The great losses of the Russian troops, which according to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, will soon exceed 40,000 casualties, force the Russian command to send reinforcements to Ukraine and involve new tactical groups in their eagerness to take Donbas.
“Russia’s losses could exceed 40,000 in June. They have not suffered so many losses in any war for decades,” he said in a video message broadcast early Monday.
A difficult figure to contrast due to the stubborn silence of the Russian command, which has not returned to give casualty figures in its ranks since on March 25 it recognized 1,351 soldiers killed in the military campaign.
According to the Ukrainian president, “the key tactical objective of the occupiers has not changed: they keep their pressure on Severodonetsk, where the battle for every meter is fierce,” he said, noting that the Russian Army is also advancing in the directions of Lisichansk, Bakhmut and Slovyansk.
“The Russian army is trying to deploy reserve forces in Donbas. But what reserves can they talk about now?” he asked.
According to the president, the Russians will try to “throw into battle the poorly trained recruits and those who were gathered through covert mobilizations.”
A view that he shares with UK military intelligence, according to which Russia “is preparing additional combat units for deployment in Ukraine.”
“In recent weeks (…) preparations have begun for the deployment of a third battalion. Usually no more than two of three battalions participate in operations at the same time,” British intelligence found, noting that the third battalion ” it’s often not fully formed.”
Something that would force the Russians to involve recruits or reservists mobilized to participate in the fighting in Ukraine, something that the Russian command has denied on several occasions and even sanctioned a dozen officers for sending some 600 recruits to the front.
Meanwhile, according to British intelligence, “Russia takes advantage of its advantage in the balance of forces and artillery to gradually take territories in Severodonetsk and its surroundings.”
The head of the Lugansk military administration, Serhiy Gaidai, acknowledged today that the territory of the Azot chemical plant, the last stronghold of the defenders of Severodonetsk, is “heavily bombarded by large-caliber enemy artillery.”
According to the official, around 500 civilians are blocked at the plant, 40 of whom are minors.
“Mass evacuation and the delivery of humanitarian aid are impossible due to the attacks. The military manages to remove a few people every day,” he said.
And although he continued to deny that the defenders of the plant are cornered by Russian forces, he acknowledged that “the shelters are not as strong as those in Azovstal”, the Mariupol steel mill in which several thousand Ukrainian soldiers barricaded themselves for almost two months. before surrendering.
Regarding Lisichansk, the city neighboring Severodonetsk and the next objective of the Russians on their way to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the main Ukrainian strongholds in the Donetsk region, Gaidai denounced that they “have intensified the attacks with large-caliber weapons, the city is daily subjected to destruction.
Meanwhile, the “ambassador” in Russia from Lugansk, Rodión Miroshnik, announced that the attack on this city “will happen shortly.”
“The main attack on Lisichansk will probably be carried out together with the attack on Siversk in order not to allow anyone to withdraw from the encirclement in the direction of Sloviansk,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.
Slowly but surely, the Russian Army continues -thanks to its technical superiority- its advance in Donbas, where it has focused all its efforts, to which kyiv insists on the importance of receiving more Western weapons.
The adviser to the Ukrainian Presidency, Mykhailo Podolyak, stated that the country needs at least “1,000 155-millimeter caliber howitzers; 300 rocket launch systems; 500 tanks; 2,000 armored vehicles; 1,000 drones” to achieve heavy weapons parity with Russia. and liberate the occupied Ukrainian territories.
For his part, Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov lashed out at the West, accusing it of not offering enough support to his country.
“Either the world does not understand what is happening at all, or it understands it but is tired and is willing to resign itself to the idea that Ukrainians die every day,” he denounced.
The Minister of Defense asserted that “we need help quickly, because every day of obstacles is measured in the blood of Ukrainians”, and did not hide his disappointment at the lack of will of his French and German counterparts to accelerate the delivery of weapons to Ukraine.
Conforms to The Trust Project criteria
