As Russian forces continue to gain ground in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Moscow may be planning an imminent push further south, according to Kyiv, with fears over Zaporizhia. But does the Russian army have enough resources for this?
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Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Kyiv was closely monitoring the development of Russian troops in the Zaporizhia region, where he noted “existing threats”a statement that followed a report from the commander of his armed forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi.
On Wednesday, Ukrainian soldiers repelled an attempted Russian offensive in this area, National Guard Commander Oleksandr Pivnenko said.
The town of Zaporizhia is located just over two dozen kilometers from the current front line, and experts fear it could become Moscow’s next target.
Russian troops captured about two-thirds of the Zaporizhia region in the first weeks of the invasion, but were stopped in Vasylivka, a town 30 km south of the region’s administrative capital.
Vasylivka served as the main checkpoint for hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians evacuating from the occupied territories of the Zaporizhia region, including the major railway center of Melitopol, localities on the Sea of Azov coast and the city of Mariupol.
Since February, Zaporizhia has welcomed more than 275,000 internal refugeesor a quarter of the city’s population before the 2022 invasion.
In recent weeks, Russia has significantly stepped up its airstrikes against the city, targeting its civilian infrastructure with guided aerial bombs.
L’offensive de Zaporizhzhia linked at the Kursk incursion
No one knows exactly when Russia might launch its assault, if it intends to do so.
But according to the Ukrainian military, Moscow had initially considered doing so much earlier, before Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region last August.
The Economistciting Ukrainian intelligence sources, reported earlier this week that Russian forces were preparing to a future offensive operation with up to 130,000 people.
However, the Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) cited a Ukrainian brigade commander who said the Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region had disrupted Moscow’s initial plans for an assault. on Zaporizhia and that the Russian military command had redeployed almost half of the 20,000 to 30,000 Russian soldiers initially planned for the offensive towards Kursk.
The battalion commander noted that continued Russian efforts at Kursk could delay the offensive on the city of Zaporizhia and that Russian forces could also carry out the attack with a smaller grouping of forces than planned.
Does Russia have sufficient troops for a new offensive?
As part of the intensification of the push into eastern Ukraine, Russia last month suffered its largest troop losses since the start of the war in Ukraine, while making territorial gains, said Tony Radakin, chief of the defense staff of the United Kingdom, with “on average more than 1,500 people killed or injured every day”.
According to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Russia’s daily casualties in Ukraine exceeded 2,000 for the first time on Friday.
The figures do not specify whether they are dead or injured, but the general consensus is that they are dead, injured, missing and prisoners.
It is virtually impossible to establish exact figures for both sides, as kyiv and Moscow keep their losses secret.
The last figure provided by the Russian authorities was 5,937 soldiers killed in September 2022.
As for Kyiv, Mr. Zelensky acknowledged in February that 31,000 Ukrainian fighters had been killed.
The Economist also released its estimates on Tuesday, saying that between 60,000 and 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed since the all-out invasion of Russia began in early 2022, and another 400,000 are too injured to continue fighting.
Since February 2022, Ukraine and Russia have lost a larger share of their populations than the United States during the Korean and Vietnam wars combined, according to available data.
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