The Russian army further accelerates its offensive in eastern Ukraine

For several months, rarely a week goes by without the Russian Defense Ministry announcing the capture of a new location in the Donetsk region, in eastern Ukraine. Certainly, these are very small localities, sometimes hamlets, like Razdolnoïe, which came under the control of the Russian army this Friday, November 29, according to the information portal Lenta.ru. On Wednesday, the locality of Ilyinka had already been taken by Moscow, recalls Slow.

Over the past month, the Ministry of Defense has claimed the conquest of several villages around the town of Kurakhove, which appears to be the real objective of these troops. “The pincers are closing on Kurakhove”, stated on November 20 a senior official of the Russian army, on condition of anonymity, to the economic agency RBK. On the Ukrainian side, there is fear both that Kurakhove will fall and that a certain number of soldiers will find themselves surrounded there, recalls the Russian-language service of the BBC. “Along with Pokrovsk, this is one of the most complicated sectors of the front,” according to British Public Radio.

Thursday, November 28, several consistent sources announced the presence of Russian soldiers in the city center of Kurakhove. According to several voenkor Russians (war correspondents and mainstream media experts), men and armored vehicles are now circulating in the streets of the city; the very popular Alexander Sladkov, correspondent for the first Russian public television channel Pervy Channel, even publishes a video showing the alleged movement of the assault units of the fifth brigade of the 51^e Russian army in the center of Kurakhove. Information partially confirmed on the Ukrainian side, in particular by the analysis group DeepState, close to the Ministry of Defense in kyiv.

Open the way for an offensive towards Zaporizhia?

The website of the television channel Current Time, which broadcasts from Prague, emphasizes for its part that Kurakhove is an essential logistics center for the Ukrainian armed forces. The defense of the entire front in the south-west of the Donetsk region depends on it. In addition, the city is located on the highway connecting occupied Donetsk, and the kyiv-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia continues Current Time, recalling a recent article in the British magazine The Economist who, on the basis of information obtained from Ukrainian intelligence services, claimed that Russia was certainly also preparing an offensive on this axis. “In recent months, the Russian army has intensified its bombardment of the city using rockets and guided bombs, destroying more than 1,500 houses,” recalls the article.

According to the press agency Reuters, little suspected of sympathies for the Kremlin, the Russian army seized nearly 235 km² in the week of November 19 to 26. In total, some 667 km² of Ukrainian territory were seized in November. “Russian forces are advancing in Ukraine at the fastest pace since the early days of the 2022 invasion,” continues the agency. “The front is in turmoil, because everyone is rushing to gain ground before the official inauguration of Donald Trump on January 20,” summarizes the Russian language service of the Turkish Radio and Television (TRT), which recalls that the Republican candidate had pledged to quickly end the war, probably by imposing a cease-fire and freezing the front line.