BBC reported on 2 February 2023 quoting the Ukraine’s defence minister Oleksii Reznikov has said “Russia is preparing a major new offensive, and warned that it could begin as soon as 24 February. Moscow had amassed thousands of troops and could “try something” to mark the anniversary of the initial invasion last year. The attack would also mark Russia’s Defenders of the Fatherland Day on 23 February, which celebrates the army. Moscow had mobilised some 500,000 troops for the potential offensive. The true figure recruited and deployed to Ukraine could be far higher.”
This apprehension comes at the time when the US-NATO are struggling to equip Ukraine with highly sophisticated German Leopard tanks. Germany is unlikely to agree until the US Abraham tanks accompany them.
The US has so far provided about $29 billion in military aid to Ukraine that is more than NATO has contributed all together. The US officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to Reuters, said Washington would be pushing Germany to at least allow for the transfer of Leopard tanks to Ukraine given an expected Russian spring offensive. While the United States aims “to break the dynamic of grinding warfare and near-frozen front lines in Ukraine with newly announced military capabilities” that it hopes will breath fresh momentum into Kyiv’s battle against Russian forces, the Pentagon is still not prepared to meet Kyiv’s calls for gas-guzzling M1 Abrams main battle tanks. Contrarily shifting the Ukraine war burden on other NATO and non-NATO countries.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian president Mr Zelensky wrote on social media about the apprehended attack: “[Russia will attack] By tanks. Fighter jets. Long-range missiles. The only way to stop Russian terrorism is to defeat it.” Ukraine is expecting to have highly sophisticated tanks from the US, UK and Germany. The country has recently renewed its calls for fighter jets to help protect itself from expected air attacks.
In September 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a general mobilisation of some 300,000 conscripted troops, which he said was necessary to ensure the country’s “territorial integrity”.
BBC has reported that Russia has claimed recent gains in the eastern Donbas region and its forces say they are moving in on the front-line town of Bakhmut after a battle that has lasted months and led to heavy loss of life on both sides. Last month, Russian mercenaries and regular soldiers seized the nearby town of Soledar and on Wednesday a Russian-appointed official, Yan Gagin, said Bakhmut was “operationally surrounded”.
The US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) recently said that Moscow could seek to “undertake a decisive action” and launch a “big offensive” in the east. The Ukrainian defence minister believes that his country’s commanders would seek to stabilise the front and prepare for a counter-offensive ahead of the rumoured Russian advance.
While the situation is getting worse, the sources at Russian authorities have said that the Russian army will soon launch a full-scale offensive in Ukraine. The appointment of Army General Valeriy Gerasimov as Commander of the combined group of Russian troops in the zone of the special military operation was a personnel reshuffle that will determine the further conduct of the operation. This decision by the Kremlin means that the Russian leadership has not abandoned its intention to conduct a full-scale offensive along the entire front line. Moreover, the “strategic-level general” will be tasked with resuming the offensive against the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.
This is said to be evidenced by the specifics of the new management scheme: Gerasimov’s deputies are high-ranking generals – Air Force Commander Sergei Surovikin, Ground Forces Commander Oleg Salyukov and Deputy Chief of Staff Alexei Kim. This means that three fronts are unfolding in Ukraine, which under a single coordinated command should launch an offensive in the coming days.
The first front is said to be the Donbass region, where the group is tasked with reaching the administrative borders of Russia’s new entities, the Donetsk and Luhansk Republics. The second is Nikolayev and Odessa, where the Russian army will have to seize the Black Sea coast of Ukraine and reach Transnistria. And the third, the key direction, is Kyiv, where the main command and control points of the Ukrainian armed forces and Ukrainian defence are located. The liberation of Kiev would mean the loss of Ukraine’s symbol city and its political surrender.
Russia plans to use the territory of the Republic of Belarus for a repeat offensive against Kiev. According to analysts of the Institute for the Study of War (USA), Russian troops are likely to advance from the Gomel region of Belarus and plan to capture Kyiv in February-March 2023.
At the same time, in order to develop some success after the capture of Kyiv and to move on, the command of the Russian Armed Forces will have to carry out a large-scale redeployment of its troops from the Southern Front to the north of Ukraine. However, experts say that in order to achieve this goal, the Russian Federation will have to significantly increase its grouping on Ukrainian territory, and Moscow has all the necessary resources to do so.
Furthermore, according to the information of the monitoring group ‘Belarusian Hajun’, Russian troops moved about 30 tanks from the Vitebsk Region to the Brest Region. The vehicles were transported by rail, and their final stop was the Obuz-Lesnovsky training range (230th Combined Arms Range of the Western Operational Command of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Belarus), where Russian Armed Forces units are currently stationed. In addition, Russia supplied Belarus with a new batch of Tor-M2K surface-to-air missile systems, as well as Iranian ‘Shahed-136’ kamikaze drones.
According to British intelligence, Russian mobilized servicemen are being trained at training camps in Belarus. At the same time, former Ukrainian ambassador to Belarus Roman Bezsmertnyy believes that this indicates that the Russian Armed Forces are actively preparing for a new offensive against Kyiv. According to his assessment, Russia is planning to create a strike force on the territory of Belarus with its further involvement in the Ukrainian conflict.
Seems, the “decisive” clash of titans will bring more misery and mourning not only to Ukraine but to the region too with high impact on the globe.
