Smoke rises from Russian shelling of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, February 2023 (NBC)


Saturday’s Coverage: Zelenskiy on Tanks, Missiles, and Fighter Jets — “We Still Need to Work on This”


Source: Institute for the Study of War


UPDATE 1531 GMT:

Two captured Wagner Group mercenaries have reinforced accounts of the fighters being used as cannon fodder in attacks in eastern Ukraine that resemble a “zombie movie”.

The men, who were released from prison to fight on the frontline, describe being in the initial wave of attacks.

There were 90 of us. Sixty died in that first assault, killed by mortar fire. A handful remained wounded.

If one group is unsuccessful, another is sent right away. If the second one is unsuccessful, they send another group….

If you’re wounded, you roll away on your own at first, any way you can, somewhere neutral where there’s no fire, and if there’s no one around, you administer first aid to yourself.

Disobeying orders brought the risk of execution:

One man stayed at a position, he was really scared, it was his first assault.

We received an order to run forward. But the man hid under a tree and refused. This was reported to the command and that was it. He was taken 50 meters away from the base. He was digging his own grave and then was shot.


UPDATE 1218 GMT:

Ukrainian officials have spoken further about Russia’s difficulties in mounting a major offensive in eastern Ukraine.

Oleksiy Danilov, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, said on Saturday night:

They have begun their offensive, they’re just not saying they have, and our troops are repelling it very powerfully. The offensive that they planned is already gradually underway. But not the offensive they were counting on.


UPDATE 1209 GMT:

Russian shelling killed one civilian and wounded one in Nikiopol in the Dnipropetrovsk region in southern Ukraine.

The shelling damaged four residential buildings, a vocational school, and a water treatment facility.

Three Russian S-300 missiles hit infrastructure facilities in the Kharkiv region in northeast Ukraine overnight, wounding one person.

Ukrainian forces downed five drones — four Iranian-made Shahed attack drones and one Orlan-10 reconnaissance drone — over the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions on Saturday evening.


UPDATE 0954 GMT:

Russian Orthodox priest Maxim Nagibin was summoned by the State security service FSB after he said in a sermon that the Ukraine war is a “crime”.

Nagibin said he has been an outcast in his village in the Krasnodar region in southern Russia since the sermon during an Easter service:

I wanted to express my point of view for people to hear me, wanted to share the pain in my soul But, unfortunately, not everyone heard me and there were consequences.

The 38-year-old cleric was reported to both the local police and the church authorities in Moscow. In October, he was charged with violation of censorship laws, but acquitted because the statute of limitations had expired.

“In my eparchy, there is no dissent,” Nagobin says. “People are either scared of speaking up and choose to go with the flow or they support what’s going on. There are two people who think like me [in the village] and they are secular.”

Ioann Burdin, from the central Kostroma region, was convicted under the censorship laws and fined35,000 rubles ($501) after his anti-war sermon. He stepped down as parish priest the following month.

Nagibin and Burdin were among 293 Orthodox clerics who signed an open letter last March calling on “everyone on whom the cessation of the fratricidal war in Ukraine depends” to implement “an immediate ceasefire”.


ORIGINAL ENTRY: Both the Ukrainian military and Russian military analysts say Moscow does not have the resources for a major offensive in eastern Ukraine before February 24, the first anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

An official of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate, Andriy Chernyak, said the Russians are preparing to step up attacks in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and are searching for weak spots in Ukrainian defenses.

But he added, “According to our information, Russian command does not have enough resources for large-scale offensive actions.”

A spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern commander, Col. Serhiy Cherevaty, said the Russian leadership has ordered the capture of all of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts. However, Russia’s slow advance near Bakhmut in Donetsk, with the high cost in Russian casualties, is a “symbol” of Russia’s inability to “conduct rapid and powerful offensive operations”.

Alexander Khodakovsky, the commander of the forces of the Russian proxy “Donetsk People’s Republic”, echoed the Ukrainian evaluations. He questioned why Russian forces are wasting limited resources on the high-cost advances rather than accumulating combat forces for a larger offensives. One “milblogger” said officials in the Russian Presidency are creating expectations which cannot be achieved.

See also Ukraine War, Day 347: Zelenskiy — Situation Is “Tough” on Eastern Frontline

Another prominent milblogger noted that Russian forces failed to advance quickly in their offensive to capture Vuhledar in southwest Donestk, losing the initiative as Ukraine moved reserve forces to the area.

Video footage last week supported the assessment of UK military intelligence and reports among Russian milbloggers that 30 armored vehicles were destroyed in the failed Vuhledar assault.

The Ukraine military said that it repelled 11 Russian assaults in Donetsk and Luhansk on Saturday, including in the Bakhmut and Vuhledar areas.

Ukraine military commander-in-chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyi said:

Fierce fighting continues in the area of Vuhledar and Maryinka. We reliably hold the defence. In some areas of the front we have managed to regain previously lost positions and gained a foothold.

Wagner Group Head: Years Before Russia Can Succeed

Unexpected backing for the downbeat assessments of Russian capability has come for the head of Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Prigozhin’s fighters, including freed Russian convicts, have led the assault in eastern Ukraine. But on Friday, he said in a high-profile interview that it could take two years for Russia to fully control the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, both of which were “annexed” by Vladimir Putin last September.

“If we have to get to the Dnipro [River], then it will take about three years,” he added.

There are signs that, with the slow Russian advance, Prigozhin is losing influence in his rivalry with Moscow’s military command, including Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu. Officials have ordered a halt to Wagner’s recruitment of prisoners for the frontline, and conventional forces have been moved into the battle for Bakhmut.

See also Ukraine War, Day 328: Kremlin Pushes Back v. Wagner Group’s Prigozhin

Pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov said Prigozhin has now been blocked from appearances on Russian State TV. The directives said bluntly, “Don’t excessively promote Prigozhin and Wagner.”

Markov explained, “It was a request from the leadership, and not just to me. They apparently don’t want to bring him into the political sphere because he’s so unpredictable — they fear him a little bit.”

Wagner’s unofficial Telegram channel Gray Zone posted a document which purportedly showed a Russian Defense Ministry request not to mention Prigozhin or any of his statements about the invasion. State media should not refer to Wagner but to “assault units”, “Russian paratroopers”, and “airborne units”.