This video grab from a handout footage released by the Russian Defence Ministry press service on October 25, 2023, shows Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu visiting the “Vostok” command post in eastern Ukraine.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Russia claimed on October 25 it was exhausting Ukraine’s army, 20 months into a conflict in which neither side has made recent significant gains.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu made the comments during a visit to east Ukraine, the Defence Ministry said on October 25.

“The situation today suggests the enemy has fewer and fewer opportunities. And they will continue to be reduced, thanks exclusively to your combat work,” Mr. Shoigu told Russian soldiers.

He was also filmed smiling and laughing when a Russian soldier told him Ukrainian troops were “in a panic”.

It has been months since either Russia or Ukraine made a significant territorial gain in the 20-month conflict, as losses continue to mount. Analysts say the conflict is approaching a winter stalemate.

The Defence Ministry did not say when Shoigu’s visit to Russia’s “Vostok” — or East — command post took place.

In a rare admission, it also quoted soldiers telling Mr. Shoigu that heavy Ukrainian artillery fire was having an effect.

“The enemy’s artillery is causing a lot of problems. We are taking measures,” the soldiers were quoted as saying.

The Defence Minister has faced criticism inside Russia for Moscow’s failure to make more significant gains during its assault on Ukraine.

Russian forces have recently stepped up their attacks on the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka but have failed to make any significant advances.

It has suffered a string of manpower and equipment losses in its attempt to seize the city — which has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance — according to Kyiv and independent military analysts.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on October 25 his troops were facing “heavy, tough battles” around Avdiivka but were “holding their positions”.

News of Mr. Shoigu’s visit comes a day after Mr. Zelensky said Kyiv had managed to disrupt Russian attacks from the Black Sea and the annexed peninsula of Crimea.

“The Russian fleet is no longer capable of operating in the western part of the Black Sea and is gradually fleeing Crimea. This is a historic achievement,” Mr. Zelensky told a diplomatic summit on October 24.

Smoke rises above the area of Avdiivka town in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict, as seen from Yasynuvata (Yasinovataya) in the Donetsk region, Russian-controlled Ukraine, on October 13, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Kyiv reported “heated” fighting around its eastern city of Avdiivka on Saturday, saying Russian forces had “not stopped assaulting” the symbolic industrial hub for days in their attempt to surround it.

Ukraine last week said Russia had stepped up assaults on the frontline city, which lies just 15 km from Moscow-held Donetsk.

Avdiivka has been a symbol of Ukrainian resistance since 2014, after it briefly fell to Russian-backed separatists.

Russian forces now control territory to the east, north and south of Avdiivka.

“For the fifth day already, the enemy has not stopped either assaulting or shelling positions around the city,” Vitaliy Barabash, the head of the city, said on Ukrainian television.

“It is very heated, very heated,” he said of the fighting.

“They are trying to surround the city,” Barabash added, claiming that Moscow was deploying “more new forces” to the area.

He described intense battles: “There is certainly no silence there at all. Shooting battles continue, both from the north and from the south of the city.”

Kyiv’s Interior Ministry said Russian shelling had “destroyed” a five-storey building in the city, saying it believed a man in his sixties was under the rubble but that it was “impossible to retrieve the body.”

It urged residents still in Avdiivka to evacuate.

Some 1,600 civilians are believed to be in the city, which had a pre-war population of 31,000.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Kyiv was holding its ground in Avdiivka, but Moscow claimed it had improved its positions there.

Ukraine also said Saturday that a Russian attack killed an 11-year-old boy in the eastern village of Bagatyr, also in the Donetsk region, some 80 kilometres (50 miles) west of Avdiivka.

“The boy turned 11 just two days ago,” Ukrainian police said in a statement.

It said his 31-year-old mother and younger brother were wounded and taken to hospital following the attack, which damaged around 20 homes, a church and a school.

Russia’s intensified assault on Avdiivka has come after months of a Ukrainian counter-offensive, which has been slower than expected.

Russia meanwhile said it had “repelled enemy attacks” in several villages in eastern Ukraine, including in Andriivka — an eastern village that Kyiv has claimed it recaptured but Russia says it controls.

Russian air defenses shot down 31 Ukrainian drones during a concerted nighttime attack by Kyiv’s forces on border regions, the Russian Defense Ministry said October 4, even as uncertainty grew over Ukraine’s future access to weapons and ammunition from its Western allies.

The drone attack appeared to be Kyiv’s largest single cross-border drone assault reported by Moscow since it launched its invasion 20 months ago.

Ukraine is pressing on with a slow-moving counteroffensive it launched three months ago, though mounting concerns about replenishing its military stocks cast a cloud over its efforts

Also Read: Ukraine says it downed 29 Russia-launched drones, one cruise missile

Adm. Rob Bauer, the head of NATO’s Military Committee, sounded the alarm about depleted stockpiles.

With the war of attrition likely continuing through winter into next year, Bauer said of weapons systems and ammunition supplies: “The bottom of the barrel is now visible.”

He urged the defense industry to boost production “at a much higher tempo. And we need large volumes,” he told the Warsaw Security Forum, an annual two-day conference that continued October 4.

The Russian Defense Ministry didn’t provide any evidence for its claims about intercepting Ukrainian drones nor any details about whether there were any damage or casualties.

It also said Russian aircraft thwarted a Ukrainian attempt to deploy a group of soldiers by sea to the western side of Russian-annexed Crimea.

Also Read: Putin marks anniversary of annexation of Ukrainian regions as drones attack overnight

The force attempted to land on Cape Tarkhankut, on Crimea’s western end, using a high-speed boat and three jet skis, the Ministry said.

Moscow’s claims could not be independently verified, and Ukrainian officials made no immediate comment.

The Crimean Peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, has been a frequent target of Ukrainian attacks. The region has been the key hub supporting the invasion.

Fears over the resupply of Ukraine’s armed forces have deepened in recent weeks.

The Pentagon has warned Congress that it is running low on money to replace weapons the U.S. has sent to Ukraine.

Concern about the commitment of Kyiv’s allies has also grown amid political turmoil in the United States amid the unprecedented and dramatic ouster Tuesday of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Some in the House Republican majority, and many GOP voters, oppose sending more military aid to Ukraine. The U.S. is by far Ukraine’s largest military supplier.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, publicly questioned the motives of what he called “Western conservative elites.”

“Why are you so insistently against… destroying the Russian army, which has been terrifying,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

The funding concerns prompted U.S. President Joe Biden to hold a phone call Tuesday with key allies in Europe, as well as the leaders of Canada and Japan, to coordinate support for Ukraine.

The call came three days after Biden signed legislation hastily sent to him by Congress that kept the federal government funded but left off billions in funding for Ukraine’s war effort that the White House had vigorously backed.

Ukraine’s military intelligence said on Friday that a recent drone attack on an airport in northwestern Russia which damaged several transport planes was carried out from within Russian territory.

The claim came as Kyiv said the police in the Capital were responding to bomb threats as children returned to classrooms for a second academic year since Russia’s invasion.

The attack this week on Pskov airport some 700 kilometres from Ukraine marked the latest strike to rock Russian territory since Kyiv vowed to “return” the conflict to Russia in July.

“The drones used to attack the ‘Kresty’ air base in Pskov were launched from Russia,” Ukraine’s intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said on social media Friday.

“Four Russian IL-76 military transport planes were hit as a result of the attack. Two were destroyed and two were seriously damaged,” he added.

Mr. Budanov said the aircraft had been used by the defence ministry to transport troops and cargo.

The Kremlin said this week that military experts were working to find out which routes drones are taking in order “to prevent such situations in the future”.

Asked about Ukrainian claims on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment and instead deferred questions to the Defence Ninistry.

The region of Pskov, which was also targeted by drones in late May, is surrounded by NATO members Estonia and Latvia to its west and Belarus to its south.

Budanov’s comments came hours after Russian air defences destroyed a drone approaching Moscow, the city’s mayor said, a day after a similar attack on the capital.

Russian media reported that air traffic at Moscow’s Domodedovo and Vnukovo airports had been temporarily halted.

A recent uptick in aerial assaults have hit the capital’s financial district, ripped holes in commercial buildings and even struck the Kremlin but officials have dismissed the increase in attacks.

The reports of bomb threats in Ukraine’s capital came as the country’s education ministry said nearly four million students were returning to school, both online and in person.

“We have received information about explosives in Kyiv’s schools,” police spokeswoman Yulia Girdvilis told AFP.

“All educational institutions are being checked by Kyiv police forces with the involvement of the State Emergency Service.”

The police force said any evacuations would be decided by schools and the police, calling on people to “stay calm.”

Ukrainian officials announcing the beginning of the new school year said that Russian attacks since the beginning of the invasion in February 2022 had damaged or destroyed thousands of schools.

Andriy Sadovy, the mayor of the western city of Lviv, said pupils will be learning to fly drones, releasing a picture of students behind computers.

“This is our new reality,” he wrote on social media alongside images of children holding controllers and sitting in front of monitors simulating drone flights.

Alongside the increase in drone attacks inside Russia, tensions have been building on the Black Sea after Moscow in July scrapped a deal allowing maritime exports from Ukraine.

But Ukraine has established an alternate route for cargo vessels and announced Friday that two more vessels had departed, defying a Russian naval blockade.

Turkey, which brokered the deal allowing grain exports from Ukraine with the United Nations, has urged Moscow to return to the accord.

The Kremlin announced Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin will host his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Black Sea resort of Sochi for talks on Monday, likely on the scuppered agreement.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on a visit to Moscow this week that reviving the deal to ship Ukrainian grain across the Black Sea was “critical” for global food security.