Latest news with #DonetskRegion
CTV News
a day ago
- Politics
- CTV News
Russia has amassed 110,000 troops near strategic Ukrainian city, Kyiv says
An abandoned car stands against the background of damaged buildings in central Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Michael Shtekel) Russia has amassed 110,000 troops in the vicinity of Pokrovsk as part of its efforts to take over the strategic eastern Ukrainian city, the Ukrainian military chief said Friday. Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Friday that the area around Pokrovsk was the 'hottest spot' along the 1,200-kilometre (745 miles) front line which runs across the east. Russian forces have been trying to capture Pokrovsk for almost a year, staging one grinding offensive after another. But despite having a clear advantage in terms of the number of troops and weapons available, Moscow has failed to take over the city. Pokrovsk is a strategic target for Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin has made it clear that his goal is to seize all of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk his forces partially occupy. Kyiv and its allies accuse Russia's President Vladimir Putin of stalling on peace efforts so that his forces can seize more Ukrainian territory. Although not a major city, Pokrovsk sits on a key supply road and railroad that connect it with other military hubs in the area. Together with Kostiantynivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, it forms the backbone of Ukrainian defenses in the part of Donetsk region that are still under Kyiv's control. Some 60,000 lived in Pokrovsk before the war, but the majority have left in the three years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Ukraine's last operating coking coal mine was in Pokrovsk and many of its employees were staying in the area to keep it going. Once it was forced to shut down early this year, they too began to leave. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S.-based conflict monitor, said late last year that Ukrainian defensive operations in Pokrovsk have forced Russia to abandon its original plan to take over Pokrovsk in a frontal assault. The ISW said this was because Ukrainian troops began using drones as integral part of their defensive strategy, successfully integrating drone operators with their ground forces. At the same time, Russia was unable to increase the number of troops in the area by much, because it was trying to contain the surprise incursion of Ukrainian troops into its own territory in the southern Kursk region. Syrskyi told reporters last week that at one point, the Kursk operation pulled back nearly 63,000 Russian troops and some 7,000 North Korean troops. 'This allowed us to weaken the enemy's pressure on the main fronts and regroup our troops. And the enemy's capture of Pokrovsk, announced back in September 2024, has not yet taken place, thanks in part to our Kursk operation,' he said. Instead of continuing to attacking the city directly, Russian troops then began encircling the city from south and northeast. The ISW said in its most recent assessment on Friday that Russian forces were continuing assaults with small fireteams of one to two soldiers, sometimes on motorcycles, in all-terrain vehicles and buggies. In a statement issued on Friday, Syrksky said Russia continued to try to break through to the administrative border of the Donetsk region. 'They want to do this not only to achieve some operational results, but primarily for demonstrative purposes. To achieve a psychological effect: to put the infamous 'foot of the Russian soldier' there, plant a flag and trumpet another pseudo-'victory',' he said. Ivana Kottasová and Daria Tarasova-Markina, CNN
Telegraph
16-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
I abandoned my unit in Ukraine. Now I'm going back to war
In between last-ditch prayers to God, Volodymyr could only think of one person to blame for what he feared would be his final moments on earth. Russian mortars were hammering down on his hideout in an abandoned house on the front line in Ukraine's Donetsk region, while first-person view drones hunted for his exact position. 'I don't believe in God,' says the 23-year-old, but as the explosions shook the walls in the dead of night, he hedged his bets. Five hours earlier, he and a few other soldiers had been sent to reinforce a position they were told was 750 metres from the Russian lines, behind layers of Ukrainian defences. But when their armoured vehicle deposited them, the Russians were just 100m away – and the promised stocks of grenades, mortars and fellow infantry were nowhere to be seen. Under heavy fire, the men sprinted for cover. Internally, Volodymyr cursed his commander. This was the second poorly planned operation he had been ordered to carry out in weeks. After a bloody rescue following 12 hours of hiding, Volodymyr, known as 'Vova', told his commander to either transfer him to a different brigade or he would go AWOL. The commander refused. So Vova simply walked away, hitch-hiking at first before taking a train home to his wife. In doing so, the former barista became one of tens of thousands of absconders, a number whose growing size has forced Ukraine to stretch its armed forces in new and elastic ways. Until September last year, soldiers who left their posts faced prison; around five years for an AWOL offence, and up to 12 for the more serious crime of desertion in the heat of battle. With their name added to a list by military police, absentees could be arrested at post offices, bars, checkpoints or in their homes. But the situation on the battlefield means Ukraine must carefully husband its reserves of manpower. Vladimir Putin's forces outnumber the Ukrainian military by a factor of at least two to one, with around 2.35 million soldiers to 900,000. According to Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's president, Moscow is now recruiting up to 50,000 men a month. With roughly a quarter of the population, Ukraine manages around 27,000. In response, parliament passed a law allowing first-time deserters and AWOL soldiers to avoid punishment if they agreed to rejoin the army. Initially, they were given a deadline of January 1, 2025. That was extended to the end of March, and then again recently to Aug 30. More than 100,000 cases of absconding have been registered with the prosecutor's office since the war began, with almost two-thirds in the last year. Kyiv cannot afford to jail so many able-bodied men – let alone shoot them, as Putin's forces have done. It has left deserters in a surprisingly powerful position, whether they present themselves to authorities – as around 6,000, including Vova, did in the first month – or are rounded up by police. Held in reserve battalions, they are visited by recruiters from various units in desperate need of manpower. Soon after the law changed, Ukraine's elite 47th Brigade published an advert specifically aimed at absconders. Men like Vova cannot be forced back to the front; they pick whichever unit makes them the best offer. In his office above a theatre in Kyiv, Roman sits back in his chair and flicks through his phone. The recruitment officer for the Da Vinci Wolves, part of the 59th Brigade, has a 'million' chats with deserters, he says. Once he has filtered the list, he will attempt to persuade the best of them to join the battalion, one of the most disciplined and respected in the armed forces. 'When I start the conversations, nobody wants to fight,' he says. 'Who would?' Soldiers can be discharged if they have disabled parents or three children. Some prefer prison to returning to the front. In his early calls, Roman asks if the men have any STIs, heart problems or a history of trouble with the law. Then he will lay out his cards: men can be offered a different specialism, such as being a drone pilot, moving them back from the zero line. Roman understands only too well the horrors of that place. A combat medic built like a boxer, he has been temporarily reassigned to the recruitment office to recover from Bakhmut. 'There were just endless barrages of artillery fire, just pouring down on you,' he says. 'Planes, rockets, artillery, infantry, constant assaults.' He cannot count the number of men he treated. In one final assault before Ukraine retreated, he was the only man of 20 not to be killed or wounded. His brother was among the victims. 'After that, I kind of hit rock bottom,' he says. In this office role, he tries to understand those who fled 'just as a human being', while assessing whether he would be willing to fight alongside them when the time comes for him to return to the front. Vova's case is a relatively easy one. Stick thin, with large brown eyes and bony hands, the young man wants to fight – and is open to joining the Da Vinci Wolves. They fought near his position on the front, and he has seen social media clips of their exploits. In addition, Roman can offer him a return to the role of reconnaissance drone pilot. It was Vova's commander's decision to transfer him into the infantry that led him to go AWOL. '[The commander] was in the infantry himself and didn't know anything about this business [drone warfare], to put it bluntly,' he says. Such shifts contribute to a fair amount of desertions. According to Ukrainian Pravda, a local news site, more than 1,200 members of the 155th Mechanised Brigade absconded over five months, after hundreds were forced into the infantry. Vova's paperwork is still incomplete; other units can still secure his signature. Outside a reserve battalion barracks, Roman tells Vova that if he does well, he might even be sent abroad for extra drone training. As the men speak, a soldier who goes by the call-sign 'Psycho' walks over. His combat style might be guessed by the tattoos that adorn his body: 'Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!' spirals manically up his right arm, towards a ring of assault rifles around his elbow. Given a lift to meet his girlfriend in town, Psycho speaks gently about deserters. He joined the army as a teenager in 2015 and has seen more war than all but a few of the surviving soldiers of that generation. When deserters join up, he asks why they left. One told him once that he had slept with a major's wife, he says, laughing. 'We are all human. If you're not scared, you're crazy.' Veterans recognise that conscripts – who just weeks ago may have been teachers or IT workers – can struggle to adapt to the front. In Psycho's case, he realised after his first assault in Luhansk, in 2015, that there would be 'dead people, meat and all that unpleasant stuff'. It helped to steel his mind for the next time. Like the deserters, the army itself is in a bind. Despite Western pressure, Mr Zelensky is unwilling to lower the conscription age to 18. Instead, the army now offers 18- to 24-year-olds large bonuses, including a $20,000 one-off payment, to sign up. Take-up has nevertheless been slow, admits Roman: perhaps 10 a month come to him in the recruitment office. Meanwhile, the government has repeatedly extended the term of existing soldiers, who have no end to their service in sight. One knock-on effect of the AWOL reform might be to gradually 'squeeze out and starve the worst of the brigades' through a process of 'natural selection', says Gil Barndollar, a former infantry officer in the US marines and a senior research fellow at the Catholic University of America. More soldiers now feel at liberty to quit poorly led battalions. 'It's better for these people to end up in good positions. But it does create a problem for the army and I suspect these worst brigades are going to get starved of men,' he added. Before he heads back into the barracks, Vova shakes hands with Roman. The meeting seems to have stiffened his resolve to sign up with the Da Vinci Wolves. Asked whether he felt relief when he walked away from the front line, he demurs. He will only feel relief when he's back 'serving in a brigade I want to'.
Arab News
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
Russia says it captures a village in Ukraine's Donetsk region
MOSCOW: Russian forces have captured the settlement of Nova Poltavka in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, the Russian defense ministry said on Thursday. Russian news agencies, citing the defense ministry, separately reported that air defenses had shot down 317 Ukrainian drones over the territory of Russia in the past 24 hours and 485 drones in total since the evening of May 20.
