The eastern Luhansk region of Ukraine, which Russia has annexed to Russia and has total control over, was declared completely over on Tuesday by the government’s occupying governor.
Leonid Pasechnik told Russia’s TV , Channel One, “Just a few days ago, I received a report that the territory of the Luhansk People’s Republic has been completely liberated.”
Not everyone sided with me.
According to Russian military reporters, two villages remained free while Luhansk had previously been declared confederated in 2022 before being partially reclaimed in a Ukrainian counteroffensive in September that year.
However, it’s unquestionable that in the past 33 months, Russian forces have sped up their strategy for retaking control of the entire area, marking a second milestone on Ukraine’s eastern front.
More than three years after the start of the full-scale invasion, Russia’s advance hit Ukraine once more. The United States announced that it would not send Kyiv some weapons that had been promised by the former US president’s administration on the same day as Pasechnik’s announcement.
Following a review of our country’s military support and assistance to other nations, the White House made the decision to prioritize America’s interests.
For the first time in the war, Russian troops had ever seized the entire Donetsk region at any point, despite having about a third of it still in Kyiv’s control, when they crossed the border of the Dnipropetrovsk region over the weekend of June 8 and 8 respectively.
These milestones demonstrate that Ukrainian forces are ineffective, as they do not represent a change in the Russian forces’ crawling advance or a breakthrough.
On June 27, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed its forces had taken control of the Donetsk villages Zaporizhzhia, Perebudova, Shevchenko, and Yalta before moving to Chervona Zirka and Novoukrainka on Sunday.
Russia has amounted to an unfathomable feeling in Ukraine as a result of such small but persistent conquests.
The buffer bluff
The Russian armed forces are now being asked to carry out patrols to create a buffer zone, according to the statement. According to experts, it should extend at least 70 to 120 kilometers (40 to 75 miles) inside Ukraine, according to National Defense magazine editor Igor Korotchenko.
Russian officials and pro-Moscow pundits have previously made similar statements.
As a result of the Russian forces’ recapture of Kursk, a Russian region that Ukraine had counter-invaded, battalion deputy commander Oleg Ivanov stated to TASS that a buffer zone “no less than 20km]12 miles] wide, and preferably 30km]19 miles] should be established in order to protect residents of Kursk from Ukrainian counterattack.
The buffer zone could look like this, according to Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s National Security Council, who cited Kyiv as a reference to the country’s “regime of bandits” in a map posted on his Telegram channel in May.
Russian troops crossed the border in the middle of a new offensive offensive, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, last month, with the goal of establishing a buffer zone.
Although the Kremlin officially annexes only Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson, many experts believe these buffer zones are just an excuse to keep capturing as much Ukrainian territory as possible given that Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, revealed on June 20 that he still considered all of Ukraine to be Russian territory.
Putin cryptically stated his objectives at the Eurasian Economic Union summit in Minsk on June 27 and stated this at the summit.
He demanded a buffer zone on Ukrainian territory between Russia and Ukraine in May, leaving the decision to his lieutenants. Legislators in the Russian Duma supported him, despite the general’s suggestion that it should have six Ukrainian territories.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, stated on Sunday that the country was reversing its support for the Ottawa Treaty, which prohibits antipersonnel landmines.
With the new strategy, Ukraine could create, stockpile, and defend itself with these mines.
According to Zelenskyy, “Antipersonnel mines have very frequently no other option for defense.”
Ukraine responds with a response
Ukraine continued to use long-range weapons to achieve tactical victories inside Russia.
Ukrainian drones struck the Kirovske airfield on Friday and Saturday, June 27 and 28. At least three attack helicopters were destroyed, according to the Ukrainian State Security Service (SBU).
Additionally, the Ukrainian General Staff reported last week that at least four Sukhoi-34 fighters had been destroyed by an aerial attack at the Russian Marinovka airbase. On the front lines of Ukraine, Russia drops glide bombs using the fighters.
On June 26, according to information from intelligence sources, Ukraine may have destroyed a Russian intelligence base in the Bryansk region.
Russia is putting money into its unmanned capabilities. On June 30, Zelenskyy announced that Russia plans to increase the number of drones being used in attacks on our nation.
447 drones and 90 missiles had been fired into Ukrainian cities as a result of Russia’s largest unmanned airstrike of the conflict the day before.
The Ukrainian air force claimed to have shot down or electronically suppressed all but 38 missiles and drones.
Ukrainian military experts have come to the conclusion that Moscow is marking Ukrainian territory with which to launch a ground war against in light of the larger and more frequent Russian unmanned air attacks this year, especially since bilateral discussions between the conflicting sides resumed in May.
“We’re not talking about the front lines,” he said. According to Victoria Vdovychenko, a professor at Cambridge University Center for Geopolitics, “we are actually talking about]rear] areas of Ukraine, and even the residential areas,” she told Al Jazeera. “We are talking about] red] cities or communities in Ukraine, not so much as red lines or communities,” but actually yellow cities and communities, which means slightly further away from red line zones.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul made his first trip to Kyiv on Monday during Zelenskyy’s speech.
Zelenskyy claimed that the majority of the 11 billion euros ($11 billion) of military aid Germany promised this year would go toward the “strategic objective” of launching “systematic production of air defense systems”.
Last week, he had more in-depth understanding of what that meant when he claimed that Ukraine’s potential was “scaling up,” particularly with regard to interceptors, the missiles used to intercept incoming missiles.
He argued that the pace of drone development and the scale of our production must be fully in line with the circumstances of the war. Zelenskyy’s increased frequency of Russian attacks required Ukraine to maintain its defensiveness.
Regarding drones, he stated on Monday that “the priority is drones, interceptor drones, and long-range strike drones.”
Source: Aljazeera
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