Ukraine's army chief warned on Saturday that the battlefield situation in the industrial east had “deteriorated significantly in recent days” as warm weather allowed Russian forces to launch a new offensive on several stretches of the front more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) long. Line.
In an update to the messaging app Telegram, General Oleksandr Sirsky said Moscow had intensified its attacks “significantly” since President Vladimir Putin extended his nearly quarter-century rule in a previously scheduled election last month that saw anti-war candidates banned from the polls. Ballots and independent voices have been silenced under the Kremlin-backed media blockade.
According to Sirsky, Russian forces were “actively attacking” Ukrainian positions in three districts in the eastern Donetsk region, near the cities of Liman, Bakhmut and Pokrovsk, and began launching tank attacks, as drier and warmer spring weather made it easier for Russian forces. Heavy vehicles to move across previously muddy terrain.
Sirsky said: “Despite the heavy losses, the enemy is intensifying its efforts using new units (equipped with) armored vehicles, thanks to which it periodically achieves tactical success.”
A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman on Saturday confirmed control of a village that had been the scene of intense fighting for nearly eighteen months. Analysts from Ukraine's non-governmental Deep State group, which tracks developments on the front lines, had reported Russia's seizure of Pervomaisky, about 45 kilometers (28 miles) southeast of Pokrovsk, in the early hours of Thursday.
Moscow forces also captured Bohdanivka, another eastern village close to the city of Bakhmut, where the bloodiest battles of the war took place nine months ago until it fell into Russian hands last May, the group said in an update on the Telegram app on Saturday. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense shortly after denied Bohdanivka's arrest and said “heavy fighting” was continuing there.
As the war in Ukraine enters its third year and a vital US aid package for Kiev remains in Congress, Russian forces are ramping up pressure on exhausted Ukrainian forces on the front line to prepare to seize more territory during the spring and summer.
Russia relied on its superior firepower and personnel to intensify its attacks across eastern Ukraine. It has increasingly used satellite-guided glider bombs – which allow aircraft to drop them from a safe distance – to attack Ukrainian forces short of troops and ammunition.
Germany also announced on Saturday that it would deliver an additional Patriot air defense system to Ukraine, days after Russian missiles and drones on Thursday struck infrastructure and energy facilities in several regions, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of homes, the company said. Special Power DTEK has been described as one of the most powerful attacks this year. The German Defense Ministry said it would “begin delivery” of the Patriot system immediately, without providing a specific timetable.
In an update on the website “
Putin described the strikes as retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on Russia's energy infrastructure, after a series of Ukrainian air strikes with drones over the past few months hit oil refineries deep inside Russia.
Starting last month, Moscow renewed its attack on Ukrainian energy facilities. On Thursday, a plant that was the largest energy supplier to the region surrounding Kiev, as well as the nearby Cherkasy and Zhytomir provinces, was completely destroyed.
At least 10 raids damaged energy infrastructure in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that more than 200,000 people in the region were without electricity and that Russia was “trying to destroy Kharkiv's infrastructure and leave the city in the dark.”
Energy facilities were also bombed in the Zaporizhzhya and Lviv regions.
The scale and precision of the latest attacks have alarmed the country's defenders, who say Kremlin forces now have better intelligence and new tactics in their campaign to take out Ukraine's power grid and halt its economy.
In the winter of 2022-2023, Russia targeted the Ukrainian electricity grid in an attempt to deprive civilians of light and heat and dampen the country's appetite for war.
In Russian-occupied southern Ukraine, a local Kremlin-appointed official blamed Kiev for a bombing that killed 10 people, including children, in a town in the southern Zaporizhya region the day before.
The Tokmak municipal administration reported on Telegram that the bombing hit three residential buildings on Friday evening. Five people were pulled alive from the rubble and 13 people were taken to hospital, according to Kremlin-appointed regional head Yevhen Paletsky. His allegations could not immediately be verified.
Ukrainian officials did not immediately acknowledge or comment on the attack.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, a Russian drone on Saturday dropped explosives on an ambulance called to a village near the frontline city of Kobyansk, wounding its 58-year-old driver, local governor Oleh Sinyhopov said. His claim could not be independently verified.
