Russia ‘Expending Significant Resources for Minimal Gains’ Says UK Intel, as Kremlin Says Ukraine Will Cease to Exist

Ukrainian servicemen greets each other as they drive along a road near the town of Bakhmut
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Oliver JJ Lane

Russia is giving a “high priority” to attempting gains near Donetsk, a British intelligence assessment says, noting “minimal gains” made despite “significant resources” committed.

Tank assaults against suburbs of Donetsk are increasing as Russia expends “significant resources for minimal gains” in that area, the British Ministry of Defence had said in one of its regular Ukrainian war intelligence updates. Donetsk itself has been occupied by Russia since the last Ukraine war in 2014 and professes under the leadership of Russian-backed separatists to be the capital of a breakaway people’s republic.

Despite the intensity of the latest period of Russian aggression commencing from 2022, and unlike Russian advances into the area around Melitopol and north of Luhansk, the front line has moved little around Donetsk, which is right at the frontier of what the Kremlin occupies and has been for nearly a decade. The British intelligence assessment underlines how Russia is throwing resources into trying to capture suburbs to the north and west of the city, or what remains of them.

Marinka, which lies around 12 miles to the West of Donetsk has been “fought over since 2014 and has been largely destroyed by artillery”, the UK says, but it remains strategically important because it “commands the approaches to Donetsk”. Avdiivka to the north, another focus for Russian armed pushes, has also been saturated with artillery and resembles a wasteland.

The UK assessment of Russia’s high-attrition attempts to push forward the border from Donetsk echoes comments by the Ukrainian government, which through a spokesman notes “colossal losses” sustained by the Russians in the area. In comments reported by Ukrainska Pravda, Ukrainian military spokesman Oleksii Dmytrashkovskyi accused drunk Russian officers of forcing their soldiers, including prisoners of war, to advance on Ukrainian positions at gunpoint.

While Russia’s own rhetoric towards Ukraine, that the so-called “special military operation” is to save Ukraine from itself, has been betrayed by the reality of the “scorched earth” war, even the words are now catching up to the violence. Far from the claims last year that Ukraine was a valued part of Russia that was going to come home, by force is necessary, Putin lackey, Kremlin propagandist, and former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has questioned why the country even exists.

Claiming that Ukraine doesn’t really matter to anyone, that Asia has bigger problems to worry about than a European war, that most Americans couldn’t find it on a map, and that even European nations don’t truly care about the country, Medvedev repeated the Russian line that the creation of the country at all was an accident of history. In comments amplified by the Kremlin’s own wires service, Medvedev prognosticated that: “This kind of Ukraine is not needed to anyone on the planet. And this is why it will cease to exist”.

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