Putin has brought out the nukes for a parade May 9th is reportedly a date when Putin wants to have the war in Ukraine "out of the way"
In Russia, rehearsals have begun for the big military parade on May 9th, on the occasion of the 77th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory against the Nazis in the "Great Patriotic War" of 1941-1945.
According to images and videos released, the first rehearsal held on Thursday evening in Moscow's Red Square with the infantry units and the motorized convoy had...nukes in the foreground.
Note that May 9 is reportedly a date when Putin wants to have the war in Ukraine "out of the way".
Nukes and their possible use have been brought up many times by the Kremlin, and even by Putin himself, in connection with the war in Ukraine, and by being at the "head" of the parade, the Russians are sending another message to the West.
[/B][/B][/B]Moscow now. Victory parade rehearsal. Nukes right in the front. This will be a show. pic.twitter.com/hJ8ArISFNv
- Dmitri ?? (@mdmitri91) April 28, 2022
#Russia held its first parade rehearsal at night in Moscows Red Square Thursday. An official #parade will be held on May 9 with 33 formations, and more than 10,000 soldiers participating in celebrating the 77th anniversary of the Great Patriotic War. pic.twitter.com/BzWHIk32vB
- Peoples Daily app (@PeoplesDailyapp) April 29, 2022
[BR]
Putin must emerge victorious 10 days from today. Can he?
Experts point to May 9 - Victory Day in Russia, which commemorates the 1945 surrender of Nazi Germany - as the next decisive milestone for Vladimir Putin.
By that date, they say, Russia will either find some way to declare some kind of victory and stop the fighting, or May 9 will trigger a transition from Russia's "special military operation" to "war." Then Russia will undertake a nationwide mobilization to defeat Ukraine, with Moscow's threat escalating further.
On the ground, however, Putin's forces are now scattered, exhausted and showing no real signs of renewal. American military and intelligence observers tell Newsweek that the expected major offensive in the south has already turned into a stalemate: neither side can fully defeat the other, they say.
"Russia is again depending on long-range airstrikes, artillery and missile fire to pave the way for ground forces to be able to advance," a senior U.S. military officer, who was granted anonymity to discuss operational matters, told Newsweek by email.
"But it cannot sustain an attack on the giant front it has now established. The over-mobilised Ukrainian forces have not only held their ground and even advanced in some places, but they see the enemy faltering again. Yes, Russia is fighting, but Ukraine is winning."
An hour before midnight last Monday, April 18, Russia launched what it now calls the "second phase" of its invasion of Ukraine. The primary goal, according to the Kremlin, was to seize Donbass (the Donetsk and Lugansk regions) in the southeast, half of which it took control of in 2014.
One of Ukraine's top security officials, Oleksiy Danilov, says that in their new offensive Russian forces tried to break through Ukrainian defenses "along almost the entire front line of the Donetsk, Lugansk and Kharkiv regions." Kharkiv is the province north of Donbass, where Ukraine's second largest city is located, making it a symbolic trophy and an important line of communication, reaching from western Russia to the eastern battlefield.
As heavy artillery and rocket strikes began, Russian troops began a "pincer movement" from Kharkiv in the north to occupied Donetsk in the south. Imagine this Russian offensive as a horseshoe, with forces at the two open ends trying to join together to form a circle, enclosing all the territory in the middle (the rest of Donbass).
The success of such a move requires the complete defeat of the remaining Ukrainian defenders in the besieged port city of Mariupol, analysts say. That would free up nearly 20 percent of Russia's total force. The Russian army has deployed about 10 tactical battalion groups (BTGs) around the city.
On Thursday, Putin declared Mariupol "liberated" after 53 days of fighting, urging his army to move on. "We don't need to climb these catacombs and crawl underground through these industrial facilities..." he said, referring to the Azovstal steelworks in the north of the city, one of Europe's largest. There, some 2,000 Ukrainians are barricaded in, more than half of them civilians.
"Close off this industrial area so that not even a fly can get through," Putin said.
Putin was answered by Serhiy Volyna, commander of Ukraine's 36th Marine Brigade, one of the main units defending the city: 'Regardless of what Russian propaganda tells you, we fight hard every day and hold back thousands of enemy troops, preventing them from advancing. This is done at a cost, superhuman efforts and great losses."
Defenders in Mariupol held out
By Sunday, Russia's offensive in Donbass had also stopped. Russian air strikes intensified after Monday, and the military increased rocket and artillery fire to about 1,000 missiles a day - three times the average used in the new effort. But on the ground, Russian forces moved just a few kilometers, losing as much territory as they were gaining.
And Russia opened another front, beyond Donbass. On Friday, a senior Russian commander, Major General Rustam Minekaev, told Russian media that the task of the armed forces is to establish "full control in Donbass and southern Ukraine." U.S. intelligence agencies saw his statement as a redefinition of Moscow's mission, adding the entire south to its territorial goal - a difficult task.
This second southern front to the west of Donbass extends some 250 miles from Donetsk in the east to Mikolayiv in the west (the distance from New York to Niagara Falls on the Canadian border). Russian forces in this region are more freely supplied from occupied Crimea and appear stronger than the weary forces in the Donbass region. But they are also struggling in their new advance, meeting stiff Ukrainian resistance.
Closer to the Russian border, in and around Kharkiv, Moscow lost the most during the week. Although Russia continued its intense artillery attacks and airstrikes on residential urban areas, the perimeter of Ukrainian territorial control around the city widened. Ukraine also managed to liberate some towns and villages around the city's periphery, according to Governor Oleh Synehubov. In fact, U.S. intelligence observers say, Russia appears to have completely abandoned the goal of capturing eastern Ukraine's largest city - just as it abandoned Kiev, another major defeat.
South of Kharkiv, in the northern part of the "tantalizing movement," Russian soldiers advanced a few kilometers, captured Kremina and threatened the urban complex around the city of Severodonetsk, which sits on a major obstacle, the Shiverskaya Donets River, which flows from north to south. Before the war, about 250,000 Ukrainians lived in the area, including the towns of Rubizne and Lysychansk. Here the fighting has been intense since February 24, with Russia unable to make any significant breakthrough.
About 25,000 Russian troops have been deployed along these front lines. Their goal is to reach the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, about 35 miles away. These two cities will be key to Russia's ability to unite its forces from north to south and complete the circle. The Ukrainian headquarters for the entire Donbass defense is located in Kramatorsk and is fully fortified.
On the southern side of the "tantalum", Russia has made even less progress than in the north. Three Ukrainian brigades have held this territory for weeks and are now being reinforced. The only significant change during the week is an apparent Russian breakthrough further west, where Putin's forces have managed to capture the town of Zelene Pole, south of Kramatorsk but far from Donbass. Some U.S. observers say the new move northward may be a sign that some forces may have already been freed from the battle in Mariupol.
On the southern front, further west, where Russia says it seeks to take all of southern Ukraine, Putin's forces have also stalled. Russian forces there have been unable to move north from Kherson to take Mikolayiv, a city of nearly half a million people.
As for occupied Kherson itself, the region north of Crimea, Zelensky's adviser, Mikhail Podolyak, pledged this week that Ukraine would not give up, that it would not only keep Russia at bay, but would liberate the entire province. "You cannot even doubt that the state has a strategy to liberate all the towns and villages of southern Ukraine," he said in a message to the people. "There will be no freeze on the conflict ... There will be only the Kherson region of Ukraine."
Following Russia's defeat in northern Ukraine and its withdrawal from the Kiev region, Putin's forces are moving into southern Ukraine to reinforce this second phase. Mostly, these forces come from Russia itself (forces from northern Ukraine are too battered to engage directly in combat.)
Prior to the offensive, Russia had about 65 battalion tactical battalion groups (BTGs) in the south, equivalent to about 50,000 front-line troops. Another 20 additional BTGs have now joined these forces, with a total of about 82-85 battalion tactical teams now inside Ukraine. Russia has also amassed 100,000 troops near the Ukrainian border.
But these reinforcement troops are neither fresh nor ready. Sources in Kiev now say Ukraine has more tanks inside the country than Russia does. Russian forces are not only short of supplies, but also poorly coordinated.
Experts say it's a matter of battlefield density: how many forces Russia can muster and operate together. In nearly two months of fighting, Putin's army has shown little ability to coordinate among neighboring forces or to successfully command large formations. Logistical infrastructure problems - the supply of ammunition, fuel and even food - have never been resolved. Environmental factors - weather, terrain, spring thaw - have also hampered Russia, preventing off-road movements. The Russian military also continues to face serious morale problems, hampering operations and advances.
Nearly two months of failed ground attacks have enabled Western assistance to make a difference, first with anti-tank weapons and surface-to-air missiles and now with heavy equipment. Soon, Western artillery will be in Ukrainian hands - the first purely offensive weapons sent to the country.
As the second week of Russia's second phase is underway, Russian forces are split between northern, southern and eastern formations around Donbass, still fighting in Mariupol and sparsely deployed along the 250-plus mile southern front.
Putin may be able to make some progress in Donbass over the next 10 days so that he can declare victory on May 9, but overall, the prognosis on the ground is grim. This leaves declaring war and ordering national mobilisation as Putin's second choice on 9 May: a decisive move that will match the seriousness of Russia's national day.
Source: in.gr
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