Russia on Thursday claimed new territorial gains in Ukraine in the face of a Ukrainian army on the defensive and suffering from weapons shortages, two days before the second anniversary of the Russian offensive against kyiv.
In its daily report, the Russian Defense Ministry assured that the army had seized the village of Pobeda, not far from the destroyed town of Mariïnka, itself located near Donetsk, in the east of the Ukraine.
“The units of the Southern group of forces liberated the village of Pobeda,” he said, also assuring that the Russian army had improved its positions in the same area, around the villages of Novomykhaïlivka and Krasnogorivka.
Since the capture of Mariïnka at the end of December, a Ukrainian stronghold reduced to ashes after months of resistance and intensive bombardments, the front was largely unchanged in this sector.
The Ukrainian army did not immediately confirm the loss of Pobeda, saying it was fighting “in the area”.
“In the Mariinka sector, the defense forces continue to hold back the enemy in the areas of Georgiyivka, Pobeda and Novomykhailivka,” the commander of Ukrainian forces in the region, Oleksandr Tarnavsky, said on Telegram.
Series of demands
Russia had already claimed on Tuesday the recapture of the village of Krynky (south), on the occupied bank of the Dnieper, where the Kiev army had difficulty built a bridgehead in October, one of its only advances after the failure of its summer counter-offensive.
The Ukrainian army, for its part, denied having lost control of Krynky. “Our navies firmly hold the beachhead,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram on Thursday.
Above all, Moscow’s claim on Thursday comes after the conquest, announced last weekend, of the town of Avdiïvka, a fortress town in eastern Ukraine which resisted Russian forces, a symbolic victory for Russia.
While February 24 will mark the second anniversary of the outbreak of the large-scale attack on Moscow, Ukraine finds itself in an “extremely difficult” position on the front, Volodymyr Zelensky admitted on Monday.
Russia attacks and tries to push its advantage: the Ukrainian army faces multiple Russian assaults on both the Eastern and Southern fronts and suffers under bombardments.
Ukrainian forces are finding it all the more difficult to repel attacks as they are suffering a shortage of ammunition due to drying up Western aid, particularly that from Washington, blocked by President Joe Biden’s Republican rivals.
But the Ukrainian army does not remain inactive. She claimed Thursday “to have killed or seriously injured” around sixty Russian soldiers by striking a training ground in the occupied part of the Kherson region the day before.
This strike was corroborated by Telegram channels from Russian military experts close to the army, who had also reported a bloody strike on Tuesday against another Russian military field near the town of Volnovakha, in the occupied part of the Donetsk region of Ukraine.
North Korean missiles
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian security services (SBU) on Thursday accused Russia of using North Korean-made missiles to carry out deadly strikes in Ukraine against civilian targets.
“We are talking about ballistic missiles of the Hwasong-11 (KN-23/24) type,” said the SBU, specifying that these strikes had killed “at least 24 civilians” and injured more than a hundred.
Russia and North Korea have made a spectacular diplomatic rapprochement in recent months. Leader Kim Jong-un visited Russia in September to meet President Vladimir Putin, who in turn is expected to visit Pyongyang.
In addition to kyiv, South Korea and the United States argue that North Korea is sending weapons to Russia to support its assault in Ukraine. Moscow rejects these accusations.
Russia suffers significant losses according to Ukraine, but it has more men and superior weapons after having turned its entire economy towards the war effort.