The Kremlin wants to get back in control of the war and take over the rest of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. This means that Russian troops will soon launch a large-scale attack on Ukrainian forces.
In the past few days, Ukrainian officials have warned more than once about an upcoming Russian offensive, though they have given different dates. Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, said on Sunday that his country expected Russia’s occupying forces to start a new offensive later this month in the Donbas and the south, where they already control about 20% of Ukrainian land.
The attack is expected to happen about a year after Russian president Vladimir Putin started a full-scale invasion on February 24, and before modern tanks and other weapons recently promised by the west arrive. Reznikov said at a press conference in Kyiv, “Of course, we expect possible offensives from the Russians. They like to send a message.”
He also said that the modern tanks and other new equipment wouldn’t be there by then, but that the country had “built up resources and reserves that we can use to push back”
So far this winter, Russian forces have only made small gains in land near Bakhmut, in Donetsk province, and near Kreminna, in Luhansk.
But if they attacked now, they would be able to strike before western tanks and infantry fighting vehicles arrived and made it easier for Ukraine to attack.
In his nightly address on Saturday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that his country was entering “a time when the occupier throws more and more of its forces to break our defences.”
A military adviser for Ukraine told the Financial Times that Kyiv had “very solid intelligence” that Russia was planning to attack and that it could happen within 10 days.
A member of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Andriy Chernyak, told the Kyiv Post on Wednesday that Putin had told his army to take over all of Donetsk and Luhansk by March.
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