The situation on the ground “is complicated, but under control”, estimated yesterday evening the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, Valery Zalouzhny. “The superiority of the enemy artillery illustrates the need to increase the firepower of the Ukrainian armed forces,” he argued. “The question of integrated anti-aircraft defenses is also essential.” Thursday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stressed during his daily address that Russia was currently sending “thousands of its mobilized soldiers to the front”. “The Russian generals’ use of these people as cannon fodder allows them to increase the pressure on our defenders. It’s tangible pressure.”
The Russian forces, retreating on several fronts, are on the offensive on that of Bakhmout, a city in the east of the country which had 70,000 inhabitants before the war and today largely deserted and ravaged by artillery fire. Further north, in Lampil, near the strategic Lyman railway hub recently reconquered by Ukraine, AFP journalists heard heavy artillery fire on Thursday. According to a soldier returning from the front, the village of Torske was under Russian bombardment there. In Belgorod, Russia, a Ukrainian missile struck a residential building without causing any casualties, local authorities reported.
At a meeting Thursday in Brussels of the 50 allied countries that coordinate their military support for kyiv, Washington pressed to urgently build a “patchwork” anti-aircraft defense from old or recent equipment, to the standards of the army. NATO, in order to protect the main Ukrainian strategic objectives from Russian bombardments. However, to set up the “anti-aircraft shield” demanded by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, it is necessary to create what the military call a multi-layered ground-to-air defense.
“These are short-range, low-altitude systems, then medium-range, medium-altitude systems, and finally long-range, high-altitude systems,” the US Chief of Staff, the Chief of Staff, told reporters on Wednesday. General Mark Milley. These three levels will make it possible to protect Ukrainian strategic objectives, such as large cities, key infrastructures or centers of power, against ballistic missiles, cruise missiles or even drones.
Spain was the first to respond positively on Thursday: it will send four medium-range “Hawk” surface-to-air systems to Ukraine, announced US Defense Minister Lloyd Austin, welcoming this “very, very fast”. President Emmanuel Macron told him on Wednesday that France would deliver to kyiv “radar, systems and missiles to protect (the Ukrainians) from attacks, in particular to protect them from drone attacks”. The United States has promised the NASAMS air defense system, the first two copies of which are due to arrive in Ukraine soon. They have ordered six more from manufacturer Raytheon, but delivery of these short-to-medium-range, mid-altitude systems may not be for two to three years.
Russia announced Thursday that it would organize the evacuation to its territory of the population of the Kherson region in southern Ukraine, claiming to respond to a request from the local occupation authorities threatened by the progress of the counter -offensive of the Ukrainian forces. “Following the appeal of the head of the Kherson region (…) the government decided to organize assistance for the departure of the inhabitants of the region to other regions” of the Russian Federation, has said Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khousnullin on television. “We will provide everyone with free accommodation and everything necessary,” continued the minister, without giving any indication of the number of people concerned.
The Russian occupation authorities in the Kherson region had previously asked Moscow to organize the evacuation of civilians from this territory annexed at the end of September with three other Ukrainian territories. The inhabitants will be taken to the Crimean peninsula, annexed in 2014 by Moscow, and to the Rostov, Krasnodar and Stavropol regions in southern Russia.
This announcement comes as the Ukrainian army said Thursday that it had recaptured five localities in the region, after having already claimed Wednesday the capture of five other municipalities.
On the diplomatic front, the Russian and Turkish presidents met Thursday in Kazakhstan on the sidelines of a regional summit in Astana, but did not speak publicly about the Turkish mediation proposal previously mentioned by the Kremlin. Vladimir Putin has proposed the creation of a “gas hub” in Turkey to export Russian hydrocarbons. “It makes no sense for us to create new infrastructures that would allow us to import more Russian gas,” reacted the French presidency.
A Ukrainian strike in the Belgorod region of Russia, bordering Ukraine, blew up an ammunition depot, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov announced on Thursday, adding that “according to preliminary data, there is no casualties or injuries”. Russian authorities had accused Ukraine earlier Thursday of bombing a residential building in Belgorod, a major city rarely hit by gunfire and located in a region bordering Ukraine.
Russia last week reported a “significant increase” in Ukrainian fire targeting Russian territories bordering Ukraine. According to Moscow, these strikes hit residential buildings, power plants, administrative buildings and border checkpoints.
