KYIV, Ukraine — As Russia makes slow, bloody achievements in a new attempt to capture more of eastern Ukraine, it is pouring more conscripts and military supplies into the battle, Ukrainian officials say. although it is far from clear that Moscow can mobilize enough forces to sustain a protracted offensive.
The Ukrainian military said on Tuesday that Russian forces attacked in five different directions along the crescent-shaped front line in the east, relying on massive forces to try to capture Ukrainian positions. This tactic has allowed Russia to gradually increase its profits in recent weeks and slowly tighten its siege around the Ukrainian-controlled city of Bakhmut, according to US officials, but at the cost of hundreds of soldiers dead. and injured every day.
“The main threat is quantity,” Serhiy Haidai, the Ukrainian governor of the eastern Luhansk region, told Ukrainian television on Tuesday. “It is a giant monster that is at war with us, and it possesses enormous resources — not endless, but still there. There are too many of them.”
A day earlier, he said that an “all-out offensive” could begin after February 15, as the Kremlin tries to show progress around its one-year mark of aggression.
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency has warned that Moscow plans to mobilize an additional half a million troops to sustain its operation. That will be “in addition to the 300,000 mobilized in October 2022,” Vadym Skibitsky, Ukraine’s deputy intelligence chief, wrote in a lengthy statement released Monday night assessing the state of war.
But Western intelligence officials have questioned whether Russian President Vladimir V. Putin can quickly find hundreds of thousands more troops. without causing more backlash in water. Military analysts say the Kremlin is struggling to train and arm the troops it has.
Britain’s defense intelligence agency said on Tuesday that Russia had been trying to launch “major offensive operations” since the beginning of last month, with the aim of capturing the rest of the Donetsk region, including Bakhmut. . But it “gave only a few hundred meters of territory per week” because of a lack of ammunition and mobile units, the agency said. in its latest daily review of the war.
“It is unlikely that Russia will be able to build up the necessary force to significantly affect the outcome of the war in the coming weeks,” the agency concluded.
However, that hasn’t stopped Ukraine from sounding the alarm about Russia’s upcoming large-scale military buildup, as it agitates for more powerful weapons from the West. It’s first forecast that Russia will mobilize 500,000 new troops in January, a move that has not materialized.
The Kremlin continues to insist it is making progress in eastern Ukraine. Russian Defense Minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, told reporters that combat operations near Bakhmut and the town Vuhledarto the south, “successfully growing,” the official Tass news agency report.
While Moscow’s willingness to sacrifice large numbers of troops for small gains has been demonstrated time and time again throughout the war, Putin has not publicly announced the second wave of mobilization. two. The announcement of partial mobilization in Russia last September caused hundreds of thousands of people men of combat age fled the country.
Mr. Putin, according to analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank, has repeatedly chosen options for his war effort that he considers less risky at home, claiming only to mobilize partly after a series of setbacks in Ukraine.
Moscow’s latest offensive along the eastern front has relied on inexperienced recruits and former prisoners to rush towards Ukrainian positions, straining Kyiv’s forces but also causing casualties. heavy death. An opposition Russian publication, Mediazona, has said that fewer Russian prisoners are willing to sign up for combat because of high casualty reports among criminal colony recruits.
Haidai said on Tuesday that Ukrainian officials had observed Russian commanders keeping newly mobilized units apart. The reason, he said, was to keep information about failure in the Russian ranks from spreading.
“They have a large number of dead and wounded, and the commanders are trying to prevent panic among the fighters in this way,” Haidai said.
