The army Russian It is torn between defending its border, which has proven highly vulnerable to enemy incursions, and advancing into Donbas, where Chechen units have replaced the Wagner group mercenaries.
The Belgorod region, the weakest link on the border, as it shares 540 kilometers with the Ukrainian regions of Lugansk, Kharkiv and Sumy, has been the target of non-stop attacks for two weeks, with the Kremlin apparently unable to do anything to prevent it. .
Meanwhile, kyiv says that everything is ready to launch the counteroffensive, whose first step would be precisely to force Russia to withdraw troops from Ukraine in order to protect its territory.
BELGOROD, FRONT LINE
Belgorod is no longer the rear, but the first line of the front. Its Governor, Viacheslav Gladkovinforms the Russians and the rest of the world from his Telegram channel about daily bombings, which left seven civilians dead on Friday and Saturday.
“Listen to the authorities and provisionally leave your homes to preserve what is most important, which is your life and that of your loved ones,” he wrote on Sunday.
The official explained that his appeal is not only for the Shebékino district, the hardest hit by the attacks in recent days, but for all the districts that are being bombarded.
Gladkov, who estimated that more than four thousand civilians have already been evacuated, announced on Saturday the urgent evacuation of 600 children from border towns, while another thousand will be sent to the annexed Crimean peninsula.
The Governor and other hawks in Russia have called on the authorities to take the threat seriously once and for all and create a security strip some 40 kilometers wide in neighboring Kharkiv.
NEW RUSSIAN PARAMILITARY RAID
In the middle of the afternoon, the Governor admitted a new incursion by an enemy saboteur group, which would have led to combat in the town of Nóvaya Tavolzhanka.
“I hope they are wiped out. It can not be any other way. These fascists are killing civilians in Belgorod every day (…), they mutilate children and the elderly, ”she said in a video.
The Russian Defense Ministry then recognized the enemy’s attempt to re-enter Belgorod across a river, but was prevented from doing so by artillery.
“The enemy dispersed and withdrew,” the military statement said.
The two previous incursions, carried out by the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Freedom for Russia Legion, were repelled.
“We continue to crush the enemy. Russia will be free!”, wrote the Telegram one of the members of the legion, which aspires to create a military administration in Belgorod.
DONBAS, BEGIN AGAIN
After the capture of Bakhmut, Russian troops are now focused on the outskirts of Donetsk, capital of the homonymous region, the most militarized area of the entire front since 2014.
The objectives are Avdíivka and Márinka, where the Chechen special unit “Ajmat” would be exercising the role of assault troops that the Wagnerites fulfilled in Bakhmut.
According to Defense, the Chechens are actively involved in bloody combat in the center of Márinka, from where they would advance towards Vugledar, a stronghold that has resisted them since the beginning of the war.
The final objective, Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, seems far away at the moment, although the military report on Sunday reported the destruction of an ammunition stockpile in the first of the Donetsk towns.
Russia also said today it had destroyed a drone factory in the central city of Dnipro with precision weapons.
Instead, kyiv denounced the death of a two-year-old girl in that city due to the impact of a missile against a residential neighborhood.
THE COUNTEROFFENSIVE, AN OPEN SECRET
After assuring “The Wall Street Journal” the day before that the Ukrainians are “ready” to launch their counteroffensive and that they will not wait “several months” for the arrival of heavy weapons and Western planes, the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelensky, He was much more cautious today.
“This is not like the movies (…) The vacancy of our territory, that is the result of the counteroffensive. When it happens, you will understand that it is already underway, ”she said at a press conference.
For its part, the Ministry of Defense published a video with a group of soldiers with their fingers on their lips and the title: “Plans like silence. We will not announce its start.
“The enemy awaits the next actions of the Ukrainian Army in amazement,” said Sergui Cherebaty, spokesman for the Eastern Command of the Army, to local television.
Prepared with information from EFE
Source: Gestion
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