Russian forces have largely abandoned efforts to seize more territory in Ukraine and switched to defensive positions ahead of Kyiv’s counter-offensive, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence said.
Kyrylo Budanov said Russian president Vladimir Putin’s forces were mainly concentrating offensive operations on trying to capture Bakhmut, where fighting has been raging for months, and the nearby towns of nearby Avdiivka and Marinka in the eastern Donbas region, saying “they want to wipe the settlements off the face of the earth.”
Major General Budanov, the head of the Ukrainian Defence Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate, said that Moscow had “completely switched everywhere to positional defence” elsewhere in the country.
He did not reveal details of the long-awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive, but said in the interview with the RBC-Ukraine website that it would be a “landmark battle in Ukraine’s modern history” and would result in the recapture of “significant” amounts of occupied territory.
Ukrainian troops have set up positions on the east bank of the Dnipro River in the Russian occupied Kherson region, war experts at the US-based Institute for the Study of War have said in what is seen as a precursor to the assault.
The Ukrainian military will rely on the latest supplies of Western battle tanks and other weapons and fresh troops that were trained in the West.
Ukraine’s president Volodymr Zelensky yesterday met with the country’s top military brass to discuss the battlefield situation as well as prospects for new weapons supplies and the preparation of troops.
“We have to accelerate the pace of weapons supply because every day of delay is the lives of our soldiers,” Mr Zelensky said on Facebook.
Ukraine is also rapidly increasing its production of drones as demand grows on the frontline. The government has relaxed import laws and scrapped taxes for drone parts and equipment.
The expansion is being funded by a successful fundraising campaign called the Army of Drones. More than $108m (£87m) has been raised with the help of celebrity supporters including Star Wars actor Mark Hamill.
On Monday 100 Ukrainian-made kamikaze drones designed to be crashed into enemy targets were sent to Bakhmut in the latest shipment.
Mr Zelensky yesterday condemned a Russian strike on a museum in Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region, which killed two women and injured 10.
He said: “The terrorist country is doing everything to destroy us completely. Our history, our culture, our people. Killing Ukrainians with absolutely barbaric methods.”
