Russia orders troops to intensify offensive
New command comes as attacks continue to rain down far behind frontline in Kremlin terror strategy
‘A 10-day pause is insufficient to fully regenerate Russian forces for large-scale offensive operations’
‘Four Russian rockets fired from Belgorod at about 3.30am hit a residential building and a school’
‘The order is to exclude the Kyiv regime launching massive strikes in Donbas and other regions’
MOSCOW yesterday ordered its army to “intensify” attacks on Ukraine, as missiles rained down across the country, killing at least 16 civilians.
Sergei Shoigu, the defence minister, was filmed visiting army commanders who have been fighting in Ukraine and also handing out medals.
“The head of the Russian military department gave the necessary instructions to further intensify actions in all operational areas,” the ministry of defence said in a statement.
The statement said the order was given “to exclude the possibility of the Kyiv regime launching massive rocket and artillery strikes on civilian infrastructure and residents of settlements in Donbas and other regions”.
The instruction marks the official end of an “operational pause” the Russian army in Donbas had taken since capturing the town of Lysychansk at the start of July, a conquest that secured control over the Luhansk region.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has made capturing Donbas his priority in Ukraine and Luhansk makes up half of the region. Western analysts have warned that Russia army now intends to capture the Donetsk region towns of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, the largest cities in Donbas not under its control.
The US-based Institute for the Study of War said it expected a major assault in the next three days, although the exhausted Russian soldiers had been unable to rest fully.
“A 10-day-long operational pause is insufficient to fully regenerate Russian forces for large-scale offensive operations,” the think tank said.
Fighting has continued despite the reported pause. In the embattled eastern Donetsk region, seven civilians were killed and 14 wounded in the last 24 hours in attacks on cities, its governor said yesterday.
Battles in Donbas have become attritional and heavily reliant on artillery. Russia’s armies have made slow but steady progress by pounding towns with shells and then sending infantry to capture them.
The likely resumption of major Russian attacks in Donbas came as missiles killed civilians in cities across the north, east and south of Ukraine, part of what appears to be a Kremlin strategy to spread fear hundreds of miles behind the front line.
A Russian missile hit the northeast Ukrainian town of Chuhuiv in Kharkiv region in the early hours of yesterday, killing three people including a woman of 70 and wounding three more.
“Four Russian rockets, presumably fired from around (the Russian city of) Belgorod at night, at about 3:30 a.m., hit a residential building, a school and administrative buildings,” said Serhiy Bolvinov, the deputy head of Kharkiv’s regional police force.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, has seen especially severe bombardments in recent days, with officials and local commanders voicing fears that a second full-scale Russian assault on the northern city may be looming.
Yesterday morning, missiles hit a factory in central Dnipro. Ukrainian officials said that three people were killed in the attack.
Two people were also killed in rocket attacks on Nikopol in the south of Ukraine.
On Thursday a Russian missile attack killed 23 people including a number of children in Vinnytsia, a city in western Ukraine that is far closer to Romania than to Donbas.