As for months, Bakhmut continues to be the main square to be conquered by Russia on the Ukrainian front. But the advances of his troops are small and, in any case, the work of the mercenaries of the Wagner Group. The Russian Army is shelling the entire front line on Tuesday and has attacked 16 towns near Bakhmut with artillery, according to the Ukrainian military command. Kyiv also claims to have repelled a dozen attacks.
According to various Ukrainian and Western sources, these would be the first steps in the massive Russian offensive of which the Kyiv authorities have been warning for weeks.
It would be an attempt to offer Russian President Vladimir Putin a concrete victory a few days after one year of the start of hostilities (February 24) and before he delivers the state of the nation address to Parliament, which was postponed several times last year and has been announced for February 21.
"We are already seeing the beginning" of the new Russian offensive in Ukraine, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in Brussels on Monday. "We are seeing how Russia, President Putin, is sending thousands and thousands of more soldiers, more weapons, more capabilities, accepting a very high casualty rate, suffering great losses, but putting pressure on the Ukrainians," the Norwegian said before asking allies to expedite arms shipments to Kyiv.
The secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, said a day earlier on Ukrainian television that Moscow had started its "big offensive", but assured that it is in its beginnings and that it is running into "big problems". . The Ukrainian official stressed that "it is not the offensive that they expected."
The Russian activity of the last days would be part of these first, but slow, steps. On Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry reported in its daily part the destruction of arsenals along the entire front line, from Kharkiv (northeast) to Kherson (south). On Monday, he assured that his artillery had defeated Ukrainian units in several positions near Kupiansk (Kharkiv), causing the death of 30 soldiers, and that he had launched several attacks in other locations in Luhansk and Donetsk, with the result of 80 soldiers. dead ukrainians.
But the Ukrainian military command reported Tuesday that its forces had repelled a dozen attacks against various towns in Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk in the last 24 hours, causing "significant losses" to Russian troops.
Kyiv claims to have fortified its positions in Bakhmut, the main battlefront of the conflict. The Russian Army is shelling the entire front line on Tuesday and has attacked 16 towns near Bakhmut with artillery, according to the Ukrainian military command.
"There is not a single square meter of Bakhmut that is safe or not within range of enemy fire and drones," Pavlo Kyrylenko, the Ukrainian governor of Donetsk, said on Ukrainian television on Monday.
For his part, the pro-Russian leader of Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, assured on the First Russian Channel that there are "fierce fighting" near the city of Ugledar and the village of Paraskovievka. If Russian troops occupy the latter, they could block the road that allows the Ukrainian Army to continue supplying its troops in Bakhmut to the north.
"There is still no prospect that the Ukrainian army will give up its positions without a fight," he added.
British intelligence reported on February 14 that in the last three days Wagner's mercenaries had "made additional small advances around the suburbs of the disputed city of Bakhmut in the Donbass, including the town of Krasna Hora."
The Wagner Group already announced on Sunday that it had occupied this small town, ten kilometers from Bajmut and near Soledar, which it captured last month.
The Russian Defense Ministry announced on Monday the capture of Krasna Hora by "volunteers of assault detachments with fire support from artillery troops" of the army.
Russia has been trying for months to take control of Bakhmut (70,000 inhabitants before the conflict) and the small nearby towns. This would allow it to advance towards more important places in the region, such as Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the latter converted since 2014 into the administrative center of the Ukrainian authorities in the Donetsk region.
The Russian objective is then to control the entire territory of this region, which Moscow considers part of Russia since it was unilaterally annexed in September. In a decision that Ukraine considers illegal, three other regions were also annexed: Luhansk, Jershon and Zaporiyia.
But Russian troops do not fully control any of them. Where they have advanced the most is in Luhansk. The Ukrainian governor of this region, Serhiy Haidai, assured that Russia intends to reach its administrative border. "They have already brought a large number of troops to capture the entire Luhansk region," he told the media, according to Reuters.
If this is the "big offensive" Kyiv hoped and feared, for now it is nowhere near as potent as it was a year ago.
Both inside and outside Russia it is believed that the Russian advance will be slow. The most nationalist Russian bloggers, in favor of attacking Ukraine but very critical of the Russian Army, are calling for a change in strategy.
The head of the Wagner Group, the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, who by his comments is situated in that current, has gone so far as to say that Russia will need two years to control the entire Donetsk region.
Ukrainian military intelligence said on Sunday that "the Russian command does not have sufficient resources to launch large-scale offensive actions" and will therefore opt for tactical victories.
The US Institute for the Study of War (ISW) is of the same opinion, considering that Russia does not have the necessary potential to launch a major mechanized land offensive.
