The Russian forces launched a series of punitive bombardments on cities, towns and villages in eastern Ukraine, even as Western and Ukrainian military officials and analysts said Moscow’s military offensive in the The country’s industrial heartland was being held back by troop casualties and problems with logistics, supply and low morale.
Russia reported almost 400 artillery attacks during the night and early hours of Saturday, mainly in the eastern battle zone.
Described the targets such as military, but Ukraine says residential areas, including the northeastern city of Kharkiv, are being devastated.
At the same time, the Kremlin redoubled its efforts to blame the West for the devastating war now in its third month.
The Russian invasion has killed thousands of people, left scars whole cities in ruins and has turned more s of 5.4 million people in refugees.
Moscow’s top diplomat, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, said on Saturday that an avalanche of armament from NATO allies was “ inflating” the battle.
But at the same time, in comments to official Chinese media that were reported on the ministry’s website, Lavrov insisted that Washington and its European allies were “absolutely indifferent” to the fate of Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a video addressed to the nation overnight, accused Russia of scorched-earth tactics in two large eastern provinces known together as Donbas, where the fighting is concentrated.
Moscow already had a foothold in two small breakaway states before the war, but seeks to seize the entire region.
“Russia wants to vacate this area,” Zelensky said, citing “constant and brutal shelling” against infrastructure and civilian populated areas.
Nowhere is it clearer, the Ukrainian leader said, than in Mariupol, the besieged port city in the southeast that he described as a “camp of Russian concentration” among the ruins.
Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed victory in Mariupol more than a week ago and said that Moscow forces control the city, while fighters and civilians Ukrainians are still holed up in a giant steel complex in increasingly desperate conditions.
Russia is blockading and bombing the complex from which black smoke could be seen billowing out on Saturday.
Videos posted from inside the labyrinth of tunnels and bunkers beneath the plant have shown sick and elderly women and injured, distressed-looking children and babies wearing diapers made from plastic garbage bags.
Ukrainian authorities were dealing Trying to organize evacuations of civilians on Saturday from Mariupol and other particularly dangerous parts of the battle zone, but such efforts have been repeatedly thwarted and Russian troops have been accused of shooting at those fleeing.
The civil-military administration in the eastern Popasnyansky district said on Saturday that buses full of evacuees had been shot at a day earlier. There was no immediate word on casualties.
The latest assessment of the conflict by British military intelligence, released early Saturday, described Russian forces facing some of the same difficulties that led Moscow to break up an earlier attempt to seize the capital, kyiv.
Despite Russia’s steps to improve its battlefield prospects in the east (raise troops and fire, streamline command, control and design shorter supply lines), its forces still face “considerable challenges,” the British assessment said.
The Russian military command is amalgamating and redeploying “disparate and exhausted units from failed advances” in the country’s northeast, the report said, adding that many of these units were likely suffering from low morale.
Also cited inconsistent air support and a “lack of unit-level skills”.
Other n New analysis, from the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, or ISW, said Ukrainian forces were “successfully holding off” Russian attacks in eastern Ukraine.
Moscow forces made limited advances west of the city of Severodonetsk, according to the analysis, but remained “stuck” at a strategic bottleneck, south of the city of Izyum.
Western analysts have suggested that nimble battlefield tactics could help the Ukrainians inflict significant losses on the Russians, as they did when kyiv was under threat.
The front lines are fluid in places, with Ukrainian forces “carrying out a defensive maneuver rather than holding static positions,” the ISW assessment said.
Neither party has made a practice of regularly publishing updated information on deaths in the ca mpo of battle.
Ukraine has been a bit more open, acknowledging a significant number of dead and wounded among its own troops. However, Zelensky adviser Oleksiy Arestovych on Friday described the Russian losses as “colossal”.
In an apparent effort to prevent further troop losses, Russia has been targeting percussion artillery throughout the east.
In Moscow, the Ministry of Defense reported on Saturday that it reached 389 targets, saying they included troop concentrations, weapons caches and fuel depots.
Ukraine has acknowledged that attacks on fuel depots fuel and refineries are causing fuel shortages.
Long lines of cars and trucks have formed at gas stations in various parts of the country.
Zelensky said in his late-night address that increased shipments from allies and other measures were expected to alleviate shortages in the next week or two, but in the meantime, Ukrainian officials have asked citizens to avoid n unnecessary trips in private vehicles. “Remember the needs of the army,” exhorted an official statement from the Ukrainian government on the Telegram messaging application.
Read more
Putin hitmen were “minutes” away from killing President Zelensky and his family, reveals Ukrainian leader
Putin orders massive mobilization and could declare a new world war in days, warns British defense secretary
The legendary “Ghost of kyiv”, identified as Stepan Tarabalka, died in combat and Ukraine claims that he shot down 40 Russian planes during the war