Forces severely lack ammunition and manpower, Die Welt’s correspondent in Kiev says
The situation on the front lines is becoming increasingly disadvantageous for Ukraine, a Kiev-based correspondent with Germany’s daily Die Welt reported this week. The Ukrainian troops severely lack ammunition and personnel to fend off Russian attacks, Paul Ronzheimer said, citing “generals and soldiers” whom he’s “constantly been in contact with.”
Kiev’s troops have largely gone on the defensive following the failure of their much-hyped summer counteroffensive. The operation, which started in early June 2023, failed to enable Ukraine to gain much ground or bring about significant changes to the front lines, despite heavy losses of personnel and equipment.
Russia’s Defense Ministry has previously put Ukraine’s losses during the failed counteroffensive at 160,000. Moscow also described Kiev’s total losses throughout the conflict as catastrophic, estimating among its military losses nearly 400,000 soldiers killed or wounded since February 2022.
Late last year, Kiev intensified its mobilization efforts in a bid to replenish the troop pool. President Vladimir Zelensky stated earlier that the military wanted up to 500,000 new recruits.
According to Ronzheimer, “mobilization isn’t working.” Ukraine has also been flooded with reports about difficult situations at the front lines, the reporter said, without mentioning any particular news pieces. Kiev’s forces were also about to run out of ammunition for its Western-made air defense systems, like America’s Patriot, he said, calling such a development a “major concern” for the local population.
Ukrainian “generals and …soldiers” also told the correspondent that the frontline situation “is extremely tense,” particularly near the Donbass city of Avdeevka, a strategic location north of Donetsk that’s seen heavy fighting over the past months.
The Ukrainian generals want “more mobilization” efforts, Ronzheimer said, adding that they want to “send more soldiers” into the fray.
In another report earlier this week, the correspondent said that Ukrainian troops had taken to the defensive along the entire front line in the East and the South, and were still struggling to hold ground. Moscow’s troops launched “massive attacks” in 80 areas “along several hundred kilometers of the front,” he added.
“We keep hearing the messages from the soldiers, which become more dramatic,” Ronzheimer said, adding that Kiev’s troops had warned they would hardly be able to defend their current positions with whatever they had in stock as of that moment.
The German journalist also said that it would be “very difficult” for the Ukrainian troops to particularly hold Avdeevka in the long term, since Moscow’s forces were making steady progress in that area. “The Russians are on the offensive there and are making progress meter by meter,” Ronzheimer said, claiming that such advances were still quite costly for Moscow.
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