Ukraine liberates more areas in the west and east, Moscow’s annexations are not recognized, Russia continues to mobilize – a look at last week at war.
On October 4, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the law annexing the four regions of Ukraine: Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk and Luhansk, which passed the Russian Duma the day before. In terms of Russia, the annexation process was legally completed with this law. However, no state except North Korea recognized the annexation.
Even Russia’s closest political and military ally, Belarus, considers the referendum illegitimate. Both the USA, the EU and all NATO countries emphasized that they did not recognize neither the fake referendums nor the annexation itself.
US approves arms shipment, EU approves sanctions
In an immediate response, the US approved another major emergency arms package, while the European Union responded with a new round of sanctions. Theoretically, after annexation, Russia can use all available means and means to defend these territories, since under Russian law it is considered an integral part of the Russian Federation.
Russian officials have repeatedly stressed Moscow’s willingness to use weapons of mass destruction if Ukraine does not give up the annexed territory.
Ukraine continues to save other settlements
However, since the beginning of the annexation process, Ukraine has declared that it will liberate its lands regardless of Russia’s unjust claims. And that’s exactly what’s happening right now. Earlier in the week, Ukraine re-increased its counteroffensive in the Kherson region, making significant territorial gains in the northwestern parts.
The multi-layered defense that Russia had built earlier could not withstand the Ukrainian pressure and collapsed.
Currently, Russian forces are trying to build new defensive lines north of Kherson to defend the regional capital. In parallel, Ukraine continued and intensified its counterattack in the Kharkov region. Ukrainian forces have almost completely liberated the region and are already advancing towards the northern parts of the Luhansk region.
Russia is losing important territory
Currently, Ukrainian troops stand in front of Kreminna, an important logistics center for Russia’s military supply lines. A little further south, in the Donetsk region, Ukrainian forces liberated both Lyman and Yampil. Paradoxically, while Moscow is busy solving the legal details of its illegitimate annexation claim, Russia is actually losing a significant portion of its claimed territory.
Ukraine’s two counterattacks show that Kiev has the necessary forces, military equipment, ammunition, supplies, as well as intelligence and planning capacity to carry out two large-scale attacks in parallel. Meanwhile, Russia has so far failed to stabilize the front line in Luhansk, and even Kherson’s long-term defense capability is in question.
Mobilization progresses, military value questionable
At the same time, Moscow is advancing with partial mobilization. Occasional protests and attacks on recruitment centers continue – hundreds of thousands of Russian men have already left the country to avoid conscription. However, the Russian administration is gradually coping with the mobilization of 300,000 recruits. However, it is doubtful when the mobilized troops will increase Russia’s combat capability.
Bottlenecks in training capacity, equipment, and overall logistics mean this process will be rather slow. Although some Russian combat units have received newly mobilized soldiers as reinforcements, it will likely take at least a few months to create completely new units.
Therefore, it is unlikely that Russia will launch a new full-scale offensive before the beginning of 2023. This is even more true, as the approaching winter will exacerbate the already serious clothing and equipment problems of the Russian army.
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Source: ZDF
I am Timothy Glover, a professional journalist and content creator. I specialize in writing and editing for news websites, specifically covering politics. I have been working as an author at News Unrolled for the past five years and have built up a reputation for producing quality content that is both informative and engaging.
