Russia is stepping up its attacks, but a dramatic new offensive has yet to materialize
(Photo: GENYA SAVILOV/AFP via Getty Images)
Russia launched nationwide missile strikes on Friday, as it has done with grim regularity for months. It fired a remarkably large number of S-300 missiles at the city of Zaporizhia and the Kharkiv region – as many as 35, according to Ukrainian officials.
It came a day following the leader of Ukraine’s Luhansk region, Serhiy Hayday, said that Russia was intensifying its attacks in that part of the country, something he believed was “part of the large-scale offensive that Russia has been planning “.
Although the balance now certainly seems to tip in the side of the Russian forces, a dramatic and successful spring offensive by Russia remains out of sight.
Ukrainian warnings: At the end of 2022, it seemed that Ukraine had the upper hand in repelling the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Months following retaking large swaths of territory in the northeastern Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, the Ukrainian army retook all territory west of the Dnipro river, including the regional capital of Kherson.
But the new year brought a series of warnings from Ukrainian officials of an upcoming Russian offensive, likely around the February 24 anniversary of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said Russia was planning a “maximum escalation” and that the next few months would be “defining”. Andriy Yusov, a representative of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence, said that February and March would be “very active.” President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia “wants revenge.”
Those warnings were accompanied by desperate calls for more advanced Western weapons, something that was partially fulfilled when Germany, the United States and other countries agreed to send main battle tanks to Ukraine in late January.
the russian position: Although incredibly difficult to assess, there have been some indications, both from Ukrainian and Russian sources, that Russia has been able to increase its mobilized reserves in eastern Ukraine.
“Our units, consisting mostly of mobilized men, gained experience, which made it possible to increase the stability of the units at the front,” Evgeny Poddubny, a pro-Kremlin Russian military blogger, wrote on Telegram on Thursday. He conceded, however, that Ukraine has also been able to replenish its own “depleted units.”
Hayday, the Ukrainian leader from Luhansk, said in late January that there were an “incredible number” of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine.
“There are a huge number of them. [tropas rusas en la zona de Svatove-Kreminna]. And a very large number of mobilized. And they constantly go on the offensive, almost all the time.”
Can those numbers be seen on the battlefield? Maybe, though not dramatically yet.
Hayday said Thursday that Russia is on the offensive near the Svatove-Kreminna front line, though so far without “much success.”
“We can conclude that some escalation has already started,” he said. “And we can say de facto that this is part of the large-scale offensive that Russia has been planning.”
