Russia’s forces are suffering a shortage of tanks, the country’s defence minister has admitted, as Ukraine’s offensive in the south and east continued to push back the frontline with the help of western hardware.
Sergei Shoigu, on a visit to a military factory in western Siberia, said that production of armoured vehicles needed to be increased as Kyiv talked up the heavy losses being inflicted on the occupying enemy.
An increase in the manufacture of tanks was said by Shoigu to be necessary “to satisfy the needs of Russian forces carrying out the special military operation”, in comments that echoed those of Vladimir Putin earlier in the week.
Russia’s president had saidthe military was lacking sufficient “high-precision ammunition, communications equipment, aircraft, drones, and so on” while insisting that Ukraine had faced “catastrophic losses” in the first two weeks of its counteroffensive.
Hanna Maliar, a deputy defence minister, said Ukrainian forces were making ground, particularly in Zaporizhzhia, in the south of the country.
“Practically in all sectors where our units are attacking in the south, they have registered tactical successes,” she said. “They are gradually moving forward. At the moment, the advance is up to 2km in each direction.”
Maliar told the Guardian in an interview on Friday that the centre of the heaviest fighting had switched in the last week to the road to Mariupol, on the southern coast of the Donetsk oblast, where the Ukrainian offensive was slowly pushing back Russian forces, and that British Challenger tanks were “loaded and armed” to join the battle.
The civilian toll remains high, however, as the frontline fighting spills over into Ukraine’s urban centres. Earlier this week, the cities of Odesa and Kryvyi Rih were hit by missiles that appear to have been targeting the Ukrainian offensive’s supply lines for food and equipment.
On Saturday, Ukraine’s interior ministry said Russia’s shelling of the Kherson region the previous day had injured 23 people.
It said that among the injured were three children: a 15-year-old boy, a 16-year-old girl and an 11-year-old girl. In a post on Telegram, the interior ministry added that a number of buildings were damaged and a car was set on fire.
Moscow has claimed to have destroyed three drones targeting an oil refinery in the southern border region of Bryansk.
The governor of the Bryansk region, Alexander Bogomaz, said: “Russian air defence systems repelled an overnight attack by the Ukrainian armed forces on the Druzhba oil refinery in the district of Novozybkov. Thanks to the professionalism of our military … three aerial drones were destroyed.”
