Towards the (re)opening of a new front in Ukraine? Russia has reinforced its military contingent and intensified its bombings in anticipation of an assault in the south of the country, where positions have remained generally unchanged in recent months, a Ukrainian military spokesperson assured this Tuesday, November 12.
A Russian offensive in the southern region of Zaporizhia would pose a challenge for the Ukrainian army, already struggling on the eastern front and which is still engaged in an incursion into the Russian region of Kursk, on the northern border. “The Russians have been preparing for some time, for several weeks, to carry out assault operations in several directions, in particular in the direction of Zaporizhia,” army spokesperson Vladyslav Volochyn told AFP. Ukrainian in the southern sector.
He specified that the Russian army was strengthening its troops, particularly in the sectors of Vremivka, Gulyaïpole and Robotyné. “Every day, it carries out aerial and technical reconnaissance there, and restocks with ammunition. For several weeks, the enemy has been preparing to use armored vehicles,” he continued. Vladyslav Voloshyn refused to give the number of Russian soldiers gathered in this sector of the front, but according to him, small groups are already launching several attacks every day.
An “overnight” assault?
From the press agency Reutersthe same spokesperson for the Ukrainian army claimed that the number of airstrikes had increased by around 30 to 40% in recent weeks. This Monday, November 11, local authorities announced that at least six people had been killed and around twenty others injured in Russian attacks targeting the towns of Mykolaiv and Zaporizhia, both in southern Ukraine.
“(The attacks) could start in the near future. We are not even talking about weeks, we expect it to happen any day,” he added. He assured that Ukrainian forces have strengthened their defense lines and are ready to repel a large-scale assault. The Institute for the Study of War affirmed, for its part, in its daily assessment of the front this Monday that the Russian army was continuing its assaults west of the Zaporizhia region, without there being so far any “confirmed changes on the line head-on.”
Last summer, Ukrainian forces launched a large-scale offensive to reconquer the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions in the south of the country, but failed to make significant advances.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently warned that Russia has prepared a force of some 50,000 soldiers, which he said includes several thousand North Korean troops, in order to reconquer areas of the Russian Kursk region still occupied by the Ukraine. While Donald Trump’s victory in the American presidential election has cast great doubt on the future of Western support for kyiv and the rest of the war, Vladimir Putin still seems ready, without much surprise, to stretch his gains as much as possible. territories in Ukraine.