While a military researcher from Moscow focused on goals related to thwarting Ukraine’s spring offensive, and striking the weapons supplies coming to it from its allies, a researcher from Ukraine confirms that the “spring offensive” will take place, and will be a “defining point” in the war.
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced that the “retaliatory” shelling, which has continued since dawn on Thursday, is to respond to the penetration of a group of “terrorists” from the Ukrainian side of the Russian borders on March 2, targeting citizens in the border Bryansk.
Russian missiles, including “Kinjal”, were launched to bomb the regions of Kharkiv (east) and Odessa (south), and explosions were heard in the capital, Kiev. On the other hand, Kiev forces targeted Donetsk and its suburbs under Russian control in eastern Ukraine with 46 missiles and artillery shells.
Broad goals
Alexander Artmatov, the Russian military analyst, monitors further targets for the bombing, related to thwarting the “spring offensive” that Ukraine intends, including:
• Preventing Kiev from regaining its energy capacity with the onset of spring; What will affect the supply of energy to weapons factories.
• Paralyzing the logistical capabilities provided by the West to Kiev for factories assembling marches and spy devices.
• Targeting more than one intelligence center in Kiev that manages operations on the eastern and southern fronts.
• Cutting off Kiev from the rest of the fighting fronts to ensure that those fronts are less supplied with Western weapons.
• The continuation of the intensive strikes puts Kiev under constant pressure and paralyzes its capabilities before the “spring counterattack”.
Wagner’s message.
The Russian military analyst adds a sixth reason, which concerns the Russian interior, which is to send a message to him that the regular army is the one that manages the operations on the fronts, and not the unofficial armed “Wagner” group alone.
Wagner, which specializes in training and supplying fighters to combat zones, has made headlines with news of Russia’s progress on the eastern front in Ukraine in recent weeks; What created a kind of competition between it and the army in proving who had the greatest role in the “success”.
Dispersion of forces
From Ukraine, Mykola Beliskov, a research fellow at the Ukrainian National Institute for Strategic Studies, downplays the impact of these Russian strikes, stressing that the spring counter-offensive that his country is preparing for “will be decisive.”
And he considered that Moscow is now “in a critical situation militarily, and what was achieved in Bakhmut is little progress, while Russia paid a heavy price in terms of lives and equipment,” citing statements by the head of “Wagner” in this regard.
In Beliskov’s opinion, Moscow’s goal in the last strike “is not to respond to the targeting of its territory, as the Ukrainian forces always target the Russian borders, but Moscow obscures in anticipation of internal anger, and the goal is to disperse the Ukrainian forces.”
It is inferred that “when looking at the targeting sites, we find that Moscow has struck most of the defensive capabilities on the contact lines close to the fronts in the east and south of the capital, in addition to plunging Kiev into darkness.”
On the ground, Ukrainian forces are holding on to their positions on the southern front (Kherson and Zaporizhia), while capabilities are declining on the eastern front (Bakhmut and Donbass), with the continuation of mutual shelling around the Dnipro River.
For its part, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on Facebook: “The enemy continued its attacks and showed no sign of stopping the storming of Bakhmut, and our defenders repelled the attacks on Bakhmut and the surrounding areas.”
In the heart of Kiev, the capital’s mayor announced that 15 percent of homes are without electricity and 40 percent without heating, after explosions in two districts.
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