{"id":282722,"date":"2024-03-01T07:47:40","date_gmt":"2024-03-01T07:47:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=282722"},"modified":"2024-03-02T06:47:21","modified_gmt":"2024-03-02T06:47:21","slug":"ukraine-sees-risk-of-russia-breaking-through-defenses-by-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=282722","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine Sees Risk of Russia Breaking Through Defenses by Summer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daryna Krasnolutska and Natalia Drozdiak \u2013 Yahoo Finance Feb 29, 2024<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Ukrainian officials are concerned that Russian advances could gain significant momentum by the summer unless their allies can increase the supply of ammunition, according to a person familiar with their analysis.<\/p>\n

Internal assessments of the situation on the battlefield from Kyiv are growing increasingly bleak as Ukrainian forces struggle to hold off Russian attacks while rationing the number of shells they can fire.<\/p>\n

Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said Thursday that mistakes by frontline commanders had compounded the problems facing Ukraine\u2019s defenses around Avdiivka, which was captured by Russian forces this month. Syrskyi said he\u2019d sent in more troops and ammunition to bolster Ukrainian positions.<\/p>\n

Pessimism among Ukraine and its allies has been mounting for weeks as they\u2019ve seen Russian forces seize the initiative on the frontline with vital aid from the US held up in Congress. The fall of Avdiivka and several nearby villages is fueling fears that Kyiv\u2019s defenses may not be able to hold.<\/p>\n

Those losses should act as a wake up call to Ukraine\u2019s allies, a European official said.<\/p>\n

\u201cUkraine can start losing the war this year,\u201d Michael Kofman, a specialist on Russia and Ukraine at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said on the War on the Rocks podcast.<\/p>\n

Russian President Vladimir Putin hasn\u2019t given up his original goal of seizing major cities including the capital Kyiv and Odesa, according to Ukrainian intelligence assessments, the person said, asking for anonymity to discuss matters that aren\u2019t public. If Russian forces reached Odesa, they would be able to shut off Ukraine\u2019s crucial grain export routes through the Black Sea and also open up access to Moldova, where the breakaway region of Transnistria on Wednesday appealed to Moscow for political support.<\/p>\n

Depending on the results of the current campaign, Russia will decide whether to continue with a slow, grinding advance, or to accumulate resources for a bigger strike to break through Ukrainian lines this summer, the person close to Ukraine\u2019s leadership said.<\/p>\n

Putin on Thursday repeated that he still plans to achieve the goals set out at the start of the invasion, which have remained unchanged since 2022, during an address to his Federal Assembly.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Sunday that munitions shortages are affecting the battlefield situation and warned that Russia is planning a new offensive in the spring or early summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will be difficult for us in the coming months because there are fluctuations in the US that have an impact on some countries, though the European Union showed it is capable of being a leader with its support,\u201d Zelenskiy said.<\/p>\n

With Ukrainian forces desperate for more ammunition, some allies, led by the Czech Republic, are looking into buying around 800,000 artillery shells from outside the EU to give to Ukraine.<\/p>\n

A major offensive would still be a challenge for the Kremlin after two years of war that have depleted its forces. Russia\u2019s efforts to take Kyiv, Kharkiv and move on Odesa in the early weeks of the war failed spectacularly.<\/p>\n

Despite Ukraine\u2019s shortages, Russia would need far more soldiers but also heavy tanks and vehicles to launch an offensive, Admiral Rob Bauer, NATO\u2019s military committee chairman, said in an interview on Feb. 17. So far, Moscow hasn\u2019t been able to ramp up production quickly enough in those areas, he said.<\/p>\n

Putin \u201chas more artillery, he has an ability to replace a certain amount of missiles every month, which he\u2019s using, but he\u2019s not been fully successful in terms of the increase in, for example, tanks and armored vehicles,\u201d Bauer said.<\/p>\n

He pointed to recent Ukrainian reports that, despite the loss of Avdiivka, Russian troops were killed at a high rate of seven for every soldier Kyiv lost.<\/p>\n

(Disinfo alert: recent assessments from reputable military analysts put Ukrainian losses at nearly 400,000<\/a>, and that assessment was made last August. Ukrainian forces have undoubtedly lost many more men since then. The Russians have lost nowhere near that number and certainly not seven times as many. This is another example of the Ukrainian intelligence using the Western mainstream media as a conduit for disinformation. Ed.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one-to-seven ratio means he will need a lot of forces to defeat the Ukrainians,\u201c Bauer said.<\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s strategy is to try to hold the front line as much as possible until the second half of the year, when it may get F-16 fighter jets and western ammunition production is due to ramp up. That would allow Kyiv to plan for another possible counteroffensive in 2025.<\/p>\n

–With assistance from Aliaksandr Kudrytski and Jessica Loudis.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We post this as it underscores how dire the situation is for Ukraine as the Russians continue to advance and ammunition shortages take hold. However, readers should be aware that this report also contains some glaring items of disinformation, which we identify <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-282722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-russia","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=282722"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282728,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282722\/revisions\/282728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=282722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=282722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=282722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}