Russian soldiers fighting near Bakhmut in Ukraine’s Donbass region have complained of a lack of ammunition supplies, and conscripts say their equipment is substandard. An official reason for Mizyntsev’s dismissal has not been given.
Putin has been accused of being a military zealot throughout the war, switching military commanders and revising orders without ever serving as a soldier.
A museum worker sits next to portraits of members of the Azov forces who were killed in a Russian attack in Mariupol last year. These photos are part of a new exhibition on the defense of the Azovstal steelworks.Credit: getty
In January, he fired the general in charge of the Ukrainian army and named chief of staff Valery Gerasimov as his campaign commander.
Mizintsev, with his white hair and icy pale blue eyes, is one of the few Russian army generals to have a reputation in the west.
He is said to have overseen Russia’s brutal bombing of Aleppo during the Syrian civil war.
Mizyntsev was responsible for coordinating the Russian military’s response to the incident and had a supercomputer designed to predict the outcome of the conflict and the development of rival forces.
Associated Press photographer Evgeniy Maloletka with his annual World News Photo photo of Iryna Kalinina, a woman from Pregnant women rescued at the Mariupol Maternity Hospital. Kalinina survived, but not her children.Credit: Associated Press
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s defense minister warned that expectations for a Ukrainian counteroffensive in Northern Spring were “overheated”.
Oleksii Reznikov said that Ukraine successfully defended against Russia and regained territory, leading to the assumption of victory.
“It’s definitely overheated and everyone wants another win,” he told the RBC-Ukraine website. “We didn’t believe in victory before. We used to hope that Ukraine would at least survive. But when the Ukrainian Armed Forces won, everyone started to believe in victory.”
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Reznikov insisted that Kiev needed further support from the West to dislodge Moscow’s troops.
“It’s not a sprint,” the minister said. “When I realized it wasn’t a sprint, it was a marathon, and I said to myself, ‘wait a minute, in order to run the last 195 meters of the marathon, you need to last 42 kilometers before that’.”
Ukrainian officials have long said they were planning new operations to liberate land occupied by Russia since its invasion last February.
Only a small circle around President Volodymyr Zelensky is said to know the details of the operation. The counteroffensive is likely to be concentrated in the direction of the occupied Crimea peninsula in southern Ukraine.
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Western analysts say Kiev could also launch attacks on disputed towns in the East Donbas region, such as Bakhmut, Vuhledar and Avdiivka, which Moscow has spent vast resources trying to seize.
A recently leaked U.S. intelligence assessment suggested that Kiev may be “well short” of the imminent target as its forces will struggle to sustain the offensive. But on Wednesday, top U.S. commanders in Europe said Washington was now less concerned about shortages in Ukraine.
“More than 98 percent of the combat vehicles are already there,” said Gen. Christopher Cavalli, who is also NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander. “I’m pretty confident we’ve delivered the materials they need and we’re going to keep them going through the pipeline. The Ukrainians are in a good position.”
NATO allies have equipped at least nine of Ukraine’s 12 new brigades in preparation for a prolonged offensive, delivering more than 230 tanks and 1,550 armored vehicles, according to Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg . “This will put Ukraine in a good position to continue retaking the occupied territories,” he told a news conference on Thursday.
Western officials added that Ukraine was not expected to launch a single large-scale offensive, but smaller precision operations to break Russian defensive positions at several points on the front line.
london telegraph
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