MOSCOW – President Vladimir Putin on Friday hailed the “authentic heroes” fighting in Ukraine on the eve of the second anniversary of the offensive, bolstered by gains against ammunition-starved Ukrainian troops.
Putin’s message came on Moscow’s “Defender of the Fatherland Day” patriotic holiday, which has always been a chance for military pomp and Kremlin-sponsored patriotism.
In Washngton, DC, President Volodymyr Zelensky called on the US Congress to approve additional aid for Kyiv, saying in an interview broadcast Thursday (Friday in Manila) a failure to do so will cost Ukrainian lives.
The United States plans to impose sanctions Friday on more than 500 targets involved in Russia’s war in Ukraine, as Moscow claims fresh battlefield advances two years after its invasion.
Ukraine, grappling with hold-ups to much-needed Western military aid, has been pushed back from the front line in recent months.
Already outgunned, Kyiv is rationing ammunition as political wrangling in Washington, Ukraine’s biggest ally, stalls a critically needed $60-billion aid package.
Russia has for months been ramping up arms production and driving massive resources into its renewed offensive, exacting an enormous human toll.
“There are no more tears, our country has been going through what has been happening for two years now,” Oleksandra Terekhovych said as Ukraine endures another winter at war.
“We live with horror inside of us.”
The Russian defence ministry on Thursday announced the capture of Pobeda (‘victory’ in Russian), a frontline village about five kilometres (three miles) west of Donetsk city.
Last week, it said it had seized the former Ukrainian stronghold of Avdiivka.
With no end to the war in sight, Ukraine’s army is struggling with recruitment as well as depleted resources.
US President Joe Biden has voiced “confidence” that Congress will soon push through new war aid, while his administration revealed sanctions to be doled out Friday.
The US Treasury Department told AFP the measures would hit “Russia, its enablers, and its war machine”.
Since Russian troops poured across the border on Feb. 24, 2022, Washington and its allies have imposed a host of sanctions, targeting Moscow’s revenue and military-industrial complex.
Earlier Thursday, the US government marked the looming second anniversary of the invasion with charges against a series of wealthy Russians to help cut the “flow of illegal funds that are fueling” Moscow’s war.
And the International Monetary Fund said it would disburse $880 million to Ukraine in the third phase of a $15.6-billion package announced almost two years to the day since Russian forces invaded.
For more than a year, the front line has barely moved.
Kyiv has managed to hold a thin bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River in the southern Kherson region, but its forces have not progressed inland.
“Russians are concentrating their main activity on the Donetsk region,” Ukraine’s senior commander in the area, Oleksandr Tarnavsky, said Thursday.
During a briefing, he said Ukraine was “holding back enemy forces” in Pobeda, but did not explicitly refute Moscow’s claim of having captured the village.
As Russia claimed advances in the east, Ukraine said its forces had struck a Russian training ground in the south, on the eastern bank of the Dnipro.
The strike, which took place Wednesday, targeted a range where Russian storm troops were training, military spokeswoman Nataliya Gumenyuk said.
Around 60 Russian troops were “killed or seriously wounded” when three strikes hit the training ground near the village of Podo-Kalynivka, she told AFP.
Ukraine carried out a separate strike on a training ground near the Russian-controlled town of Volnovakha in the eastern Donetsk region on Tuesday, resulting in numerous casualties.
Russia did not officially acknowledge that strike, but authorities in one region said they were looking into reports of casualties among the 36th Motorised Rifle Brigade.
This week, tensions on the border with neighbouring Poland also further threatened Ukraine’s war effort.
Polish farmers have blocked deliveries as they protest Ukrainian competition and farm imports, prompting warnings from Kyiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he instructed officials to go to the border on Friday to resolve the issue, which “unfortunately, adds to the threats to the supply of weapons to our guys at the front.”
“In these past years, the military and industrial complexes have multiplied both weapons production and supplies to troops,” Putin added in a video message put out by the Russian presidency.
This year the holiday falls with Putin inspired by the symbolic capture of the Ukrainian city of Avdiivka and as Russia revels in the US Congress blocking vital military aid to Kyiv.
Ahead of an election certain to extend Putin’s long reign, a massive crackdown has all but crushed dissent and the Russian leader’s main opponent — Alexei Navalny — is dead.
Putin has spent recent days flying bomber planes, handing out medals to troops and touting a “turning point” in Ukraine.
Earlier this week he mocked what he called the “chaotic flight” of Ukrainian soldiers from Avdiivka.
“This is a special page in the history of combat operations in general and in Russia’s defence of its vital interests,” Putin said of Moscow’s capture of the city that had been under attack fr months.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has been weakened by the blocking of US aid, its failed counter-offensive and worsening ammunition shortages, with President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledging an “extremely difficult” situation on the front.
After two years fighting a bigger and richer army, Ukrainian forces are exhausted, with the fall of Avdiivka after months of bloody battles a blow to morale for its troops in the east.
“It’s extremely hard,” Ukrainian infantryman Oleksiy, told AFP in east Ukraine, caked in mud after returning from the trenches.
“We don’t have weapons like they have. You know, they have factories for production, and us? We beg for weapons. That’s the way it is,” the 32 year-old said. AFP