2023-09-03 15:46:01
Kiev says it has breached a stretch of Russian defence, and Moscow reports advances in its neighbor’s northeast
IGOR GIELOW
SÃO PAULO, SP (FOLHAPRESS)
Russia attacked a Ukrainian port on the Danube River on Sunday, injuring two people. The action comes a day before President Vladimir Putin receives his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss the return of the agreement that allowed the safe export of grains from Kiev through the Black Sea.
Thus, the use of Shahed-136 Iranian kamikaze drones this morning can be seen as a calling card regarding the Russian disposition or a mere demonstration of strength, following a week of relative calm in this particular theater of war, which seemed to signal goodwill before the encounter – even some ships managed to sail from Ukrainian ports undisturbed.
Erdogan was the mediator, together with the UN, of the agreement reached in July 2022 so that Ukraine, a major player in the world grain market, might sell its production. In exchange, Russia received guarantees that its agricultural products would also be facilitated by the West, despite the sanctions imposed on Moscow due to the war.
Putin said that the counterpart was not met, and the Turk has already agreed to this. On June 17, Russia left the agreement and began a bombing campaign once morest Ukraine’s port infrastructure, isolating the country’s main terminal, Odessa.
This Sunday, Erdogan’s advisory said he had “great and cautious hopes” regarding progress in his meeting with Putin, which will take place in the Russian resort of Sochi. It will be the Kremlin leader’s first meeting with a NATO head of state, the Western military alliance, since the beginning of the war.
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Erdogan walks a fine line, supporting Ukraine militarily and fulfilling his NATO obligations, but maintaining close ties with Putin, with whom he shares energy projects and from whom he has already purchased advanced weapons. Turkey has not adhered to sanctions once morest Moscow.
With the almost total blockade of Odessa, Kiev sought to direct its exports through two ports on the Danube River, Izmail and Reni, relying on the proximity of a few hundred meters to Romania, a member of NATO and the European Union. Putin shrugged his shoulders, and proceeded to punctually attack those facilities.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry did not say which of the two ports was hit on Sunday, but local media reported explosions in Reni. According to the folder, 22 of the 25 Shahed-136s launched were shot down, but in addition to 3 passing through the defenses, debris from others fell on buildings, leaving the two injured.
The whole crisis led to the transformation of the Black Sea into an active theater of the Ukrainian War, which began with the Russian invasion of February 2022. Kiev damaged two Russian ships with water drones and announced a blockade once morest Moscow ports in the region, which did not work It is made.
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The country no longer has a functioning navy, but it still has an armada of robot boats and small boats, which have also become targets of the Russians. On Saturday (2), three drones were sunk trying to reach the bridge that connects Crimea, annexed in 2014, to the Russian region of Krasnodar.
Another aspect of the current phase of the war is the Kiev counteroffensive, which opened on June 4 and has been the subject of much criticism in the West for its ineffectiveness so far. Every small village conquest has been heralded by Ukrainians as a great victory, even to maintain the support of their allies.
In that spirit, the British newspaper The Observer gave great prominence on Saturday to an interview by Ukrainian general Oleksander Tarnavski, who said he had broken the first of three lines of Russian defense at a point on the battlefront in Zaporizhia (south).
It is there that Kiev has devoted its greatest efforts, trying to advance towards the Sea of Azov, to the south, to cut the land bridge that Putin established last year connecting Crimea to his territory. Tarnavski himself claims that “everything is still ahead of us”, but suggests that the next two lines of defense are less dense.
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That may be so, but there is no report that Ukrainian forces were able to get more than small assault parties through the breach they claim to have made. According to Russian military analysts and the Institute for War Studies (USA), progress has been made, but it is not significant enough to sustain much optimism at this point.
The same institute confirmed, through satellite images, the Russian allegations that there was progress in its own offensive, in the northeast of the country, near Kupiansk (Kharkiv region, the second largest Ukrainian city). That axis of operations is the most problematic today for Kiev, as the heart of its forces is active further south.
Kupiansk and nearly 40 surrounding towns have been evacuated by Ukraine. According to Russian military bloggers, who should be read with the same degree of skepticism and interest given to Ukrainian officers, there is a huge advance in training in the region.
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Russians have more manpower. On Sunday, former President Dmitri Medvedev claimed that 280,000 soldiers were added to the Armed Forces this year. With regarding 1 million soldiers in active service in 2022, the country announced plans to increase the force to 1.5 million by 2026. In today’s account number 2 of Putin’s Security Council are conscripts (130 thousand) and contracted professionals .
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