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Russian forces in Ukraine appear to have shifted focus from a ground offensive targeting the capital Kiev, prioritizing what Moscow calls the liberation of the disputed Donbass region in the country’s industrial east, officials said Friday, suggesting a new phase of the war.
It seems too early to know whether this means that President Vladimir Putin is diminishing his ambitions in Ukraine, but Russian military moves this week show the assertion of the reality of a strong Ukrainian resistance.
Putin’s forces are under great pressure in many parts of the country, and the United States and other countries are accelerating the transfer of weapons and supplies to Ukraine. In recent days, US officials have said they are seeing evidence of the Ukrainian defense forces moving to offensive on a limited scale in some areas of the country.
Presenting the move in a positive light, the Russian deputy chief of staff said his forces had largely achieved the “main objectives” of the first phase of what Moscow calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine. Colonel-General Sergei Rudskoi said Russian forces had “significantly weakened” the Ukrainian army’s combat power and that as a result Russian troops could “focus on the main effort to achieve the main goal, the liberation of Donbas.”
A month of fighting has left Russian forces stranded in much of the country, including in the direction of Kiev. A senior U.S. defense official said Russian ground forces in recent days have shown little interest in advancing on Kiev, although they are continuing airstrikes on the capital.
“At least for now, they do not seem to want to continue aggressively or even offensively against Kiev. “They are focused on Donbas,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss US domestic assessments of the war.
Since the start of Russian aggression on February 24, President Putin has been vague in publicly defining his military intentions in Ukraine. He said the aim was to “demilitarize” and “denazify” the country’s government and “liberate” Donbas, part of which has been under Russian-backed separatist control since 2014. The Russian president rallied more that 150,000 troops on the borders of Ukraine and then ordered them towards different targets, instead of focusing on a single strategic target like Kiev or Donbas.
In the four weeks since the start of the offensive, the Ukrainians have put up a much tougher resistance than President Putin expected, and the advance of Russian forces has been slowed by numerous problems, including poor logistics and possibly poor morale.
French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking in Brussels, said it was “too early to say” whether the Russians had changed their approach.
“This shows very clearly that in any case, a (Russian) operation undertaken simultaneously from all sides was curbed by the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people. “This is what we have been seeing for several days,” he said.
Failing to achieve the swift victory he apparently predicted before launching the aggression, President Putin faces difficult choices: How and where to reinforce his tired ground forces and whether to attack the supply of Western weapons to the Ukrainians. . A major question about the second alternative is what cost will it have if it has to escalate or expand the war?
The top US official said it appeared Putin intended to withdraw Russian forces to Georgia as reinforcements for Ukraine. The official said it was unclear from where and how many forces could enter Ukraine.
Russian weaknesses in Ukraine may be the biggest surprise of the war to date. After two decades of modernization and professionalization, Russian forces have turned out to be unprepared, poorly coordinated, and restrained. The extent of the Russian troop losses is not known in detail, although NATO estimates that 7,000 to 15,000 died in the first four weeks – roughly similar to what Russia lost in a decade of war in Afghanistan.
Robert Gates, a former CIA director and former defense secretary, said President Putin “should be extremely disappointed” with his military.
“We see in Ukraine recruits (Russians) who do not know why they are there, they are not well trained, as well as major problems with command and control, and very weak tactics,” Mr Gates said on Wednesday.
Mick Smeath, London’s defense attaché in Washington, says British intelligence estimates that Ukrainian forces may have recaptured two towns west of Kiev.
“It is likely that successful counterattacks from Ukraine will prevent the ability of Russian forces to reorganize and resume their offensive against Kiev,” Mr Smeath said in a brief statement Wednesday.
President Putin is using siege tactics against major Ukrainian cities, bombing from a distance.
The Ukrainians face a tough battle even as the United States and its allies are accelerating and expanding the flow of critical weapons and supplies, including anti-aircraft missiles and armed drones.
Philip Breedlove, a retired Air Force general who served as NATO’s top commander in Europe from 2013 to 2016 and is now a European specialist at the Middle East Institute, said Ukraine could not win the war fully, but the outcome will be determined by what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is willing to accept in a negotiated solution./VOA
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