Russia stepping up attacks ahead of Ukraine war’s one-year mark

Russian forces lobbed a heavy barrage of shells at cities in eastern Ukraine Sunday, pushing to seize more territory before mounting a widely expected major offensive marking the war’s one-year anniversary later this month.

But that anticipated offensive by Russia faces trouble on the battlefield and at home in Moscow, according to Ukrainian leaders and Western experts.

“They are having big problems with a big offensive,” Oleksy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said on Ukrainian television late Saturday.

“They have begun their offensive, they’re just not saying they have, and our troops are repelling it very powerfully. The offensive that they planned is already gradually underway. But [it is] not the offensive they were counting on,” he said.

In Russia, military bloggers who support President Vladimir Putin are questioning the chances of a successful campaign as well, according to a U.S.-based think tank.

They “continue to appear demoralized at the Kremlin’s prospects for executing a major offensive,” the Institute for the Study of War said in its latest report.

In weekend attacks on Ukraine, Russian forces launched dozens of missile and air strikes and more than 90 rounds of shelling from rocket launchers, Ukraine’s General Staff reported in its daily update.

One person was killed, and another wounded, Sunday morning by the shelling of Nikopol, a city in the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, regional Ukrainian officials said.

In Ukraine’s second largest city Kharkiv, one person was wounded after Russian missiles hit infrastructure facilities overnight, regional officials there said.

Russia said its military struck armored vehicle assembly workshops at a machinery plant in Kharkiv.

Ukraine said its forces downed five drones over the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions on Saturday evening.

Russian forces are driving to take over more land in the eastern industrial heartland of Donbas, consisting of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014.

“The main goal of Russian troops remains to achieve at least some tactical success in eastern Ukraine,” Andry Chernyak, Ukraine’s military intelligence spokesman, told the Kyiv Post late last week. “Russian command does not have enough resources for large-scale offensive actions.”

Ukrainian and Western officials warn that Russia hopes a fresh offensive will turn the tide of the conflict ahead of the one-year mark.

They also say Moscow has wanted to demoralize Ukrainians by leaving them without power, heat and water in the bitterly cold winter.

Russia suffered humiliating setbacks last fall when the Ukrainian military launched successful counter offensives to reclaim large areas of territory in the east and the south.

Russia has launched 14 rounds of massive strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities and other critical high-voltage infrastructure in the eastern, western and southern regions, causing area power outages.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Russian Wagner Group, the private military contractor fighting for Moscow, said Sunday that its fighters had taken over a settlement north of Bakhmut, a strategic city and Ukrainian stronghold in the Donetsk region.

He conceded that Ukrainian troops were mounting fierce resistance.

Later this month, President Biden plans to travel to Poland, hoping to rally allies of Ukraine ahead of the war anniversary, according to the White House. The visit is scheduled for Feb. 20-22.

Polls in the U.S. and abroad suggest support is waning for keeping up tens of billions of dollars worth of military and economic assistance for Ukraine.

Republicans who now control the House of Representatives have voiced skepticism and opposition to continuing the funding.

Biden is slated to meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda and the leaders of the Bucharest Nine, which are NATO allies in Eastern Europe, to discuss his “unwavering support” for the alliance, the White House said.

The U.S. president will deliver a speech on how the U.S. “will continue to stand with the people of Ukraine for as long as it takes,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

Wagner Group chief Prigozhin said late last week that it could take 18 months to two years for Russia to take full control of Donbas. He also said the war could take three years if Moscow wanted to grab more territory east of the Dnieper River.

The views of Prigozhin, a millionaire with close ties to Putin, showed the difficulties Russia has faced in Ukraine since it first expected to wrap up its military campaign within weeks of its Feb. 24 invasion.

Russia has said its “special military operation” will continue until its goals are fulfilled.

With News Wire Services