Russia's summer offensive: Ukraine is preparing for a large-scale attack on Donetsk region – WP
Kyiv • UNN
Russia is planning a large-scale offensive in Donetsk region in the summer, Ukraine is preparing to defend itself. Experts believe that this may be Moscow's last chance to achieve its захватницьких goals.
Russia may launch a large-scale offensive in the Donetsk region this summer, which the occupiers have been trying to conquer since the beginning of the war in 2014. Ukraine is preparing to repel an intensified offensive. This is reported by The Washington Post, citing Ukrainian military officials and analysts, reports UNN.
Details
Warnings about an offensive, which some analysts say has already begun, come amid a lack of progress in the US-brokered peace process, as well as fruitless diplomatic meetings. Russia has rejected repeated calls from the US and Europe for an immediate ceasefire.
American analysts said that Russian President Vladimir Putin seems confident that he can still win the war militarily. Although sanctions and heavy losses are gradually undermining the power of the Kremlin's military machine. Experts say this summer may be Moscow's last chance for a serious push.
Control over the Donetsk region has been a priority for Putin since he failed to capture Kyiv at the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022. In September of the same year, Putin declared the entire Donetsk region, along with three other Ukrainian regions, part of the Russian Federation, despite the fact that he was unable to capture any of them completely.
The understanding that Russia will not stop at what it has seized comes against the background of Moscow's statements allegedly seeking to end the war diplomatically. At the same time, the Kremlin states that the cessation of hostilities can only be achieved by eliminating the "root causes" of the attack. After direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul on May 16, each side agreed to draw up a memorandum detailing its principles for a peace agreement.
Meanwhile, Russia launched some of the most massive and brutal airstrikes on Ukraine last weekend since the beginning of the invasion.
Analysts say that along with the main offensive on Donetsk, about 70 percent of which is controlled by Russia, it plans to carry out smaller attacks along the border of Sumy and Kharkiv regions in northeastern Ukraine to increase pressure on the already overburdened Ukrainian troops on the front line, as well as on the border with Sumy and Kharkiv regions in northeastern Ukraine.
Russia needed 80,000 troops to take the small town of Avdiivka in the Donetsk region in February 2024 after a grueling siege. Currently, 125,000 Russian troops are stationed on the border of Sumy and Kharkiv regions. According to data published by Ukrainian military intelligence, this is far from enough to take two regional centers.
Most likely, these troops will be used to occupy patches of Ukrainian land along the border, said Andriy Chernyak, a representative of Ukrainian military intelligence. Russia has already stated that it seeks to create "buffer zones" along the border to prevent further Ukrainian invasions into the Kursk or Belgorod regions of Russia.
However, according to Chernyak, Moscow troops will use these new strongholds inside Ukraine to put pressure on both regional centers, including the city of Sumy. Russian troops have already captured four villages along the border, Sumy Regional Governor Oleg Grigoriev wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.
Let us remind you
According to the results of the meeting of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief's Staff, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that Ukraine sees from the information obtained by intelligence and from open data that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and his entourage are not planning to end the war, but on the contrary, there is a lot of evidence that they are preparing new offensive operations.