Ukraine military chief warns of worse battlefield situation
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s military chief warned Saturday that the battlefield situation in the industrial east has “significantly worsened in recent days,” as warming weather allowed Russian forces to launch a fresh push along several stretches of the 620mile front line.
In an update on the Telegram messaging app, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyy said Moscow had “significantly” ramped up its assaults since President Vladimir Putin extended his nearly quarter-century rule in a preordained election last month that saw anti-war candidates barred from the ballot and independent voices silenced in a Kremlin-backed media blockade.
According to Syrskyy, Russian forces have been “actively attacking” Ukrainian positions in three areas of the eastern Donetsk region, near the cities of Lyman, Bakhmut and Pokrovsk, and beginning to launch tank assaults as drier, warmer spring weather has made it easier for heavy vehicles to move across previously muddy terrain.
“Despite significant losses, the enemy is intensifying its efforts by using new units (equipped with) armored vehicles, thanks to which it periodically achieves tactical success,” Syrskyy said.
On Saturday, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman confirmed the capture of a village that had been the site of fierce fighting for close to 18 months. Analysts from Ukraine’s nongovernmental Deep State group, which tracks frontline developments, had reported on Russia’s takeover of Pervomaiske, about 28 miles southeast of Pokrovsk, in the early hours of Thursday.
The group said in a Telegram update Saturday that Moscow’s forces had also taken Bohdanivka, another eastern village close to Bakhmut, where the war’s bloodiest battle raged for nine months until it fell to Russia last May. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry shortly afterward denied that Bohdanivka had been captured, saying “intense fighting” continued there.
With the war in Ukraine entering its third year and a vital U.S. aid package for Kyiv stuck in Congress, Russian troops are ramping up pressure on exhausted Ukrainian forces on the front line to prepare to grab more land this spring and summer.
Russia has relied on its edge in firepower and personnel to step up attacks across eastern Ukraine. It has increasingly used satellite-guided gliding bombs — which allow planes to drop them from a safe distance — to pummel Ukrainian forces beset by a shortage of troops and ammunition.
Also Saturday, Germany announced that it will deliver an additional Patriot air defense system to Ukraine, days after Russian missiles and drones struck infrastructure and power facilities Thursday across several regions, leaving
hundreds of thousands of homes without power, in what private energy operator DTEK described as one of the most powerful attacks this year. The German Defense Ministry said it would “begin the handover” of the Patriot system immediately, without providing a precise timeline.
In an update on X, formerly Twitter, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he had discussed the “massive” Russian air attacks on civilian energy infrastructure with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday and declared that Berlin will “stand unbreakably by Ukraine’s side.”
Putin described the strikes as retribution for Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure; a slew of Ukrainian drone strikes over the past few months has hit oil refineries deep inside Russia.
Moscow renewed its assault on Ukrainian energy facilities last month.
The volume and accuracy of recent attacks have alarmed the country’s defenders, who say Kremlin forces now have better intelligence and fresh tactics in their campaign to annihilate Ukraine’s electrical grid and bring its economy to a halt.