Staring down an imminent Ukrainian counteroffensive, reports this week suggest Moscow may have reason to be nervous about the progress of Russian forces in the war-torn country.
On Friday, Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov suggested Kyiv was in the final stages of its preparations for a concerted pushback just as questions were being raised about Russian military supplies and morale.
“The preparations are coming to an end,” Reznikov told a media briefing.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky doubled down on Reznikov’s warning on Saturday, telling Scandinavian media that “there will be a counterattack, and I think it will succeed.”
Zelensky stopped short of providing operational details, but Glen Grant, a former British Army officer, now based with the Baltic Security Foundation in Riga, Latvia told Newsweek that Ukrainian forces may well use false attacks to throw off Russian forces.
The initiative is now with Ukraine, David Dunn, professor of political science at Birmingham University, U.K., told Newsweek.
Russia is facing key vulnerabilities in the face of the counteroffensive, including supplies of weapons and ammunition to the front line, according to Dunn, but also the morale, training, and professionalism of the armed forces.
With Ukraine’s strength in the information space, Dunn added, Russia’s forces are likely to be demoralized. Military vulnerabilities may also give rise to political issues, he added, causing problems back home in the Kremlin.
Russia appears to be anxiously awaiting the much-vaunted fightback and has long prepared for a determined Ukrainian push, including making defensive moves in annexed southern regions of Ukraine.
Occupying Russian forces have widened the use of “security measures and filtration efforts” in an effort to identify those supporting a Ukrainian counteroffensive, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War think tank said on Saturday.
The looming counteroffensive appears to have caused anxiety among Russian state media panelists, with one guest describing Ukrainian actions on the front lines as “alarming.” A state media host then described Russia as “preparing” for Ukrainian operations, adding, “The main thing for us now is not to make the mistakes that we obviously made in the autumn.”
“We should not relax because there is a lot at stake,” they added.
ALEXEY DANICHEV/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images
On Thursday, the head of the Russian-backed authorities in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, Denis Pushilin, told Russian state media that the military scenario was “tense” where fighting was fiercest.
Ukraine “has been making sporadic attempts to counterattack” in the contested Donetsk town of Vuhledar, Pushilin said, before adding that Russian forces “have been advancing anyway.” On Sunday, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said Russia continued to shell Vuhledar.
But earlier this month, Western analysts reported that Ukrainian forces had established positions on the eastern bank of the Dnieper River in the Kherson region. One military expert then told Newsweek that this presence was likely for reconnaissance.
Ukrainian forces traveled to the east bank “very often, conducting raids,” Kherson administration deputy head Yuriy Sobolevskiy told Ukrainian television, according to Reuters.
Trouble in Crimea
On April 24, the Moscow-installed governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said that Russian authorities had repelled naval drones in the key port city, beginning at 3.30 a.m. local time. Russia’s Black Sea fleet is based in Sevastopol, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014.
One drone was destroyed and another exploded but the windows of four buildings were shattered, Razvozhayev said on Telegram, adding that “all forces and services are in a state of combat readiness.”
On Saturday, Razvozhayev said a fuel tank in Sevastopol had ignited after a drone attack, blamed by Russian authorities on Ukraine. The fire covered an area of 1,000 square meters, Razvozhayev wrote, adding that one drone “was able to reach the oil reservoir” and another was shot down.
There were no casualties, he said, later writing on Telegram that the fire had been “completely extinguished.”
Kyiv has not claimed responsibility for the blaze, with a spokesperson for Ukraine’s military intelligence agency calling the fire “God’s punishment, in particular for the killed civilians in Uman” in a comment to Ukrainian media.
A wave of Russian missile attacks on central Ukraine on Friday, including on the city of Uman, killed 23 people, including several children.
“Regaining Crimea for Ukraine is one thing that will make [for] a huge political upset inside Russia,” Grant said. “Crimea is the prize,” and is the “one thing that could actually break Russia.”
There have also been reported incidents of drones reaching the Russian capital. Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to Ukraine’s interior minister, posted footage to social media which he described as a Ukrainian drone flying “calmly over Moscow.”
“It seems that the Kremlin has every chance to be in the affected area very soon,” he added, although Newsweek could not independently verify this footage.
Border Shelling
Russian authorities have reported waves of shelling in border towns over the weekend, prompting local officials in the city of Belgorod to share maps on Saturday showing residents where bomb shelters are located.
Belgorod is located around 25 miles north of the border with Ukraine, and the area’s regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said on Saturday that five villages on the border had lost electricity after shelling. The governor of the Russian Bryansk region, which also borders Ukraine, said on Saturday that two civilians had died in the Suzemka settlement after shelling, and then posted on Sunday that no further people had died in another round of shelling.
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Earlier this month, the border regions of Belgorod and Kursk, as well as Crimea, canceled their annual May 9 Victory Day parades, a staple of the Russian calendar, citing “security considerations.”
Putin’s Troop Woes
On Monday, the ISW think tank reported rampant Russian military blogger speculation that Putin had sanctioned changes to Russia’s military leadership on April 20. Russia’s command control is weak, Grant said, with Moscow’s fallibilities highlighted in its retreat from Kharkiv during Ukraine’s previous counterattack last year.
“There’s no moral imperative for them to stay,” Grant said. “They’re not fighting for Russia. They’re fighting for money and survival.
In the ISW’s previous assessment on Sunday, April 23, the think tank said the “generally exhausted” and “apparently disorganized” troops will be “significant obstacles to Russia’s prospects for defending critical sectors of the frontline.”
Ukraine will likely far outmatch Russia with its new NATO-standard tank capabilities, donated by Western backers in time for training ahead of the counteroffensive, Grant added. This is despite Russian state media reports of the new T-14 Armata tanks being rolled out in Ukraine.
“They can’t energize themselves much harder than they are at the moment,” Grant added. But they are lacking in another military capacity, he said, arguing Russia is “extremely short of radios” to coordinate operations, whether their forces are attacking or retreating.
The head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has previously called a counteroffensive “inevitable,” but increased the pressure on Russia’s military command over the weekend by saying his fighters would withdraw from the key Donetsk city of Bakhmut, should they fail to receive ammunition supplies.
“We are patriots and we will go to Bakhmut while we have the last cartridge, but these cartridges are left not for weeks, but for days,” Prigozhin said in a translated clip.
This “threat” could indicate the Wagner chief fears “that the Russian positions in Bakhmut’s rear are vulnerable to counterattacks,” the ISW said on Saturday.
