Russia tries to advance on the eastern front

Moscow/Leopolis, (EFE).- The Russian forces continued trying on Tuesday to break the Ukrainian defensive lines on the eastern front, where they collided with fierce resistance without achieving significant advances.

“There is fighting in the southeastern part of Vuhledar. The situation is very difficult, the fighting is fierce, but we see some progress,” Russian-imposed interim leader in the Donetsk region, Denis Pushilin, told Russian public television.

According to Pushilin, fighting is also taking place in the western part of Mariinka and that “there are possibilities” to be able to occupy new positions on that part of the Donetsk front later.

The cities of Vuhledar and Mariinka are located a few kilometers southwest of the city of Donetsk and have been the scene of fierce armed clashes for several months.

Ukrainian troops hold out in Bakhmut

Pushilin also alluded to the situation around the city of Bakhmut whose conquest is one of the main objectives of the Russians, but where for the moment, he said, “there are no signs that point to an enemy withdrawal.”

Bakhmut is one of the strongholds of the Ukrainian troops in the Donetsk region and is considered the key to access Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the largest cities in the Donetsk region controlled by Kiev forces.

The leader of the Wagner Group private military company, Yevgeny Prigozhin, stated that the situation in Bakhmut is such that “it cannot be said that it will be captured tomorrow, because there is great resistance there and a meat grinder is operating.”

Ukraine sends reserves

“The enemy is active in all directions, adds new and new reserves. Every day between 300 and 500 new fighters arrive at Bakhmut from all directions. The artillery fire is increasing with each passing day,” Prigozhin said.

He added that to the north of the city fierce fighting is taking place and that in that area there are no conditions to encircle the enemy.

“It is taken by assault house by house, square meter by square meter (…). I don’t know where they get that there is an encirclement and other things”, said Prigozhin, who attributes the Russian advances in the front area to his mercenaries.

The spokesman for the Eastern military group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Serhiy Cherevaty, confirmed the intensity of the fighting near Bakhmut, stating that the Ukrainian positions in that area were attacked 243 times during the day by Russian artillery and there were a total of 37 bouts.

Small advances of the Wagners

In its daily report, British military intelligence notes that in the past three days, Wagner Group forces have made small gains in the northern suburbs of Bakhmut, including the town of Krasna Hora.

At the same time, it highlights that the Ukrainian forces maintain the defense in the area and that the Russian advance towards the south of the city is barely progressing.

In the north, in the Lugansk region on the Kremina-Svatove axis, Russian forces are making offensive efforts, although – the report underlines – each local attack remains too small a scale to make significant progress.

“In general, the current operational landscape suggests that the Russian forces are receiving orders to advance in most sectors, but do not have enough offensive combat power in any axis to achieve a decisive effect,” the text summarizes.

A big Russian offensive on the first anniversary of the campaign?

With the proximity of the first anniversary of the start of the Russian military campaign in Ukraine, which will take place on the 24th, press reports have multiplied that the Russian Army could launch a new major offensive similar to the start of the campaign, when it broke into in the neighboring country from various directions.

However, Igor Guirkin, the retired Russian officer who led the pro-Russian armed uprising in Donbas in 2014 and sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment by a Dutch court for the downing of flight MH17 that caused the death of 298 people, today ruled out for the moment the possibility of a great offensive.

“Currently the Russian Armed Forces nowhere have a clear superiority over the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” Guirkin wrote on his Telegram channel.

According to him, the most the Russian Army can do is to concentrate forces and strike in one place, which will inevitably lead to “heavy casualties and the depletion of resources accumulated during the past mobilization and other preparations.”