Whe attacks when in the first winter of the war? Just two weeks ago, the tenor among many Western experts was this: as long as snow and ice cover the country, the Ukrainians will launch an offensive – if at all – and the Russians will lock themselves in their positions. The Russian general staff, according to the credo, will first of all calmly replenish, train and equip its exhausted troops as best it can. Until then, he will continue to try to wear down the people in the Ukrainian cities with massive rocket attacks, such as the one on Kyiv on Friday.
However, different assessments were heard from the Ukrainian capital this week. The Ukrainian foreign minister was the first to issue a warning on Tuesday Dmytro Kuleba on his YouTube channel ahead of “a major Russian offensive,” which Moscow is advising for late January or February. Ukraine is trying everything possible to thwart them.
Defense Minister also spoke on Thursday Oleksiy Rezhnikov in an interview with The Guardian from that. So did President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Chief of Staff Valry Zalushnyy and Army Commander Oleksandr Syrsykyi in an article published by The Economist on the same day.
At the same time, Zalushnyj also commented on where the possible shocks of the Russian operations could be expected. Attacks could therefore take place in the Donbass, on the city of Dnipro or again on Kyiv. That wasn’t precise. Because with the exception of the areas west of the Dnipro River, where Russians and Ukrainians are facing each other, and the areas north of the Donbass, where the Kremlin’s troops are entrenched, the general could have said: An offensive can come from almost anywhere where larger Russian Troops stand.
An “extremely high blood toll” of Russia
At the moment, the fronts are largely frozen. The Bundeswehr registers battles everywhere. But they are “predominantly of lower intensity”, so General Christian Freuding, head of the Ukraine special staff, on YouTube on Friday. Excluded from the relative calm is a roughly 100 to 140 kilometer long front section in the Donbass between Soledar and Bakhmut. Artillery duels continued to take place there. In the Bakhmut area, the Russians would try to encircle the city’s Ukrainian defenders in a pincer movement, at the cost of an “extremely high blood toll.”
The mercenaries of the Wagner group recorded up to 500 casualties per day, the average probability of survival of their members was now only a few days. So the Russians continue to attack, even now, but a major offensive is not under way in Donbass.
A number of western researchers see, at best, cautious indications that this could change in the winter. The American Institute for War Studies (ISW) wrote on Wednesday in his situation report, the Russian troops had the potential for future offensives. However, it is assumed that the abilities are “still limited”. It is “highly unlikely” that they will be able to capture strategically important areas in the coming months.
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