Kiev reports highest Russian losses ever
07:10 | According to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, so many Russian soldiers have died this month. In February, 824 Russian soldiers died every day. The British Ministry of Defense defines the plausible figures. “It may be true, the Russians are starting their offensive,” says former Land Forces commander Mart de Kruif.
‘It might be true, the Russians are starting their offensive and then you have to attack. And the attacker always suffers more losses than the defence,’ says De Kruif. According to the former commander, an offensive has three phases and now we are in the second: breaking through enemy lines. “That’s where we are now, in Bachmut and Luhansk. Bachmut is of little value, I think most of the units are north of Luhansk.’
Is this the long-awaited offensive? ‘They certainly won’t start one day with drums and trumpets, it will take time. We have seen the first phase, the preparatory logistics and the recruitment of troops. They finished the construction one shot ahead of the Ukrainian forces. There is also enormous political pressure on the new commander Gerasimov.’
Situation on Monday 13 February
It Ministry of Defense of Russia it says its forces carried out a “massive attack” on Friday against critical energy facilities in Ukraine’s military-industrial complex. Ukraine’s Energy Minister German Galushchenko said Russia attacked power plants in six regions with missiles and drones, causing power outages in most of the country. Ukraine’s state energy company Ukrenergo said the situation in the country’s energy system was difficult but under control.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, said it could take two years for Russia to fully control the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine, two regions Moscow has said are a key target of the war. “If we are to get to the Dnipro, it will take about three years,” Prigozhin added, referring to a larger area that would extend to the vast Dnipro River which flows roughly north-south and divides Ukraine in two.
THE Russian troops they must capture Bachmut’s Ukrainian stronghold to continue their campaign, Prigozhin said in the same interview, acknowledging that Ukrainian forces are putting up fierce resistance. Russian forces have attempted to encircle and capture Bachmut, a town in the eastern Donbass region that has become the focal point of Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion and Moscow’s push to regain strength.
Russia he is ready to negotiate with Ukraine, but without preconditions, said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin. In an interview with the state channel Zvezda, Vershinin said that not Ukraine, but the US and the EU should decide on talks with Russia. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak, who led the country’s negotiating team in the early stages of the conflict, said “talks are out of the question”.
half of The main Russian battle tanks in Ukraine it was likely captured or destroyed in battle, a senior US defense official said. Celeste Wallander, assistant defense minister for international security affairs, has not provided an exact figure for the number of tanks lost since Russia’s invasion last February, but her estimate comes as Ukraine is set to receive an influx of heavy western tanks from his supporters.
The ‘increasingly direct rivalry between the Russian Ministry of Defense and Wagnerit is likely a “significant factor” in the supposed end of the Russian mercenary group’s recruitment of prisoners, the British defense ministry said. Wagner’s founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Thursday that the group had “completely stopped” recruiting prisoners to fight in Ukraine. The Defense Ministry update said Russia’s regular army “has probably now also deployed the vast majority of its called-up reservists under ‘partial mobilisation'”.
Andriy Ermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, said he and Volodymyr Zelensky visited the Turkish embassy in Kiev to remember the victims of Monday’s earthquake in Turkey and Syria. Ukraine has dispatched 88 rescue experts to help search for survivors, set up tents and provide first aid. The team is made up of search and rescue specialists, doctors, dog handlers and firefighters.
THE Russian Sports MinisterOleg Matytsin said Ukraine’s call to ban Russian athletes from the 2024 Paris Olympics was “unacceptable,” state media reported. He described the call as “a blatant desire to destroy the unity of international sport and the international Olympic movement”. His comments come as a group of 35 countries will demand that Russian and Belarusian athletes be banned from the 2024 Olympics, Lithuanian sports minister Jurgita Šiugždinienė said.
In a door the United Nations General Assembly The draft resolution to be adopted stresses that peace must guarantee Ukraine’s “sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity”. The draft resolution by Ukraine supporters, on the eve of the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is broader and less detailed than Volodymyr Zelensky’s 10-point peace plan he announced in November.
Zemfira, one of most popular singers in Russia, was placed on a list of “foreign agents,” according to Russia’s Justice Ministry, for supporting Ukraine and criticizing Russia’s “special military operation” in that country. The ministry added several more people to its list of “foreign agents”, including opposition politician Dmitry Gudkov, political analyst Abbas Gallyamov and activists Aleksandra Kazantseva and Tatyana Nazambaeva for “LGBT propaganda”.