HomeAs Putin's Army Regroup Ukraine Readies For New Russian Strikes

As Putin’s Army Regroup Ukraine Readies For New Russian Strikes

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Ukrainian officials claimed their armed forces are advancing against Russian military units in the region of Kyiv, hoping to take advantage of Moscow’s efforts to recover following weeks of severe losses.

Ukrainian soldiers are now engaged in intense activity in the adjoining towns of Bucha and Hostomel, officials claimed, after seizing the city of Irpin to the northwest of Kyiv this week.

Officials said Ukrainian forces retook a village in the Chernihiv district to the north of the city and were pushing for more victories, while cautioning that it was too early to claim Russian forces were withdrawing.

“I’m not sure one can call it a withdrawal of troops. At the very least it’s a regrouping, but perhaps they are really withdrawing,” governor of Chernihiv region, Vyacheslav Chaus said. “But that does not give us any chance to relax.”

As a goodwill gesture to help peace talks, Russia announced it would reduce its attacks around Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, and Chernihiv, while focusing on air and ground attacks in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. According to Ukrainian and Western authorities, Russia’s military has been forced to halt its advance due to massive losses in troops and equipment and is now attempting to dig in around Kyiv and Chernihiv in order to continue bombarding the cities while redeploying some units to the east.

Russia has been stepping up its attacks in Ukraine’s east, an area that Moscow has long wanted. For the past two days, the Russian military has been attacking the city of Lysychansk. Overnight, Russian military shelled the area, killing at least seven people and injuring scores more, according to officials.

Igor Konashenkov, a spokesperson for the Russian Defense Ministry, said on Thursday that Russian forces had gained momentum in their push to retake large parts of Donbas and claimed further missile attacks against Ukrainian military equipment.

The announcement came on the same day that Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law establishing the spring draft, which will enlist 134,500 new conscripts while others complete their voluntary service. Conscripts were used in Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in the past, but Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu warned on Tuesday that no fresh recruits will be deployed to conflict zones.

“There is an accumulation of Russian troops for new strikes in Donbas.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned overnight, “And we are preparing for this.”

Russian troops are reportedly employing artillery and mines to hide their withdrawal, according to Ukrainian military officials. The shelling of Kharkiv was also still going on.

Officials in the West are skeptical that Russia has abandoned its attempts to annex Kyiv.

“Russian forces continue to hold positions to the east and west of Kyiv despite the withdrawal of a limited number of units,” said the British Defense Ministry.

“Heavy fighting will likely take place in the suburbs of the city in coming days.”

The secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Jens Stoltenberg, stated on Thursday that Russian soldiers were reorganizing in preparation for operations in the Donbas region.

“At the same time, Russia maintains pressure on Kyiv and other cities. So we can expect additional offensive actions, bringing even more suffering.”

On the diplomatic front, there has been little movement in achieving a cease-fire. After peace negotiations on Tuesday raised hopes that an agreement might be on the horizon, the Kremlin announced the next day that no turning point had been reached. Several Western countries, which Ukraine seeks as security guarantors in any peace agreement, have expressed skepticism about making broad guarantees to rush to Ukraine’s defense.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, said on Thursday that he would try to speak with both Mr. Putin and Mr. Zelensky in order to arrange a meeting between the two. Turkey, he said, would be happy to be one of the peace deal’s security guarantors, though details would need to be worked out.

Any such meeting, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, should be preceded by a definitive agreement between Russia and Ukraine.

“Only after that can there be talk of a high-level summit,” he said Thursday.

According to Ukrainian officials, negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will resume via videoconference on Friday.

On Wednesday, the White House announced that it would declassify material indicating that Mr. Putin’s aides were misinforming him. “We believe Putin’s advisers are afraid to tell him the truth,” Jeremy Fleming, the chief of Britain’s eavesdropping intelligence agency GCHQ, stated hours later.

He also said that Russia’s Wagner Group, a private military organization largely comprised of former Russian special forces, was planning to send a big number of fighters to Ukraine to work with Moscow’s regular forces.

Meanwhile, Moscow tried to increase economic pressure on some of Ukraine’s supporters while also bolstering its own economy, with Mr. Putin adopting a rule mandating “unfriendly” countries to pay for energy imports in rubles beginning April 1. It’s unclear how strictly the new restrictions will be implemented right now. Germany was told this week that it could keep paying in US dollars, but that the funds would have to be converted to rubles by a Russian bank.

Russia declared a cease-fire near Mariupol on Thursday at 10 a.m. local time, allowing people who had been subjected to Russian shelling for weeks to flee to Zaporizhzhia, 140 kilometers to the northwest. According to Mikhail Mizintsev, head of the Russian Defense Ministry’s National Defense Control Center, further humanitarian routes would be created.

Thousands of people are still stuck in Mariupol, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, where photographs reveal one of the organization’s warehouses has been damaged. Since the beginning of their assault on Ukraine on February 24, Russian forces have been attempting to seize the southeastern port city. The city’s center is still under Ukrainian control.

Iryna Vereshchuk, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister, said three humanitarian corridors had been agreed upon for people to evacuate some cities, including Mariupol. According to the United Nations, the war has displaced 10.5 million people, including more than 4 million refugees who have fled the nation.

Image Credit: Getty

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