The enemy continues to regroup in separate sectors of the front. The main efforts are focused on conducting offensive operations in the Kupyansky, Limansky, Bakhmutsky, Avdeevsky and Novopalovsky directions.
This was announced on February 7 by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on its Facebook page.
The report notes that over the past day, units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces have repelled attacks in areas of a number of settlements in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. In addition, in these areas, as well as in the Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, the enemy launched fire attacks on the settlements.
In particular, it is reported that 23 settlements were shelled in the direction of Zaporizhzhia and 19 in the direction of Kherson.
According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in the past two days the Russian invaders have lost 25 tanks; about 1900 invaders were liquidated.
“Yesterday some kind of record was set – 1030 people. The fight continues! Glory to Ukraine!” – notes the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The Ukrainian press points out that the “hot spot” of the war in recent months is the situation around Bakhmut.
“We are not ruling out any scenario. But we act exclusively vertically. All the military are on defensive lines. And everything is taken, maximum measures, ”said Pavel Kirilenko, head of the Donetsk regional military administration, in an interview with the Ukrainian service of Radio Liberty.
He stressed: “No one will use the defenders of Ukraine as cannon fodder.”
“As long as Bakhmut holds on. We are doing everything possible to destroy the enemy as much as possible so that his offensive fervor is extinguished,” Kirilenko said.
On the air of the Current Time television channel, a junior sergeant in the Ukrainian army, a former Kharkiv lawyer Oleg Golovkov, said on February 7 that his unit was located on the outskirts of Bakhmut – this area was already marked on the cards as busy.
Golovkov noted that the Konstantinovka-Bakhmut road is entirely under Ukrainian control.
“I had the chance to ride it several times today. The road is under our normal and effective control of Ukraine. There is no fire damage from small arms. And they used artillery to hit it three months ago,” Golovkov said.
A day earlier, Denis Yaroslavsky, commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, had told Current Time that the situation in the city, partially occupied by the Russian army, was “objectively difficult”. According to him, Bakhmut is now being stormed not by Wagner PMC mercenaries, but by the regular army of the Russian Federation.
About Bakhmut and non-existent victories
Meduza on February 7 quotes Russian sources saying that Russian troops occupied seven settlements in the directions of Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia: Soledar, Klescheyevka, Podgornoye, Krasnopolye, Blagodatnoye, Lobkove and Nikolaevka. This was stated by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, reports Meduza.
She also cites the assertion of the Russian side that in January the Ukrainian Armed Forces lost more than 6.5 thousand people, 341 tanks, 26 planes and seven helicopters.
The Main Intelligence Directorate of the Armed Forces of Ukraine states that Sergei Shoigu “attributes non-existent victories to himself and activates the conflict with the Wagnerians”.
“He also mentioned the “successful” development of hostilities near Bakhmut and Ugledar, stressed that all these “boots” are the result of Russian actions. At the same time, Shoigu deliberately did not mention the fact that the forces of the private military company Wagner are actively involved in all these areas to conduct hostilities. Instead, the Russian regular army only plays an episodic role of “support forces”, points out the GUR of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Facebook.
At the same time, according to a number of experts, over the past two weeks in the Ukrainian press one can observe more reporting on the defensive actions of the Ukrainian army than on the offensive ones.
About Offensive and Defensive Indicators
Director of foreign policy and international security programs at the Razumkov Center, military expert Oleksiy Melnyk notes that there are several reasons that can explain the situation in Donbass over the past two weeks.
“Indeed, in the past two weeks, there have been no press reports reporting a tactically significant advance by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. And… we can say that there are quite a few signals and indicators that Ukraine is preparing its own counter-offensive. Where will it take place, when will it start, one can only guess, but to make a counter-offensive (on such) a scale as near Kharkiv or Kherson, resources need to be concentrated, ammunition, equipment, don’t spray it at tactical targets,” Aleksey Melnik told Russian service correspondent Voices of America.
He noted that regrouping forces or retreating to other positions is a kind of active defense when other actions are inappropriate.
The escalation of the conflict has not stopped
Political scientist Oleg Lisny explains that Russia is now turning its offensive, but it cannot be ruled out that the Ukrainian side, having fired Russian forces on itself, will organize a counterattack.
“As part of the Russian mobilization, the front is saturated with manpower, and here the problem arises that we need a weapon capable of destroying manpower at great distances – up to present, there is none. According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, we are currently crushing enemy units in the Donbass. But now the main thing, if we make an analogy with boxing, is to resist the attack, see the weak point and hit it, ”says Lisny in an interview with the media correspondent Russian Service.
“Russia has imposed a message on the West: give Ukraine long-range weapons, and the war will escalate. But the escalation hasn’t stopped – it’s started and hasn’t stopped since February 24, 2022. And that should be the point. Ukraine does not cross “red lines”, it is our right, because there are legitimate targets on Russian territory. These strikes have long been asking to save the lives of our soldiers, ”underlines Oleg Lisny.
