The President of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelensky , asked the population on Tuesday to prepare for new attacks with Russian missiles, expressed his distrust of the calls for peace negotiations from the Kremlin and acknowledged that the situation in some areas of the Donbas, in the This part of the country is “hard”.
This was stated by the president in his traditional message to the population, in which he stressed that the situation in the Donetsk region “now demands the maximum of forces and concentration.”
“The situation there is tough, painful. The occupiers use their resources – and they are important resources – to achieve even some progress,” he explained.
Purpose: Bajmut
After a series of defeats on the battlefield, Russia seeks a victory by capturing Bakhmut, an industrial city in Donbas near which the Russian Army has concentrated large numbers of troops and weapons. This enclave, located 65 kilometers north of Donetsk, the capital of the homonymous region, is a strategic communications hub, whose capture by Russian forces would pave the way for them to advance towards Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the main Ukrainian strongholds in the area. .
According to experts from the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW), the advance of Russian troops on the Bakhmut front has slowed down in recent days, although it is premature to say that the offensive to capture the city has reached its climax.
At the same time, the ISW considers that the Russian troops do not have enough troops or supplies to sustain the current intensity of their offensive in the Bakhmut area for a long time.
“In the last 48 hours, fighting has focused on the Bamut sector in the Donetsk region and near Svatove in the Lugansk region. Russia continues to launch frequent small-scale assaults in these areas, although little territory has been changed hands,” British Defense Intelligence reported on Tuesday.
Kremlin demands
Meanwhile, on the political front, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged Ukraine to accept the Kremlin’s demands to end the war or face the consequences. “The matter is simple: (the demands) are met by good means or the Russian Army solves it,” Lavrov said in an interview with the TASS news agency.
The head of Russian diplomacy stressed that the “proposals to demilitarize and denazify the territories under the (kyiv) regime, and to eliminate threats to Russia’s security from there are well known to the enemy.” “As for the continuation of the conflict, the ball is in the field of the regime and of Washington, which is behind it,” he said.
