The Russian military is attempting to “stretch Ukrainian forces” by intensifying attacks on Ukrainian territory, according the U.K.’s Ministry of Defense.
Russia has recently seen some significant battlefield success as the war in Ukraine approaches its two-year anniversary, including seizing control of the Donetsk settlement of Avdiivka last weekend after months of intense fighting.
The British defense ministry suggested in an intelligence update on Wednesday that invading forces had intensified their assault across the front lines in hopes of pushing Ukraine to a breaking point, noting that Russian ground forces had also escalated attacks near the village of Robotyne.
ANATOLII STEPANOV/AFP
“Russian Ground Forces have continued and highly likely increased their ground attacks on the Robotyne axis in southern Ukraine, which was recaptured by Ukraine during its counter-offensive in summer 2023,” reads the update, which was shared to X, formerly Twitter. “The village has remained on the frontline since.”
“Russian forces have intensified attacks across several points of the front line within the last week, likely intended to stretch Ukrainian forces,” it continues.
Newsweek reached out for comment to the Ukrainian military via email on Wednesday night.
U.S.-based think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said in a report published on Wednesday that Russia was in the process of “conducting a cohesive multi-axis offensive operation in pursuit of an operationally significant objective for nearly the first time in over a year and a half of campaigning in Ukraine.”
The ISW report claims that the ongoing Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv and Luhansk regions “involves attacks along four parallel axes” that “taken together, would likely generate operationally significant gains.”
“The design of this offensive operation is worth careful consideration regardless of its outcome as a possible example of the Russian command’s ability to learn from and improve on its previous failures at the operational level,” it continues.
The Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) claimed on Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin had given his army a three-week deadline to take full control of Luhansk, one of four regions that he claimed to have annexed for Russia in late 2022.
General Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of GUR, said during an Interfax-Ukraine interview that Putin wants total control over Luhansk before Russia’s coming presidential election, which is set for March 15 to March 17.
“Before the elections, they want to reach at least the administrative borders of Luhansk Oblast,” Skibitsky said. “To have at least some success, something like Avdiivka, maybe somewhere else on some other front.”
“[Putin wants] to show that they have supposedly managed to return the territories that Ukraine liberated after the start of full-scale aggression,” he added. “That would be used very actively in information and psychological operations, actions and the information space.”
Despite growing discontent over the war, Putin is considered an overwhelming favorite in the election, although Western observers have long claimed that Russia’s elections are manipulated to ensure Putin’s grip on power.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.