As of: February 4, 2024, 7:06 p.m
By: Tadhg Nagel
Comments
Press
Split
Even if the counteroffensive is considered a failure, Ukraine is fighting.
Supply lines are the new target.
A strategy that pays off.
Kiev - Ukraine has intensified its efforts to undermine key Russian supply lines in the occupied south and east of the country.
This is also reflected in the increasing number of destroyed fuel transport vehicles reported in Kiev's daily battlefield reports from the Ukraine war.
According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, 937 tank trucks and tanks were destroyed or damaged beyond repair in January alone.
This is the highest monthly figure since the Moscow invasion began in February 2022. Already in December, Ukraine says 931 Russian fuel trucks and cisterns were destroyed - the second highest monthly total during the war.
This information cannot be independently verified.
It is likely that costly offensive activities by Russia, with Kremlin troops advancing in hotspots such as Avdiivka in the eastern Donetsk region and on the northeastern front near Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region, contributed to the heavy Russian losses.
Ukraine attacks strategically important oil industry - an “active defense posture”
Ukraine is also carrying out attacks on the strategically important Russian oil industry and the energy sector in the hinterland.
One of the most recent targets of drone strikes was an oil terminal in St. Petersburg, about 1,000 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
The oil refinery in the southern Russian Black Sea port of Tuapse also had to stop operations after a Ukrainian attack last week.
A week earlier, an oil depot in the Bryansk region on the border with Ukraine was set on fire by a Ukrainian drone strike.
Burning oil depots in the Bryansk region after a Ukrainian drone attack.
© IMAGO/Russia Emergencies Ministry
Following the failure of the Kiev counteroffensive in the summer of 2023, Ukrainian forces along the entire 600-mile front have now largely moved into an "active defense posture," a senior NATO defense official told US portal
Newsweek
in December .
Now they are preparing for a difficult year in 2024, which will be “hard work”.
Letting Russian forces bleed dry - Kiev spares its own troops in the Ukraine war
As was the case last winter, Ukraine's strategy is to bleed advancing Russian forces as much as possible while maintaining the strength of its own units, according to
Newsweek
.
This has already led to some withdrawals by Ukraine.
The town of Marinka - on the outskirts of the city of Donetsk - was abandoned in December.
The Ukrainian armed forces are currently still fighting in the fortress town of Avdiivka on the northwestern edge of Donetsk, but are forced to give up ground.
It is a bloody battle that is similar to the battle for Bakhmut, which ended in a tactical victory for Russia in May 2022.
Nevertheless, the strategy seems promising.
The head of Ukraine's Main Military Intelligence Service (GUR), Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, said on Tuesday (January 30) that despite minor successes, the performance of Russian troops on the Eastern Front was "not even close" to what Moscow had imagined.
Their offensive continues, but “at some point at the beginning of spring they will be completely exhausted,” Budanov continued.
My news
Ukraine speaks of “flying garbage”: Australia wanted to supply Kiev with F/A-18 fighter jets
Putin mocks Germany and its auto industry: “We should help them” read
“Our payment card is harder”: Söder explains how Bavaria wants to eliminate asylum “incentives” read
1 hour ago
Without Americans: Germany is working on Ukraine's liberation strike
“Miracle” turns into scrap: Russia’s next hypersonic missile on the ground
Russia recognizes plan behind NATO maneuvers: diplomat attacks Germany
The goal is “the elimination of the military threat” - liberating Ukraine at the same time
Pavel Luzin, a Russian military analyst and visiting scholar at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, told
Newsweek
that Moscow's grueling, high-casualty offensives reflect the Russian military's lack of options after two years of hard fighting.
“They simply have no other options to carry out the orders,” he said.
“And of course they don’t have the courage to tell the Kremlin that the war is unwinnable and must be ended.”
Observers have suggested that the Kremlin wants to stabilize and slightly expand its partial occupation of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson by 2024 in order to catch Kiev and its Western partners off guard, according to
Newsweek
.
However, such a stabilization of the lines is an impossible goal, Luzin continued.
“Ukraine's goal is not to liberate the territory.
Ukraine's goal is to eliminate the military threat from Russia, and the liberation of the territory would only be a consequence of the main goal."
(tpn)