Russia plans mass mobilization-Ukraine
2023.01.04 09:02
Russia plans mass mobilization-Ukraine
Budrigannews.com – Vladimir Zelenskiy, the president of Ukraine, said that Russia planned to send more troops to a big new offensive, even though a strike that killed a lot of new recruits was drawing some of Moscow’s harshest internal criticism for the war.
Kyiv has been claiming for a number of weeks that Russian President Vladimir Putin intends to order yet another massive conscription drive and close Russia’s borders to stop men from escaping the draft.
Zelenskiy stated in his Tuesday night video address, “We have no doubt that the current masters of Russia will throw everything they have left and everyone they can gather to try to turn the tide of the war and at least delay their defeat.”
“This Russian scenario must be disrupted by us. We are planning for this. The terrorists must be defeated. Any endeavor at their new hostile should come up short.”
On Wednesday, Russia’s defense ministry said that a Ukrainian strike on New Year’s Eve that killed 89 Russian soldiers was caused by soldiers using their phones. This was the deadliest incident Moscow has acknowledged for its troops since the start of the war.
The deaths of numerous conscripts on New Year’s Eve could lower morale if Russia is planning a new mobilization. When Putin ordered the first call-up of reservists since World War II in September in response to military setbacks, hundreds of thousands of men fled Russia.
Last month, Putin stated that there was no need for additional mobilization. However, a little-known group claiming to represent widows of Russian soldiers issued a request on Tuesday for Putin to direct a massive mobilization of millions of men, indicating that the Kremlin may now be considering one. That appeal has received no response from the Kremlin.
Russia has effectively suppressed all direct opposition to the war, and harsh media regulations prohibit open criticism. However, it has given pro-war bloggers, some of whom have hundreds of thousands of social media followers, relatively free reign.
This week, many people have voiced their displeasure at the strike that killed Russian troops housed in a vocational school in Donetsk province on New Year’s Eve. Many of them are becoming increasingly vocal about what they believe to be a campaign that has been led with incompetence and little effort.
Instead of Putin, who has not spoken out about the attack, critics have targeted military leaders.
The official death toll from the attack was increased from 63 to 89 by the Russian Defense Ministry, who claimed that Ukraine chose Makiivka, the twin city of regional capital Donetsk, as the location of the base.
Putin’s war correspondent Semyon Pegov said on Telegram that the phone explanation “looks like an outright attempt to smear the blame” and that Ukraine could have seen the base in another way.
According to other pro-Russian bloggers, ammunition storage at the site contributed to the strike’s worsening. This is not confirmed by Moscow.
Pegov stated that the death toll would continue to rise: Those who were immediately identified are most likely the subjects of the announced data. Sadly, the list of the missing is noticeably longer.”
According to Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the think tank Foreign Policy Research Institute, Moscow had difficulty securely housing newly mobilized troops in the winter near the front.
“They will do worse in the cold than trained soldiers, and it is more difficult to disperse them because of a lack of small unit leadership,” he tweeted. He added, however, that housing them near ammunition “is simply a leadership failure.”
At first, Ukraine claimed that hundreds of Russians had been killed in Makiivka. However, Moscow has not confirmed that a separate attack on a base in southern Kherson province that night also resulted in the deaths of a large number of Russian troops.
HUMAN TOLL A representative of the intelligence section of the Ukrainian defense ministry, Andriy Cherniak, told the media outlet RBC-Ukraine that despite the significant human toll, Kyiv expected Russia’s offensive to continue this year.
“The Russian army may lose up to 70,000 people in the next four to five months, according to estimates made by Ukrainian military intelligence. Cherniak added, “And the leadership of the occupying country, Russia, is prepared for such losses.”
He stated that Russian leaders “understand they will lose but do not plan to end the war.”
The General Staff of the Ukrainian military reported on Wednesday in its daily update that Russia had targeted civilian infrastructure in the cities of Kramatorsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson with seven missile strikes, 18 air strikes, and more than 85 attacks from multiple-launch rocket systems in the last 24 hours.
It stated, “Among the civilian population, there are casualties.” Russia denies focusing on regular citizens.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the battlefield reports.
Ukraine’s General Staff additionally said Russian powers kept on focusing on progressing close to the Donetsk region city of Bakhmut, where the two sides are accepted to have lost a large number of troops in long stretches of extraordinary close quarters conflict.
Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, stated, “Numerous assaults on our positions (in the Donetsk region) continued even on New Year’s Eve, and in the first three days of the New Year the intensity of hostilities gradually increased.”
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesperson for the Kremlin, told Interfax that Putin intends to meet with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday. Together with the United Nations, Turkey acted as a mediator to reach a deal that allowed grain exports from Ukrainian ports.
On February 24, Russia launched what it referred to as a “special military operation” in Ukraine. The country cited the need to safeguard Russian speakers as well as threats to its own security. Moscow is accused by Ukraine and its allies of starting a war without warning to take territory.
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