Russia continues its attack on Ukraine and tries to advance east

Russian forces continued to shell Ukrainian towns over the weekend amid a bitter dispute over more land in the east of the country. Moscow was struggling to launch its long-awaited large-scale offensive in the region, according to Ukrainian authorities.

One person died and another was injured Sunday morning in the attacks against Nikopola city in the southeast of the Dnipropetrovsk region, according to regional governor Serhii Lysak. The shells damaged four residential buildings, a vocational school and a sewage treatment plant.

In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, one person was injured after three Russian S-300 missiles hit infrastructure overnight, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said.

Ukrainian forces too brake Saturday night five drones – four Shahed attack aircraft and an Orlan-19 reconnaissance model– on the partially occupied regions of Zaporizhia and Donetsk, according to the Ukrainian army.

Russian forces are trying to gain ground in the eastern industrial region of Donbass, made up of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. Ukrainian and Western forces have warned that Russia could launch a major new offensive there to try to turn the tide of the conflict as the war nears its first anniversary.

However, the Ukrainian authorities stated that Moscow was struggling to find the offensive.

“They have big problems with a big offensive,” Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told Ukrainian television on Saturday night.

They launched their offensive. they just don’t say they did it, and our troops are pushing them back with great force. The offensive they have planned is already gradually launched. But (it’s not) the attack they were counting on,” Danilov said.

A US-based think tank said pro-Kremlin military bloggers also question the ability to launch a major offensive in Ukraine. “They continue to look demoralized by the Kremlin’s chances of executing a major offensive”stated the Institute for the Study of War in its latest report.

The owner of Russian private military contractor Wagner Group, which is actively involved in the fighting in Ukraine, said this week the war could rage for years.

In a video interview published on Friday evening, Yevgeny Prigozhin said that could take 18 months to two years to ensure control of Donbass. He added that the war could last up to three years if Moscow decided to capture more territory east of the Dnieper.

Statements by Prigozhin, a millionaire close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and dubbed “Putin’s boss” for his lucrative contracts with the Kremlin, acknowledged the difficulties faced by the Kremlin in the campaign, which he initially hoped to resolve in a few weeks. when Russian troops invaded Ukraine on February 24.

Russia suffered a series of humiliating setbacks in the fall when the Ukrainian army launched successful counter-offensives to regain ground in the east and south.

Prigozhin said on Sunday that Wagner’s fighters seized the settlement of Krasna Hora, north of Bakhmut, a strategic town around which fighting has been concentrated in recent months.

(with information from AP)

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