Ukraine-Russia war: Vladimir Putin admits battlefield setbacks
Vladimir Putin has made a rare admission his war in Ukraine is struggling, as his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a provocative visit to the frontline.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has made the stunning admission that the war in Ukraine is not going exactly as planned.
“The situation in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions is extremely difficult,” the Russian President said in a video address.
It comes as the UK Ministry of Defence said Mr Putin was “choreographing” meetings with senior military leaders in an attempt to “deflect responsibility” for Russia’s battlefield failures, including Ukraine recapturing parts of the four regions annexed by Russia.
“This display likely aimed to deflect Putin’s responsibility for military failure, high fatality rates and increasing public dissatisfaction from mobilisation. The televised footage was probably designed to also dispel social media rumours of General Gerasimov’s dismissal,”
the UK Ministry of Defence said in a statement.”
“After 300 days of war, Ukraine has liberated around 54 per cent of the maximum amount of extra territory Russia seized since 24 Feb 2022.”
Mr Putin’s apparent campaign lay the blame for Russia’s poor performance on his senior military commanders coincided with a visit from Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy visiting the frontline in a provocative show of confidence.
Mr Zelenskyy made the unannounced visit to the city of Bakhmut, a key target under bombardment in the Donetsk, to meet troops and hand out awards for holding back Russia’s advance.
He was undeterred by a Russian artillery volley targeting 25 villages around Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Kupiansk.
A senior US official said that Russian leadership was “conflicted” on how to continue the conflict going into the winter.
Mr Putin has publicly called for his top military brass to present him with “short- and medium-term” plans on how to proceed with the war he launched 10 months ago.
“Certainly, there are some who, I think, would want to pursue offensives in Ukraine. There are others who have real questions about the capacity for Russia to actually do that,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
The official said the United States would “adjust and adapt quickly” if the nature of the invasion changes.
For their part, the Ukrainians “show no intention of slowing down” due to the weather in their quest to take back territory, the official said.
“I think the Russians have to factor that in,” the official said.
Ukrainian military leaders have warned that Moscow is gearing up for a major winter offensive, including an attempt to seize Kyiv, once the ground freezes.
Russia failed to seize the capital after invading on February 24 despite predictions in many quarters of a swift victory.
NEXT COUNTRY ON PUTIN’S HIT LIST
There are “very high” fears that Russia is planning a new offensive towards Moldova in Europe next year as Moscow attempts to secure a way through Ukraine to the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria.
Moldova’s head of the Information and Security Service Alexandru Musteata made the chilling prediction after Ukraine’s top army generals warned in recent days of the threat of a major Russian offensive early next year.
“The question is not whether the Russian Federation will undertake a new advance towards Moldova’s territory, but when it will do so,” Mr Musteata told the TVR-Moldova television channel.
He said his agency believed Russia was looking at several scenarios to reach Moldova and that it was possible an offensive would be launched in January or February, or later in March or April.
PUTIN RECEIVES BOOST FROM BELARUS STRONGMAN
Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko urged closer military co-ordination with Russia on Monday during a rare visit from Mr Putin, who launched his invasion of Ukraine from his neighbour’s territory.
Mr Putin landed in Minsk with his defence and foreign minister in tow, hours after Russian forces launched a swarm of attack drones at critical infrastructure in Kyiv, which provoked emergency blackouts in a dozen regions.
A thin looking Mr Putin, who was previously thought to be in poor health, was photographed in icy Minsk and sitting down with his Belarusian counterpart and ally.
“Difficult times require us to have political will and to focus on getting results on all topics of the bilateral agenda,” Mr Lukashenko told Mr Putin.
“The main issues lately have been defence and security issues,” he added. The Kremlin has for years sought to deepen integration with Belarus, which relies on Moscow for cheap oil and loans, but Mr Lukashenko had resisted outright unification with Russia despite being a key ally.
Speculation mounted ahead of the Russian leader’s visit that he would pressure Mr Lukashenko to send troops to Ukraine to fight alongside the Russians after Moscow suffered a string of defeats in nearly 10 months of fighting.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, however, has dismissed the reports “as totally stupid, groundless fabrications.”
Mr Putin’s most recent trip was to Moscow-annexed Crimea, his closest visit to the frontline in Ukraine.
Mr Putin told his Belarusian ally that he hoped to deepen economic ties between the countries during the visit and praised Belarus as “our ally in the truest sense of the word”.
The drone attacks over Ukraine, which wounded three people near Kyiv, came as Russia said it shot down several US-made missiles over its airspace near Ukraine.
Officials said Russia had dispatched 35 attack drones nationwide, including 23 over Kyiv.
Ukraine said it downed 30 of the aerial weapons, including Iranian-made “Shaheds”, which have pummelled the capital in recent weeks.
Ukraine has experienced frequent and deadly aerial attacks in the 10 months since Russia invaded in late February.
Speaking to the leaders of several NATO countries via video link on Monday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Ukraine’s allies to supply its military with more weapons.
He described the situation on Ukraine’s border with Russia and Belarus as a “constant priority”.
“We are preparing for all possible defence scenarios,” Mr Zelenskyy said.
Mr Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994, is a long-time Kremlin ally and allowed Russian troops to attack Ukraine from his country on February 24.
Hours before Mr Putin touched down in Minsk, Russia announced its forces were running military drills with Belarusian forces.
In October, Belarus announced the formation of a joint regional force with Moscow with several thousand Russian servicemen arriving in the ex-Soviet country, fuelling concerns Minsk could also send troops to Ukraine.
TODDLER KILLED IN RUSSIAN MISSILE STRIKE
It comes as emergency crews pulled the body of a toddler from the rubble during a search for survivors of a Russian missile strike that ripped through an apartment building in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih.
The missile was one 16, according to Ukrainian authorities, which evaded Ukraine air defences, out of a total of 76 missiles fired in the latest Russian attack.
Moscow is targeting Ukraine’s power grid in at attempt to plunge civilians and soldiers into the dark and the cold in the Northern winter.
Governor Valentyn Reznichenko of the Dnipropetrovsk region, where Kryvyi Rih is located, wrote on the Telegram social media app that “rescuers retrieved the body of a 1-1/2-year-old boy from under the rubble of a house destroyed by a Russian rocket“ on Saturday.
A total of four people were killed in the strike, and 13 injured — four of them children — authorities said.
On Sunday, local time, strikes on the Russian region of Belgorod that borders Ukraine killed one person and injured five others, the regional governor said, two days after renewed attacks by Moscow battered the Ukrainian energy grid.
Four people were injured in the Belgorod attack, governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on social media, adding that there was also “one dead and one injured” in the district near the main city.
The injuries were of “moderate severity,” Mr Gladkov said on social media.
One of those injured is a man whose back was cut by shrapnel and another is a woman who suffered facial injuries, according to Gladkov.
He said more than a dozen residential buildings and several cars were damaged across the city.
PUTIN OPENED ‘GATES OF HELL’: ARCHBISHOP
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had “opened the gates of hell” unleashing “every evil” force worldwide from murder and rape in occupied territory to famine and debt in Africa and Europe.
Welby, the highest-ranking cleric in the worldwide Anglican communion, travelled to Ukraine late last month to meet church leaders and local Christians as well as those displaced by the conflict.
On Sunday he said he had been struck by the “size of the mass graves in Bucha, the photos of what had been done to the people there, the rape, the massacres, the torture by the occupying Russian forces”.
And he said the repercussions of the invasion were also being felt far beyond Ukraine’s borders.
“Effectively we’re in the same struggle at one remove. When Ukraine was invaded at the decision of President (Vladimir) Putin, the gates of hell were opened and every evil force came out across the world,” he told BBC television.
“I was in Mozambique the week before I was in Ukraine where there is famine all the way up the East African coast,” he said.
“There is inflation … there’s an energy crisis, there’s suffering, there’s shortages of drugs, everything evil has been unleashed and until there is withdrawal and ceasefire we can’t make progress on reconciliation.”
— with AFP
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Originally published as Ukraine-Russia war: Vladimir Putin admits battlefield setbacks
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