Kyiv hesitant to mount counteroffensive for fear of heavy losses
May 12 2023, The Times
Russia has denied reports of a Ukrainian breakthrough on the war’s front lines, insisting that the military situation is under control.
Earlier this week a senior Ukrainian military official said Russian forces had dropped back from some areas near Bakhmut after limited counter-attacks by Kyiv’s forces.
Claims of a breakthrough have been reiterated by pro-Russians, with Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia’s Wagner private military company, accusing the troops of abandoning positions around Bakhmut.
Meanwhile Russian military bloggers, writing on Telegram, reported Ukrainian advances on Thursday.
Moscow reacted with an official statement from its defence ministry, saying: “The individual declarations on Telegram about a ‘breakthrough’ on several points on the front line do not correspond to reality.”
It did not comment on reports of withdrawals by Russian troops near Bakhmut but said its forces were “continuing to liberate the western parts” of the city.
“The general situation in the special military operation zone is under control,” it added.
The denial came a day after President Zelensky of Ukraine warned that a much-anticipated counteroffensive against invading Russian forces could be delayed because the country is waiting for supplies of western military aid.
“With [what we already have] we can go forward, and, I think, be successful,” he said in an interview in Kyiv for public service broadcasters that are members of Eurovision News, including the BBC. “But we’d lose a lot of people. I think that’s unacceptable. So we need to wait. We still need a bit more time.”
Zelensky said that combat brigades were “ready” but the army still needed “some things”, including armoured vehicles that were “arriving in batches”.
Ukrainian officials have expressed nervousness in recent days that expectations had been raised too high in the West for the counterattack.
A senior government official told the BBC that Ukraine’s leaders “understood that [they] needed to be successful” but that the assault should not be seen as a “silver bullet” in a war now in its 15th month.
Despite mounting losses and an embarrassing spat between the Russian defence ministry and the mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, Russian forces are heavily dug-in along 900 miles of front.
Large supplies of western weapons, including tanks, have flowed to Ukraine since it successfully pushed Russian invaders out of 10,000 sq km of territory in the summer and autumn of 2022.
Analysts say the quantity may still be inadequate to achieve a decisive victory in any new advance. President Biden has refused Kyiv’s pleas to hand over long-range missiles and F16 fighter jets.
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A Ukrainian military unit said this week that it had ousted a Russian infantry brigade from territory on the southwestern outskirts of Bakhmut, a key battleground in eastern Ukraine.
Dmitry Peskov, President Putin’s spokesman, said in a television interview on Thursday that he believed that Russian forces would take the city but he admitted that “emotions there are off the charts” and the war was “very difficult”.
Peskov played down the Prigozhin spat. “I’m not going to name names but I will say that, whatever claims are made, we are talking about the armed forces of Russia,” he said. “These are all Russian forces, and united forces. And they are pursuing a single objective.”
Prigozhin had said earlier that Russian forces were “fleeing” the area and had “pissed away” 3 sq km of land, although Russia still controls the large majority of the town.
In a video address on Tuesday, the mercenary leader said that an unnamed “happy grandfather” was convinced that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would end with victory for Moscow. “If he turns out to be right, God bless everyone. But what should the country do . . . if it turns out that this grandfather is a complete asshole?” Prigozhin said.
While there was speculation he was talking about Putin, Prigozhin claimed he had been referring to one of three figures linked to the scandal over his Wagner group not receiving ammunition as it fought to seize Bakhmut. One of those was Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff, he said.
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