After months without significant changes on the battlefront, and with winter just around the corner, the war between Russia and Ukraine has reached a point where holding the ground seems like an advisable strategy. In this sense, the order of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to build new fortifications to be able to face the Russian offensives could be understood.
The Ukrainian decision came a few hours before Vladimir Putin ordered by decree to increase active Russian troops by 170,000 men. In this way, the staffing of the armed forces of the Russian Federation will be 2,209,130 ??people, of which 1,320,000 are military.
Zelenski gave the instructions to fortify on Thursday, during his visit to the combat front, and in the evening he announced it to the whole country in his usual evening speech. “In all the main areas we must intensify and accelerate the construction of structures”, he explained.
Ukraine is trying to prepare for a difficult winter when Russia wants to regain the initiative on the whole front. In fact, Moscow says it has already taken it. The Russian Minister of Defense, Serguei Xoigu, assured yesterday that his troops are “advancing in all directions” and have improved their positions in all sectors of the front. “Our soldiers act in a professional and determined manner, occupy more advantageous positions and expand control zones in all sectors. We will continue to carry out active defense, increasing the combat potential of the armed forces, based on the experiences of the special military operation”, he assured in a meeting with the Russian army’s generals.
The Ukrainian counter-offensive, launched in the summer after months of preparations, has stalled in the south and east, and it does not appear that there should be any significant progress. Since the fall, however, the Russian forces have had the resources to launch attacks.
Their pressure is particularly noticeable on the eastern front, specifically in Avdíivka, a city close to Donetsk that they are trying to surround.
Now the main focus of the fighting, the Russians have “considerably increased” their activity in recent days, Oleksandr Tarnavski, the Ukrainian commander in the area, said on Wednesday, according to AFP. Ahiras assured that the Ukrainians “firmly hold the lines”, inflicting time and time again significant losses on the Russians, who launch – according to him – attacks with armored vehicles, but also with human waves.
Neither side ever talks about their own failures or casualties. Xoigu asserted yesterday that Ukraine “has lost 125,000 troops and 16,000 combat machines for half a year” from a counter-offensive that, according to him, has failed.
The last person to speak about the Russian casualties was the Secretary General of NATO. On Wednesday, Jens Stoltenberg estimated the Russian losses at “hundreds of planes, thousands of tanks and more than 300,000 troops”, including dead and wounded, since the beginning of the current conflict, when in February 2022 the Russian president, Vladimir Putin , ordered tanks and soldiers to intervene in the neighboring country. The figure is similar to the one given by the Ukrainian army at the end of October.
At the gates of winter, Ukraine has encountered stubbornness. In an interview with the AP agency, Zelenski admitted yesterday that Ukraine has not achieved the results they expected from its counter-offensive. When asked by the interviewer if he was satisfied with the results of the counter-offensive, Zelensky said: “Look, we are not retreating, I am satisfied. We are at war with the second army in the world, I am happy (…). We wanted faster results. From this point of view, unfortunately, we have not achieved the desired results. And that’s a fact.”
The president also explained that Ukraine has not rejected the necessary weapons from the Western allies and that the size of its armed forces does not allow for rapid progress.
