The Ukrainian war is accelerating on all fronts. After a winter with hardly any movements and whose main milestone was the pyrrhic capture of Bakhmut by Russia, the Kiev troops have started all the previous movements to carpet their announced offensive.
If the Kharkiv counterattack last September began with the publication of a video that showed hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers singing their anthem before going into action, now their commander-in-chief, Valeri Zaluzhni, has posted another on his Telegram channel that shows , with a Hollywood aesthetic, Ukrainian troops mixing the Christian Our Father with the patriotic call to arms “to drive the enemy out of Ukraine” and carry out “sacred revenge.”
Beyond their motivational role, the Leopard 2 A4 that appear in the images are striking, similar to those sent by Spain (or they may be, directly, the six Spanish battle tanks) as well as other Western components, reserved for this operation of historical importance.
Zaluzhnyi himself announced that “Ukraine is ready”, thus killing two birds with one stone: on the one hand, he launches the operation without the Russians knowing how, where and when it will happen. On the other, he shows that he is still alive, since Russian propaganda had invented an operation in which the Ukrainian general would have died. All fake. Zaluzhny is still alive and behind the wheel.
kyiv multiplied the attacks in depth in the last hours to crush Russian logistics, something usual when an operation of this magnitude is going to be launched. The ports of Berdyansk and Mariupol were hit by Storm Shadow missiles, London’s latest gift to the Ukrainian war effort. Thanks to those shells, the resistance is now reaching places where they weren’t before, creating a huge disruption to the Z troops, who will have to move all their weapons and fuel stores if they don’t want to see everything blown up.
In addition, the Russian rebels at the service of Ukraine returned to do their thing on the border after their excursion through Belgorod. This time, the points chosen to attack were the Brovnichi and Sushani passes, in the Briansk region of Russia. There is still no data on how many kilometers they penetrated or how many villages they crossed, but they are becoming a challenge for Russia, which has left that border line in charge of poorly armed conscripts.
Ukrainian troops were able to verify that Wagner’s mercenaries are withdrawing to three points outside the city of Bakhmut, as indicated by its owner, Yevgueni Prigozhin, known as “Putin’s chef”, to leave it in the hands of regular troops. Although the advance has slowed in recent days, the Ukrainian brigades defending that front are trying to close in on the Russians inside the destroyed city on the flanks. But within the current war effort, which seeks breakouts in the most critical places, this operation seems more secondary.
In these moments of doubt, after a disappointing winter in the military, in Russia the navajeo is intensifying between the most radical factions. In some places in the Russian Federation, electoral posters have appeared with the face of Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner’s boss, referring to his courage, unlike others “who live in a bunker”, in reference to Defense Minister Shoigu and even from Putin himself.
Another who has come to the fore is the terrorist Igor Girkin, one of those responsible for the downing of the commercial flight MH17 over occupied Ukraine in 2014, to criticize Yevgueni Prigozhin himself after doing it daily with Putin. Russian radicals are beginning to accept that the war is going from bad to worse and that it will be very difficult for Putin to get away with this adventure. That is why they are already placed on the starting grid. Among them, Prigozhin is the best placed, because he has an army at his service.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project