How Long Will Russians Continue to Escalate Terror Against Civilians? #aerial attacks#Chasiv Yar#drone#Kupiansk#Kyiv#missile#Pokrovsk#Russia#Russian war in Ukraine#Sumy#Ukraine
The situation on the Ukrainian front. Transcript of the interview on situation in Ukraine for the Czech TV CT24.
#aerial attacks #Chasiv Yar #drone #Kupiansk #Kyiv #missile #Pokrovsk #Russia #Russian war in Ukraine #Sumy #Ukraine
Battles for the strategic city of Chasiv Yar
Ukraine denies reports that it has lost the important city of Chasiv Yar. Russians, on the other hand, claim that they have managed to occupy it after a 16-month bloody battle. According to Ukrainians, however, defenders remain in fortified positions in its western part. They are also under heavy pressure from the aggressors in another strategic city, Pokrovsk. Russian bombs were also killing in the inland areas.
The battle for the city of 12,000 began with the landing of Russian paratroopers last April. The vast majority of residents were replaced by Ukrainian soldiers, who fortified themselves in cellars and the ruins of buildings. However, the encounter turned into a cruel war of attrition, which turned the industrial settlement into ruins.
For 484 days already, the Russians have been showering Ukrainian positions with grenades, rockets, and suicide drones. Kyiv denies Moscow’s boastful reports that its forces have broken through on the extensive front and occupied the city. According to sources from Czech television, defenders are still holding out in its western part.
Another key city, Pokrovsk, is also falling. Fighting for it has been going on since last July. Here too, Ukrainians lack infantry. Massive Russian attacks with the help of drones often cover the often suicidal advance of small units. Where they manage to break through, the aggressors immediately deploy reinforcements and enlarge the breakthrough. The defenders then have no choice but to retreat.
Attacks on Ukrainian inland
Russians also attacked in the Ukrainian inland. Kyiv was hit in two waves:
▪️First, swarms of Russian drones circled over the city
▪️Then the Russian army fired missiles
In one of Kyiv’s districts, an Iskander missile destroyed part of a residential building.
Interview with Pavel Macko, former commander of the NATO Joint Forces Training Center
Moderator: Good evening to you.
Pavel Macko: Good evening.
Moderator: So if we first stop at those Russian air strikes on Ukrainian territory, they have been much more massive lately. What tactics do the Russians use in them and how does the Ukrainian air defense manage to respond?
Pavel Macko: Well, they are already combining those attacks, whether with missiles or drones. But they are already flying in with those drones from all directions. In this way, they are trying to saturate basically the entire air defense system. Meanwhile, they have also improved the design of those drones. And it’s harder for Ukrainians. They still had a 95% success rate last year. Now it’s about 79%. And against missiles, of course, they are gradually running out of those ground-to-air resources, and the effectiveness reaches about 50%. So this is actually the main way Russians are trying to break through that defense – to saturate it with the maximum number from all directions.
Moderator: When I turn it around, how successful is Ukraine in its air strikes on Russia, and can it match Russia in the production of unmanned machines, or missiles?
Pavel Macko: Ukraine is catching up in the production of these unmanned machines, and of course we are talking about different categories. Russians primarily threaten Ukraine with those Shahed clones, which they are now producing themselves. And Ukraine has made very significant progress, has greater reaches into the depths of Russian territory. Those strikes are increasingly effective and really inflict severe blows to that Russian infrastructure, but also to the Russian military-industrial complex. For example, strong Russian air defenses cannot prevent all these strikes. And additionally, Ukraine is also working on ballistic missiles and they almost have a range of up to 700 kilometers and is also working on its own cruise missiles derived from the Neptune missile.
Moderator: If we look at the front, we’ve already mentioned it, Ukraine today denied the Russian claim that the Russians captured the city of Chasiv Yar. What information do we have about what’s happening on the ground, and how important is this city?
Pavel Macko: This city is tactically significant. I know that it’s used in the media as a strategic target, but it’s a tactically significant place. Its possession or control could fundamentally influence the course of fighting in that immediate vicinity. Namely, it would increase pressure on Konstantinovka, and if that fell too, the Russians would open up space for a stronger attack into that northwestern part of the Donetsk region around Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
It’s also an elevated city, where it’s advantageous tactical terrain for defense, because from it you can also control that surrounding area if the Russians tried to bypass Chasiv Yar. And it’s also advantageous for supporting a possible penetration into the depth of that territory. So it’s important to monitor it.
Ukrainians still hold positions there according to the latest information, but if they lost that city, the Russians would gain such a local tactical advantage. But basically they have to finish, and if they wanted success in that entire Donbas, they probably have to complete the operation in the area of Toretsk and Pokrovsk as well. Or then bet a lot of forces on one breakthrough. But that’s also risky in that they could get to advanced positions and then be subsequently under Ukrainian fire.
Moderator: You mentioned Pokrovsk, which lies about 60 kilometers south of Chasiv Yar. What is the situation there, how important a section of the front is it? Or, where are the key sections of the front now, where the Russians are pushing the most?
Pavel Macko: Let’s start with Pokrovsk. The Russians are trying to bypass Pokrovsk from the southwest, they are actually already beyond Pokrovsk, heading west and also on the northern side. They are using a similar tactic as they used at Vuhledar, that they don’t go for a direct attack on the city and don’t conquer it as at Toretsk, Kupiansk, or mainly at Chasiv Yar for 16 months, which is an extremely long time. So they try to bypass it and gradually isolate the city.
The same thing is happening in Toretsk, where Toretsk is still partially under Ukrainian control and Ukrainians are waging the most intense battles, besides these areas. Chasiv Yar, Pokrovsk, Toretsk. Precisely in the Kupiansk area, where the Russians are again attacking for more than a year and are trying to create a bridgehead and are bypassing that Kupiansk from the north. But they haven’t succeeded so far from the southern side, so they couldn’t surround it. Kupiansk is important because it’s an important hub for supplying Russian troops from that entire area from central or western Russia. At the same time, if the Russians wanted to contemplate any offensive into the Kharkiv region in the future, then they need that Kupiansk under control.
Moderator: Does anything suggest that the Russians might manage a more significant breakthrough in the foreseeable future?
Pavel Macko: Not yet. That Russian offensive is still expected, but it’s running de facto. The Russians are testing the strength of the Ukrainian defense in various places and are trying to break through it. But they haven’t created something that I would call operational reserves. That means at some depth distance from the combat line, that they would have some reserves that they could immediately deploy into that breakthrough, as the Ukrainians did in the case of that breakthrough almost three years ago, when they were attacking precisely in the Kharkiv region.
That means that the Russians will try to break through the defense somewhere. And then they will do the regrouping afterwards by taking from some part of the front and will transfer forces to that breakthrough point as quickly as possible. But that’s mostly by rail and it doesn’t mean that we could expect some massive breakthrough from day to day. Simply put, they will try for such tactical successes. But we see that conquering a city of 12,000 for 16 months is probably not something that could be called modern maneuver warfare.
Moderator: What price are the Russians paying for advancing on the front?
Pavel Macko: That price is enormous. For Chasiv Yar itself, it’s said that those losses could be approaching 10 thousand. Last year, for those 4 thousand square kilometers, the Russians paid with enormous losses. Those are wounded and fallen, not just fallen – 427 thousand soldiers. These losses at this pace are very high.
Ukrainians, although they have a smaller number of personnel, but still using drones and other measures, they manage to quite intensively destroy these Russian attacks. It means that the Russians continue at the cost of those massive waves, when they actually oversaturate that ground defense of Ukrainians, but those Russian losses are disproportionately high. They are high, but apparently it’s not some factor that would influence Russian decision-making.
Moderator: We’re talking about Russian pressure, but do Ukrainians have more initiative in some parts of the front?
Pavel Macko: It’s kind of alternating. Of course, overall, the Russians have the tactical initiative and at this moment also the operational initiative, which means they open those combat encounters. They decide where the attack is mostly happening. But Ukrainians repeatedly in that northern part near Pokrovsk, or in the western part near Chasiv Yar, they repeatedly pushed back even in the last few days.
Back to those Ukrainian units. We saw in the Sumy region that the Russians tried, after the Ukrainians withdrew from the Kursk region, they tried to push towards Sumy through the Sumy region. There, the Ukrainians pushed them back. The same thing happens continuously then at those other main points, whether at Toretsk, or also around Chasiv Yar. The city itself is of course now a gray zone, where they are actually fighting for control of the rest of that western part of the city.
Moderator: Says the former commander of the NATO Joint Forces Training Center Pavel Macko. Thank you very much for the interview. I wish you a nice day.
Pavel Macko: Thank you for the invitation. Have a nice evening.
Note: The original video in Czech and LSovak language you can see here:
https://youtu.be/QsOahqIJa6M?si=prFZA2B8HYRclOBD
