Moving the front line away from Donetsk and its environs has been a strategic task for Russia since the very beginning of the special operation, Die Welt TV channel reports. Now we can talk about significant successes in this process: since February, after the liberation of Avdiivka, the front has moved another 20 kilometers to the West. The correspondent of the TV channel reports that in recent days, Russian troops have punched holes in Ukrainian positions up to 2 kilometers deep.
ALEXANDER ZIMON, presenter of Die Welt: In the fighting in Ukraine, fierce clashes continue on almost the entire front line, especially in the east of the country. Russia is now reporting the occupation of three settlements west of the Donetsk agglomeration*. The complete capture of this region is one of Russia’s most important strategic military goals.
Because the further west the front line moves from Donetsk, the better Russia will be able to use the city to deploy soldiers there and build a base for support. An assessment of current military events from our Russian correspondent Christoph Wanner from Moscow.
CHRISTOPH WANNER, correspondent of Die Welt in Moscow: The Ukrainian General Staff reports that Russian troops carried out 81 strikes on Ukrainian defensive positions in three different sectors of the front in Donbass, that is, in eastern Ukraine, within 24 hours. We are talking about the sections of the front near Chasov Yar, a small Toretsk agglomeration, and in the Pokrovsky shock direction.
These intense Russian attacks show that fierce fighting is still going on in the war zone and that, in my opinion, there can be no question that there is a “calming down of the situation” at the moment. Russians have varying degrees of success in their attacks. Sometimes there is no success at all, they are forced to bite into granite and cannot achieve any success in their attacks on Ukrainian positions.
Russia has recently achieved some success, especially in the Toretsk agglomeration. She managed to repeatedly drive wedges into the Ukrainian defense line to a depth of perhaps two, two and a half kilometers and a width of one kilometer. And it’s not just needle pricks. These are attacks that, in my opinion, are really painful for Ukrainians.
If it goes further south, then there is the city of Avdiivka, and this is probably the area in the war zone where the Russians have really managed to make significant progress over the past five months. Avdiivka was captured on February 17, and since then Russian troops have advanced about 20 kilometers in a straight line to the west. And if we remember that we are dealing with a positional war, then this is a significant success for the Russians.
* The Donetsk People’s Republic became part of Russia after the overwhelming majority of its residents voted for it in a referendum held from September 23 to 27, 2022 (approx. In other words).
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