Russia would have by now “failed” the offensive underway since the winter in eastern Ukraine, which aimed, among other things, at conquering Bakhmut. The United States say they are sure of it, while at this point they are awaiting the now famous Ukrainian counter-offensive in the spring, perhaps decisive for the fate of the conflict. Kiev announces that it has already set up 8 new assault brigades that will take part, for a total of 40,000 soldiers who, however, still need training.
“We plan to form more additional brigades,” Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klymenko announced. “The success of the operation in one direction or another will depend on each brigade, each unit, each soldier and policeman,” he then explained without specifying the total number of brigades, since this is sensitive security information.
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the Russians had lost 20,000 men killed and another 80,000 seriously wounded over the past five months. “Figures thrown at random”, replied the Kremlin, while the defense minister of Moscow, Serghei Shoigu, in turn assured that over 15,000 Ukrainians have been eliminated in the last month alone. Meanwhile, in what appears to be a new sabotage, a freight train has derailed in the Bryansk region, without causing any casualties.
According to the local governor Alexander Bogomaz, the convoy went off the tracks due to the explosion of a bomb along the route, for the second consecutive day. In reality, the losses, on both sides, are military secrets, and therefore the UN warns that the figures provided by the belligerents cannot be trusted. Just as the declarations of both sides on the shortage of weapons and ammunition afflicting their own forces, which could be a ploy to deceive the enemy, must be evaluated with caution. Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Russian private military company Wagner, in the front row of the war in Donbass, does it regularly.
“The bureaucrats of the military apparatus”, Prigozhin denounced again today, “committed the most serious crime that could be committed, and without weapons, ammunition and other necessary things, they forced the Russian people to die”. While Kiev continues to complain that the West does not provide all the weapon systems needed for the counteroffensive. But Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said the success of the operation would go a long way towards continuing military support from partners.
On one thing Kiev and Moscow say they agree: both said they knew nothing of that peace mission in Ukraine that Pope Francis had spoken of on the plane that was taking him back to Rome after his visit to Hungary. So no compromises. “Our state has already shown that it can win”, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram, reiterating that the goal is to reconquer “all those areas that are still temporarily under occupation”.
But Russian President Vladimir Putin shows that he does not want to abandon these areas, and indeed promises that everything will be done for the development of the regions annexed to Russia: Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Today he inaugurated with a videoconference ceremony the new tram network built in Mariupol, in Donetsk, conquered last year by Moscow’s troops. Precisely in Mariupol, already the scene of the siege of the Azovstal steelworks, ambitious Russian reconstruction projects have been underway for some time, with the participation also of some European companies, according to some sources in Moscow.
And Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin announced that new buildings have already been built in the four regions for a total of 67,000 square meters and others for 393,000 square meters have been renovated. Meanwhile, the accounts of the dead in the bombings of the last 24 hours are being counted: the administration of the part of the province of Zaporizhzhia occupied by the Russians has announced that five civilians have died and 15 were injured in a bombing yesterday on the town of Tokmak. According to Zelensky, however, two people were killed and 40 others were injured in a rocket attack launched by Russian forces the previous night against the city of Pavlograd, in the Dnipropetrovsk region located north of Zaporizhzhia. Yesterday, the Russian Defense Ministry confirmed the attack, saying that the facilities of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex in the city had been hit.
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