Putin Warns Of “Prolonged” Ukraine Battle As Russia Misses Key Army Objectives

Moscow:

President Vladimir Putin warned Wednesday of a drawn-out navy intervention in Ukraine greater than 9 months right into a battle the Kremlin had hoped would finish after a days-long assault on Kyiv.

His feedback got here after Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky mentioned contemporary Russian strikes on a market and gasoline station had killed six folks and wounded a number of extra within the frontline area of Donetsk.

With the one-year mark of the battle approaching, Russian forces have missed most of their key navy objectives together with toppling the Ukrainian authorities, capturing the Donbas area and annexing 4 areas.

Moscow had anticipated combating to final simply days earlier than Ukraine’s capitulation, however on Wednesday Putin warned outcomes may very well be a very long time coming.

“As for the lengthy technique of (seeing) outcomes of the particular navy operation, in fact, this can be a prolonged course of,” Putin mentioned throughout a televised assembly with the Kremlin’s human rights council.

However he praised the introduced annexation of 4 Ukrainian territories into Russia after Moscow proxies held a referendum — denounced within the West as a sham — and introduced their integration in September.

“New territories appeared — properly, that is nonetheless a big outcome for Russia and this can be a critical subject,” Putin mentioned.

The Russian chief formalised the annexation of the 4 southern and jap territories — Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — at a ceremony within the Kremlin in September.

Russian shelling on market

However Russian troops at no level managed all of any of those areas and final month have been pressured out from the regional capital of the southern Kherson area after a months-long Ukraine counter-offensive.

That very same month Putin introduced Russia was mobilising tons of of hundreds of Russians to bolster Moscow’s struggling drive after a sequence of battlefield setbacks, significantly within the Kharkiv area in northeast Ukraine.

On Wednesday he mentioned half the Russians known as up for navy service in September had been deployed to Ukraine.

“Out of 300,000 of our mobilised fighters, our males, defenders of the fatherland, 150,000 are within the space of operations,” mentioned Putin, including that about 77,000 have been in fight items.

Because the seize of Kherson metropolis, combating in Ukraine has centered on the economic Donbas area, the place Russian forces have been pushing to seize the frontline metropolis of Bakhmut.

Zelensky — after visiting the frontline area this week — mentioned Wednesday that Russian forces had killed six civilians and injured a number of in a latest bout of shelling.

“Terrorists attacked the peaceable metropolis of Kurakhove,” he mentioned in a press release on social media.

“A market, a bus station, gasoline stations, and residential buildings got here beneath hearth. At the very least six civilians have been killed, 5 have been wounded.”

The Donetsk area has been partially managed by Russian forces since 2014, when Moscow-backed separatists wrested management of Donbas close to the Russian border and Moscow annexed the Crimean peninsula.

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