Signs of a major and imminent Russian offensive are piling up on the Ukrainian front according to intelligence reports. Moreover, the fighting is still very tough in the east of the country. BFMTV.com takes stock this Wednesday of the evolution of the conflict.
The Ukrainian intelligence services feared it – and this from February 6 – “within ten days”, Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov rather “around February 24”. Regardless of the date, each passing day makes the fear of a major Russian army offensive on the Ukrainian front more tangible. The signs of an imminent launch of the operation accumulate under the eyes of the local authorities and NATO.
While waiting for this new aggression, it is not the “phony war” for all that. Fighting is raging, on the contrary, in eastern Ukraine. BFMTV.com takes stock this Wednesday of the current state of the conflict and its future developments.
• Why these balloons in the Ukrainian sky?
You had to look up to assess the threat this Wednesday. The Kyiv military administration thus reported the overflight of the Ukrainian capital by six Russian balloons, declaring that the anti-aircraft defense of the city had managed to shoot them down for the most part. The objective pursued through the sending in the air of this equipment equipped with retroreflective devices and recognition tools? “Detect and exhaust our air defenses”, according to this source.
Yuriy Ignat, the spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force, had mentioned these airships in an interview broadcast earlier this Wednesday on Telegram and translated by a journalist from BFMTV:
“The Russians launch balloons with metallic reflectors into the Ukrainian sky for reconnaissance purposes. (…) It would be a one and a half meter ball filled with gas and flying upwards. A diffuser angle is attached to the rope. The signal from the radar station is reflected by the transmitter, the radio engineers have to react”.
And the spokesman to resume: “The enemy wants the Ukrainian forces of the antimissile defense system to spend their forces and their means”. Yuriy Ignat noted the last virtue of these balloons for the Russians: allowing them to preserve their stocks of drones.
• What are the fights going on?
But Russia didn’t just roll its eyes. She also struck from these clouds. THE Kiev Independent indeed claimed that the invader had bombed a residential building in the city of Pokrovsk, 70 km from Donetsk, injuring at least twelve people according to regional officials quoted by the media.
It is however the status quo which prevails on land, where the fighting is still concentrated around the communes of Voulhedar and Bakhmout. After more than three months of siege, the first still challenges the Russian war machine, the besieger having already left 5000 soldiers (killed, wounded, or captured) on the ground according to the Ukrainian army, whose remarks were relayed here by Newsweek. As for Bakhmout, who has become one of the emblems of the stubborn resistance of the Ukrainians on the front, she still escapes the grip of the aggressor. And this, by the very admission of the group of Wagner mercenaries.
“We won’t be partying anytime soon. Bakhmout won’t be taken tomorrow, because there is strong resistance, shelling, the meat grinder is in action,” the chief’s press office said. Evguény Prigojine, on Telegram on Tuesday.
The Institute for the Study of Wara think tank with a particular focus on conflict, added in this painting the hostile actions of the Russian troops in the direction of Kupyansk and along the line uniting Svatove to Kreminna.
• How is Russia preparing for the offensive?
The Russian losses on the ground undoubtedly announce an imminent change of foot for the Russians. Or rather a change of wings. At least that’s what two Western intelligence executives believe who spoke on Tuesday. nearby FinancialTimesensuring that the Russians were massing planes and helicopters at the border.
“The Russian ground forces are quite thin so this is the clearest indication that the Russians are going to turn to the air battle”, first confided a member of the American administration. A diplomat working with NATO for his part highlighted the good state of their fighter: “More than 80% of their air force is in a safe place and operational”.
While Ukraine’s allies are currently transporting shipments of armaments and cohorts of additional vehicles to the front, heavy tanks in the lead, it is therefore, according to them, a priority to export new ammunition and new missiles to supply a Ukrainian DCA which should soon be in great need of them.
• Does Ukraine have the means to face a major operation?
But it is precisely on the shell side that the shoe pinches. The secretary general of the Atlantic Alliance slipped, during a press briefing held on Monday: “The current rate of ammunition use by Ukraine is much higher than our current rate of production”. “This puts our defense industries under pressure,” said Jens Stoltenberg.
Undoubtedly, this pressure should be attributed to the pressure that the United States is now putting on Ukraine. On Monday, citing an unnamed source in the US government, THE washington post assured that the Biden administration was actively trying to “make Ukrainians understand that the United States could not do anything and everything for them forever.”
Jens Stoltenberg however insisted on Wednesday: “Yes, things are happening, but we must continue, we must do even more, because it is absolutely necessary to supply Ukraine with ammunition. It is becoming a war of attrition and a war attrition is a war of logistics”.
• A Ukrainian counter-offensive in the spring?
Despite the reservations distilled in the secrecy of the chancellery negotiations, the United States has in any case no intention of letting go of Volodymyr Zelensky and his family. On Tuesday, on the sidelines of an international meeting in Brussels, during which he was able to meet his Ukrainian counterpart Oleksiy Reznikov, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin even promised: “The United States and the Allies promise to help the Ukrainian army to launch a counter-offensive in the spring”.
Previously, information published by theInstitute for the Study of War reported of a different timetable for such an intervention, situating it rather “in the summer”.
• What is the attitude of the Kremlin?
The Ukrainians and their allies are not the only ones to accelerate the movement. Russian institutions are also shaking up their agenda.
Indeed, according to the official Ria Novosti news agency on Wednesday, the Council of the Federation of Russia and the Duma – respectively the upper and lower chambers of the Russian Parliament – decided to bring forward to February 22 a meeting initially scheduled for 1 March and which will focus on “the integration of the new regions (the annexed Ukrainian provinces, editor’s note) into the legal framework of Russia”. The day before, Vladimir Putin will have addressed the nation, speaking in front of the deputies. A discourse that the autocrat will surely want to galvanize within its borders, and heavy with threats beyond.
