Kiev’s troops lack oxygen, and not only due to the indiscriminate use of chloropicrin by Moscow’s soldiers. Commander Syrsky’s battalions fail to stop the enemy advance north of Avdiivka, just as they appear to have few tools (and men) available to slow down the final assault on Chasov Yar, near Bakhmut. Moscow is attempting to combine the efforts of the Avdiivka and Bakhmut groups, the strongest on the front, to strike towards Konstantinovka from the east (via Chasov Yar) and from the south (from the direction of Avdiivka and Ocheretyne). Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu would like to present Putin with a massive encirclement of the area on the anniversary of May 9th, causing the evacuation, under threat, of at least 40 thousand people to Toreck and Nju-Jork. If Kiev’s armed forces fail to slow down the Russian offensive in the coming weeks, then by the summer Moscow’s bear could reach the Pokrovsk-Kostiantynivka highway, through which all Ukrainian troops in the west and south are supplied of Bakhmut. It would be checkmate in Donbass, with the fall of a good part of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. It is worth mentioning that the Russian army has not conducted such large-scale, front-line offensive operations since the summer of 2022, when, with the support of Prigozhin’s Wagner, Severodonetsk and Lysychansk were captured.
The Kiev army is suffering on the field, Zelensky has urgently summoned the entire general staff, but the Ukrainian 007s are unable to obtain valuable information to anticipate enemy moves. There are very few glimmers of hope to cling to, and General Vadym Skibitsky, deputy director of the GRU, the military intelligence service, reveals that the biggest unknown of the war is Europe. According to him, if Ukraine’s allies do not find a way to further increase defense production to support Kiev, they risk ending up in Russia’s crosshairs. «Under these conditions, and without massive military support, the Russians would advance so rapidly until they reached the Baltics, which they would be able to conquer within a week. NATO’s reaction time would be slower”, he claims.
The Kiev debacle also reaches Parliament and Rada deputy Alexey Goncharenko, interviewed by the French TV La Chaine Info, admits that “Ukraine could ask for European troops to be sent if it does not have enough of its own forces in the conflict with Russia” , effectively accepting the invitation of Macron and Cameron, and as of yesterday also that of Poland.
Another hot area has become Odessa, hit with unprecedented violence 12 times in the last week. Putin has one more reason to get his hands on the strategic port city overlooking the Black Sea: he wants to annex it to build a military base in response to NATO, which is about to expand its base in the Romanian port of Constanta and which will play a key role in containment of Russian expansionism towards the west.
On the 801st day of the war, Russian air defense systems shot down 4 Atacms missiles launched over Crimea. In Kharkiv a raid by Moscow caused 7 victims and the industrial area set on fire. Murom, in Belgorod, is also on fire (5 injured) after a drone attack from Kiev. Moscow’s unmanned aerial vehicles injured 2 civilians in Dnipropetrovsk.
Over the past 7 days, the Russian armed forces have carried out 25 attacks on energy, transport, military and industrial facilities.
