The head of military intelligence in Kiev said Russia had abandoned almost all efforts to seize more territory and was now focusing on defending its positions in preparation for a brutal counterattack by Ukraine.
Almost all of their offensive operations are directed by Vladimir Putin’s forces to try to capture the hotly contested city of Bakhmut, said Kirillo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate.
Major General Budanov, 36, did not reveal details about the Ukrainian battle plans, but promised that the upcoming counterattack would be a “historic battle in the history of Ukraine.”
It comes after Yevgeny Prigozhin, commander of the mercenary Wagner Group of Russian fighters, announced that his forces had captured Pakhomt earlier this month. The city did not fall and continued to witness fierce fighting.
Budanov mocked Prigozhin in his recent interview with RBC Ukraine, saying that Putin’s confidant had nothing to celebrate about the meager gains and huge losses incurred by Russian forces.
Kirillo Budanov, head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, said Putin’s forces had abandoned efforts to capture more territory.
The intelligence chief also said that the Russian military leadership is trying to use tactics similar to those in Bakhmut in the cities of Avdiivka and Marinka, which are also located in the besieged Donetsk region, but with limited success.
Outside the region, “Putin’s forces have completely switched to positional defense everywhere,” Budanov said.
The only places on the front line where they are making attempts are the city of Bakhmut, an attempt to cover the city of Avdiivka from the north, and the local fighting in the city of Marinka.
“The tactics in Avdiivka and Marinka are identical to those in Bakhmut – just an attempt to wipe the settlement off the face of the earth, as they say,” he said.
Pictures from the two cities show scenes of complete devastation caused by the bombing.
In one of the scenes of destruction, a local resident was riding his bicycle in front of a shopping mall destroyed by a missile in the front-line town of Avdiivka.
Another photo shows a destroyed residential building in the town.
A local resident walks through a shopping center destroyed by a missile strike in the frontline town of Avdiivka, Donetsk region on April 25, 2023.
A local resident walks past a mural depicting a woman with a child on the wall of a badly damaged apartment building in the frontline town of Avdiivka
Budanov also revealed that he believed there was little chance that Vohlidar in the Donbass region, which was the site of a major tank battle, would be captured by Russian forces.
The intelligence chief went on to speculate about the mounting pressure at home faced by Putin and the Russian military leadership, as heavy casualties fail to yield any significant gains in what was originally presented as a short-term ‘special military operation’.
“Against the backdrop of a lack of success elsewhere, they have a problem that even their ‘cheated’ community needs to see something, some kind of triumph,” he said.
Ukrainian soldiers from the 115th Territorial Defense Brigade attend an exercise near the border with Belarus
This is the only place where they succeed at least. In addition, there is the fact that Prigozhin once said that he would take Bakhmut.
He would be happy to sing about it, but he just can’t. “Everything just came together here,” Budanov said.
In a wide-ranging interview, Budanov also blasted the Russian president for his alleged use of body doubles, claiming he had not visited the occupied regions of Luhansk, Mariupol and Kherson in recent weeks.
Russian President Vladimir Putin along with preacher Dmitry Peskov, who has denied that the 70-year-old dictator used doubles.
The Kremlin has had to issue extraordinary denials of Vladimir Putin using matrimonial corpses and hiding in nuclear bunkers amid rumors about the health of warmongers.
Putin’s mouthpiece Dmitry Peskov – a top Kremlin official – insisted the Russian president was in good health, even telling schoolchildren that the use of body doubles was a “lie”.
In another update, Budanov also revealed yesterday that Ukraine and Russia are close to reaching an agreement on an “all-for-all” prisoner exchange.
