Putin’s military has been pummeled by Kyiv’s soldiers, compelling Russia to abandon its offensive strategy against Ukraine.
Insufficiently staffed and poorly trained Russian battalions have halted their advance throughout the majority of the front line for the past six weeks, British intelligence reported today.
Analysts from the Ministry of Defense noted that at Kherson, companies of soldiers that should have consisted of 100 men fought with only six to eight men.
Despite Putin’s efforts to reinforce these forces with conscripted soldiers, it is unclear that Russia will be able to resume its offensive in the near future.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian soldiers are moving in the country’s north and south, pushing east from Kharkiv into Luhansk and advancing into Kherson.
Earlier in the week, it appeared that Russia might withdraw from the city of Kherson, but Ukraine now fears that Putin is actually bolstering its defenses.
The chief of Ukraine’s military intelligence service, Kyrylo Budanov, stated earlier this week that Russia has been evacuating civilians, but is deploying military troops into urban areas, constructing defenses, and planning to battle for the city.
The evacuation and discussion of withdrawal by Russia’s top commander may have been an attempt to entice Ukraine into a costly urban war, he continued.
In its Friday briefing, British intelligence stated: ‘It is possible that Russia has augmented some of its units [in Kherson] with mobilized reservists. Nonetheless, this is due to an exceedingly low level of personnel.
In September, Russian officers stated that each company in the Kherson sector consisted of six to eight men. Companies should deploy approximately one hundred workers.
In the last six weeks, Russian ground forces have transitioned to a long-term, defensive posture along the majority of the front line in Ukraine.
This is likely owing to a more realistic assessment that the severely undermanned and inadequately trained Ukrainian military is currently only capable of conducting defensive operations.
Even if Russia is successful in consolidating long-term defensive lines in Ukraine, its operational design will continue to be vulnerable.
To recapture the initiative, Russia must regenerate high-quality, mobile forces capable of dynamically opposing Ukrainian advances and undertaking its own large-scale offensive operations.
The war in Ukraine is now in its ninth month, with Kyiv in the lead and Putin achieving none of his objectives.
According to Putin, the declared objective of the invasion remains the ‘liberation’ of the eastern Donbas region, but in practice his troops have halted advancing practically everywhere save in the Donetsk town of Bakhmut.
In the meantime, they are being pushed back in the northern region of Kharkiv and the southern region of Kherson, which Putin has declared to be part of Russia.
After stating that he would use “all available means” to defend the area, this has generated concerns that he may employ nuclear weapons.
It follows Moscow’s accusation that Ukraine is preparing to detonate a so-called “dirty bomb” on its soil, which is a conventional explosion packed with radioactive material for the purpose of contamination.
The UN’s atomic watchdog has now been deployed to two districts of Ukraine where Putin believes the bomb is being constructed — at Kyiv’s request – although President Volodymyr Zelensky and his backers dismiss the allegations as false.
Instead, they assert that Russia may be preparing the ground to escalate the fight using one of its own nuclear weapons as a pretext.
When asked about Putin’s statement that he would never deploy nuclear weapons in Ukraine, US President Joe Biden answered last night, ‘Why does he keep talking about it?
Why is he discussing the capability to employ tactical nuclear weapons? The manner in which he has addressed this situation has been extremely risky, and he need to leave immediately.
“He can end all of this by leaving Ukraine,”