The Russian Ministry of Defense announced this Saturday (21) that it has started an offensive in Zaporizia, in southern Ukraine, conquering some cities and establishing new positions in the region.
It is the first Russian advance in the area in months, after the front stabilized in the first half of 2022. In recent days, the government in Kiev had said that fighting was intensifying there, without giving many details.
Officially, the Russians don’t talk about numbers, but military bloggers who are used by the Armed Forces to pass on public messages say there have been attacks on 21 small towns or villages, with at least 7 of them falling under Moscow’s control.
It is yet another pressure point for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Last week, the Russians managed to advance towards Bakhmut, a strategic city seen as central to the control of the approximately 40% of the province of Donetsk (east) that are still under Ukraine’s control.
For the Kremlin, this is new good news after a losing streak from September. It is not yet possible to measure how far the attack will go, of course. Zaporizhia, as well as neighboring Kherson (south) and Donbass (Donetsk and Lugansk) were illegally annexed by the Kremlin, even without full Russian domination.
President Vladimir Putin has already said that any negotiation for the end of the war involves the recognition of “new territorial realities”, that is, the annexation of these areas, which with Crimea absorbed in 2014 add up to more than 20% of Ukraine. Obviously, Kiev refuses, but until recently they were in a more optimistic position on the pitch.
The action in Zaporizia is aimed at taking the northern chunk of the province, which never fell to the Russians. The region is famous for being home to Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant, which has been under the control of Moscow troops since the first weeks of the conflict and became the subject of fears of radioactive contamination after the facility came under fire.
In Kiev, Zelensky attended a memorial in honor of Interior Minister Denis Monastirski, who was killed in a helicopter crash on Wednesday (18). The crash left 14 dead, including other Ukrainian government officials.
Also on Saturday, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidency reinforced requests for military help to contain Moscow’s offensive. The day before, Western allies failed to reach an agreement to send German-made Leopard-2 tanks to support Kiev troops.
“You will end up helping Ukraine with the necessary weapons anyway and you will realize that there is no option to end this war other than Russia’s defeat,” Mikhailo Podoliak wrote on Twitter. “But today’s indecision is killing our people more. Every day of delay means the death of Ukrainians. Think faster.”
The supply of Leopard-2s, the most widely used type of tank in Europe, has been blocked by Germany – technically, German tank operators have to ask Berlin for permission to export them. So far, Prime Minister Olaf Sholz’s government has avoided increasing its participation in the war for fear of an escalation in the conflict that could lead to a Third World War.
So far, the Kremlin has repeatedly waved its nuclear card to dissuade the West from sending heavier weapons into the conflict. On Thursday (19), former President Dmitri Medvedev, representative of the Kremlin hardliners, Dmitri Medvedev, warned in Telegram that “the defeat of a nuclear power in a conventional war can lead to a nuclear war”.
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