Ukraine says Russia plans new mobilization to ‘delay their defeat’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia is planning to call up more troops for a major new attack, even as Moscow faces some of the biggest internal criticism of the war over attacks that killed scores of new conscripts.

Kyiv has said for weeks that Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to order another mass conscription and close its borders to prevent men from escaping the draft.

“We have no doubt that today’s Russian masters will throw everything they have left and everyone they can throw at them to try to turn the tide of the war and at least delay its defeat,” Zelenskyy said in a video speech late on Tuesday.

“We must disrupt this Russian scenario … Any attempt at a new attack must fail.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry on Wednesday blamed the use of cellphones by its soldiers for an attack in Ukraine on New Year’s Eve that killed 89 soldiers – the deadliest incident Moscow has admitted to its forces since the start of the war in February 2022.

If Russia is planning a new mobilization, the deaths of many conscripts on New Year’s Eve could damage morale. Hundreds of thousands of people fled Russia when Putin ordered the first call-up of reserves since World War II in September following a military setback.

A group of soldiers’ widows spoke

Putin said last month there was no need for further mobilization.

But in a sign the Kremlin may now consider one, an unknown group claiming to represent the widows of Russian soldiers was invited on Tuesday so that Putin could mobilize millions of people. The Kremlin has not commented on the appeal.

“We ask our President, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, for the Russian Army to carry out a massive mobilization,” the Widows of Russia group said in a post on the Telegram messaging service.

Russia effectively shut down all direct opposition to the war, with open criticism banned by severe media rules. But it has given relatively free rein to pro-war bloggers, some with hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.

Many have become increasingly vocal about what they see as a half-hearted and incompetent campaign – and they have been outraged this week by the deadly attack on Russian troops occupying a vocational school in Donetsk province on New Year’s Eve.

Criticism was directed at the military commander rather than at Putin, who has not commented publicly on the attack.

Armored vehicles from France

French President Emmanuel Macron told Zelenskyy that France would send the AMX-10 RC light armored combat vehicle to help in the fight, a French official said after the phone call between the two, adding that it would be the first Western-made armored vehicle. sent to support the Ukrainian army.

An official from the intelligence section of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Andriy Cherniak, said in comments to the RBC-Ukraine media outlet that Kyiv expects no let-up in Russian attacks this year, despite heavy human casualties.

“According to the estimates of Ukrainian military intelligence, in the next four to five months the Russian army could lose up to 70,000 people. And the occupying country [Russia’s] Leadership is prepared for these losses,” Cherniak said.

Russian leaders “know they will lose, but they have no plans to end the war,” he said.

Russian frigates carrying missiles are deployed

In a signal to the West that Russia will not withdraw from Ukraine, Putin announced Wednesday the deployment of a frigate to the Atlantic Ocean armed with a new generation of hypersonic cruise missiles, which can travel more than five times the speed of sound.

Putin spoke about the frigate during a video conference with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Igor Krokhmal, the ship’s commander. Shoigu said the ship will sail through the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, in addition to the Atlantic.

Russia’s Defense Ministry later released footage of what it said was a frigate armed with Zirkon hypersonic missiles leaving a Russian naval base in the northern city of Severomorsk, in the Murmansk region.

Russia has launched seven missile strikes, recorded 18 airstrikes and more than 85 strikes from double rocket systems in the past 24 hours on civilian infrastructure in the cities of Kramatorsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

The Kremlin denies deliberately targeting civilians.

The battlefield report could not be independently verified by Reuters.

Ukraine’s General Staff also said Russian forces continued to concentrate their advance near the Donetsk provincial town of Bakhmut, where both sides are believed to have lost thousands of troops in weeks of intense trench warfare.

Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said on Wednesday that border guards had repelled a Russian attack near Bakhmut and then recaptured enemy positions after a counterattack. It did not give exact details of where the clashes took place.

Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said that Russia will continue to form additional offensive units and focus on the capture of Bakhmut and other towns north of Donetsk.

Malyar, citing the ministry’s chief intelligence director, wrote on Telegram that Russia’s significant losses meant that Moscow would probably have to announce a second partial mobilization in the first quarter of the year.

In Washington, a senior US administration official said heavy fighting around Bakhmut would continue for the foreseeable future, with the outcome uncertain as Russia made further advances.

Russia launched what it called a “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, citing threats to its own security and the need to protect Russian speakers. Ukraine and its allies accuse Moscow of an unprovoked war to seize the region.