KYIV, Ukraine — As Western allies pile up heavy weapons to help Ukraine regain occupied territory, Moscow’s forces are intensifying attacks along the eastern front that President Volodymyr Zelensky described by Ukraine as the opening move for a new Russian offensive.
Both sides have been poised for more intense ground warfare for months, with Moscow expected to continue with its goal of capturing the entire Donbas region in eastern Ukraine and Kyiv in an attempt to drive out Russian troops completely. completely out of the country.
Now, with Russia shelling at a rate not seen since September and sending tens of thousands of troops to test Ukraine’s defenses above and below a 140-mile stretch of the front line in the Donbas, Zelensky said. that the increased Russian offensive was an attempt to gain the initiative.
“Russia really wants some big revanche,” Mr. Zelensky said this week. “I think it’s already started.”
Andriy Yusov, a representative for the intelligence service of Ukraine’s defense ministry, said he expected fighting to intensify in February and March. “We are on the verge of a very positive period,” he said during an appearance on Ukrainian national television.
Ukraine and Russia have been at war for almost a year. Since the fall of Ukraine, when Ukraine regained territory with counterattacks in the northeast and south, the fighting in the east has turned into muddy and frozen trenches, with each army taking losses. burden on the other side while gaining only negligible benefits.
However, since the Kremlin appointed General Valery V. Gerasimov to take over the troubled land Consequences of War Last month, Russia steadily added forces in the Donbas, Ukrainian military officials said. Ukrainian intelligence estimates that Russia now has more than 320,000 troops in the country — nearly twice the size of Moscow’s original invasion force. Western officials and military analysts have said that Moscow also has 150,000 to 250,000 troops in reserve, trained or deployed inside Russia to join combat at any time.
“We see that they are preparing for more wars, that they are mobilizing more troops, more than 200,000 people, and potentially more,” said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. told reporters during his visit to Korea on Monday. “They are actively buying new weapons, more ammunition, increasing their own production, but also buying more weapons from other authoritarian countries like Iran and North Korea.”
The increase in Russian bombing has been accompanied by a force build-up. Konrad Muzyka, a military analyst with Rochan Consulting, which tracks Russian deployments, said Russian artillery strikes have increased from an average of about 60 a day four weeks ago. to more than 90 a day last week, with 111 Ukrainian locations targeted at one target. day alone.
He also said that “the Russians are withdrawing a lot of equipment from storage areas.” However, he concurs with other analysts who say Russia will find it difficult to equip large numbers of new troops with tanks, armored vehicles and other effective equipment.
How the Kremlin will eventually deploy its tens of thousands of new fighters is also a matter of speculation.
According to Ukrainian military officials and analysts, Moscow may be preparing to open a new front, pushing troops across the Russian border to retake territory in Sumy or Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine after being driven out from many last month. It could escalate fighting along the eastern front to divert Ukrainian resources and hurt Kyiv’s ability to launch his own offensive. It may be planning an attack from occupied territory in eastern Ukraine to move deeper into the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, which make up the Donbas.
The only consensus issue is that Russia is not satisfied with the territory it has captured and is maintaining its ultimate goal of conquering Ukraine. The intensification of the offensive has continued the Russian pattern for almost a year: Ukrainian troops bleed through relentless attacks.
Oleksii Danilov, head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told Sky News on Tuesday that he did not rule out “any scenario in the next two or three weeks”.
“The main battles are yet to come,” he said.
Andrew E. Kramer contribution report.
