Russia is bringing more reserve forces close to Ukraine, UK intelligence says
Pro-Russian separatist forces are seen in the Donetsk Oblast in eastern Ukraine on May 28, 2022.
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Russia is bringing its reserve forces from all over the country closer to Ukraine to prepare for future advances, according to the U.K.’s Ministry of Defense. Meanwhile, Moscow says it has no plans to withdraw its troops from occupied areas of Ukraine’s south, and that its soldiers will dismantle Ukrainian forces in the whole of the Donbas region.
“Russia is moving reserve forces from across the country and assembling them near Ukraine for future offensive operations,” the U.K. Defence Ministry wrote in a tweet on Saturday.
“A large proportion of the new infantry units are probably deploying with MT-LB armored vehicles taken from long-term storage as their primary transport.”
Russia has long considered its tanks “unsuitable for most front-line infantry transport roles,” the ministry said, suggesting the Russians are facing equipment problems.
“Despite President Putin’s claim on 07 July 2022 that the Russian military has ‘not even started’ its efforts in Ukraine, many of its reinforcements are ad hoc groupings, deploying with obsolete or inappropriate equipment,” it said.
Still, Russian forces continue to pound Ukraine’s eastern Donbas, and on Friday Russia’s ambassador to the U.K., Andrei Kelin, said its troops have no plans to leave the southern coastal areas they have occupied in the last few months. Those include the regions of Kherson, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhzhia, the last of which is home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
Ukrainian forces are meanwhile able to slow down some of Russia’s advances using advanced precision weapons from the West, but they still need more and the troops require more time to learn how to use them, Oleksiy Danilov of the National Security and Defense Council told Reuters in an interview.
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Moscow official jailed for anti-war remark
In an example of Russia’s tight control over dissent, a Moscow city councilor was imprisoned Friday with a sentence of seven years for what authorities described as spreading “fake information” on the war in Ukraine.
One lawyer said that this is the first instance of anyone being sent to jail under Russia’s law, established shortly after its invasion of Ukraine began, that criminalized “deliberate dissemination of fake information about Russia’s army.” “Fake information” by Kremlin standards is anything that contradicts the government’s reports.
Moscow city deputy Alexei Gorinov, accused of spreading “knowingly false information” about the Russian army fighting in Ukraine, stands with a poster reading “Do you…
Read More: Russia is bringing more reserve forces close to Ukraine, UK intelligence says