General Staff claims that Russia has suffered significant losses, especially in manpower. In his next report on the progress of the fighting, he states that the invading troops lost 910 soldiers in the last day. A day earlier, the staff reported the loss of 1,030 Russian soldiers in a day, which Reuters described as Russia's worst daily loss. In total, according to Kiev, the invading troops lost more than 134,000 people. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed on Tuesday that Ukraine had lost more than 6,500 soldiers in January.
Similar information from each side of the conflict cannot be independently verified, and Moscow and Kyiv do not report their own losses.
For some time, Kyiv has been expecting Moscow to expand and intensify its offensive. Some Ukrainian officials say the Russians could try to do so around February 24, the one-year anniversary of Russia's military invasion of Ukraine. After Russia failed to capture Kyiv last year and lost some previously captured positions under the onslaught of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the second half of the year, according to Reuters, Moscow is now making full use of the hundreds of thousands of troops it called up in the fall as part of a “partial” mobilization.
In the past few weeks, Russia has reported its first territorial gains in half a year, Reuters reports, but the invading army, despite apparently thousands of dead, is making slow progress and has not captured a major city so far this winter.
The American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) writes in its latest analysis on the development of the fighting that the Russian military command may be in a hurry to launch a large-scale offensive to capture Ukraine's Donetsk region in an unrealistic time frame and probably without sufficient combat power. “The Russian nationalist information space continues to express concern over Russia's inability to sustain a rapid and multi-pronged decisive offensive operation within the deadline,” the institute writes. of the (western) bank of the Dnieper River, skirmishes and reconnaissance actions of both sides continue on the complex network of islands and waterways in the delta of this river. “Both sides are also likely to have deployed small groups on the Kinburn spit,” writes the British Ministry of Defence. Kinburn Spit, according to ISW's earlier information, allows to control the entrance to the mouths of the Dnieper and South Bug rivers, but also to the cities of Mykolaiv and Kherson. important river and provided a warning against any attempt by the adversary to launch a major attack across the river,” writes the British ministry, according to which, however, it is unlikely that Russia would attempt an offensive crossing of the Dnieper, given the difficulty of such an operation.
