Russia continues fortifying for hundreds of kilometers their positions to prepare for the Ukrainian counter-offensive, especially in the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhia, while in the east is still in offensive mode and has taken another two blocks in the destroyed city of Bakhmut.
“In the axes of Zaporizhia and Kherson the enemy remains on the defensive,” the General Staff of Ukraine said in its evening war report.
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Russia strengthens its defenses
The spokesman for the Tavria Region Defense Forces, in southern Ukraine, Oleksiy Dmytrashkovskyi, said on Monday that Russian forces “continue to build fortifications, defensive lines.”
“Which is the reason? It is due to the fact that the enemy is very afraid of a counter-offensive,” he said on national television.
Russia fears that the Ukrainian counteroffensive could be launched against Zaporizhia and has already warned that Ukrainian troops are preparing to cross the Dnieper River in the Kherson region.
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Dmytro Orlov, the legitimate mayor of the city of Energodar in the Zaporizhia region and taken by the Russians early in the warindicated on his Telegram channel that the fact that Russia is preparing for the Ukrainian counteroffensive is not only seen in the dug trenches and the mining of territories near the city, but also by the existence of a “quick getaway” plan.
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An interactive map that is frequently updated by Brady Africk, American Enterprise Institute press officer and open source intelligence (OSINT) analyst, shows Russian defensive lines of hundreds of kilometers.
Russia erects 800 kilometers of fortifications to stop a Ukrainian counteroffensive. kyiv’s allies accelerate the delivery of vehicles and specialized explosives to overcome a defensive chain that Europe has not seen since World War II https://t.co/wiHcqNpdCG pic.twitter.com/Dpd4GTnpn1
— THE COUNTRY (@el_pais) April 17, 2023
From Belarus to Crimea
The line starts on Russian territory, almost on the border with Belarus, stretches along the Russian-Ukrainian border in the northeast, it plunges east onto Ukrainian soil through Lugansk and Donetsk down to Zaporizhia and Kherson, as well as the Crimean peninsula.
Russia began to build this extensive defensive line last October and for it has used fortifications, dragon’s teeth, trenches, anti-tank ditches and mines.
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All of this will complicate Ukraine’s planned counter-offensive, which was scheduled for April 30, supposedly with 12 brigades – nine of which are trained and equipped by the United States, NATO and other partners – according to leaked Pentagon documents published by Newsweek on Sunday.
The date of the counter-offensive is known to very few people, although the Ukrainian authorities themselves have stated that it will be closer to the summer.
The dangerous counteroffensive
According to the Financial Times, some 35,000 Ukrainian soldiers reinforced by Western tanks they will face some 140,000 Russian soldiers on a front of about 950 kilometersseparated by deadly obstacles of mines, trenches and anti-tank barriers erected by the Russians.
The order to launch the counteroffensive will only be given by the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelenski, advised by few people from his closest circle, such as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Valery Zaluzhny.
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The president held another meeting of the General Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief today, which discussed “the question of providing the defense forces of Ukraine arms and ammunition, in particular self-produced” and “the endowment and equipment of the newly created brigades”, indicated the Presidency. They also analyzed “the probable actions of the enemy in the near future”.
According to the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW), the Russian military command “seems to be increasingly transferring responsibility for offensive operations in Ukraine to troops Russian airborne”.
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The alleged return to the fore of its commander, Colonel General Mikhail Teplinski, after reports that he was replaced in January, “suggests that the Russian Defense Ministry is trying to work more closely with the Wagner Group to complete the capture of Bakhmut (…)”, the analysts write in their daily analysis.
The mercenaries continue to advance in Bakhmut, where they control just over 76% of the territory after eight months of fighting.
Some fronts still in the Russian offensive
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said today that “the assault detachments liberated two blocks in the northwest and center of the city of Artiomovsk”, Russian name of Bakhmut.
Since last Friday, always according to Moscow, the Wagnerites have taken nine blocks. The denunciations of a former mercenary shook Ukraine and the West on Monday.
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He told a Russian human rights activist that he had received orders to kill Ukrainian civilians in Soledar and Bakhmut, including teenagers, to which Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, stressed that “there must be a punishment.”
EFE
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