WESTERN PERSPECTIVE
Russia accelerates advance in Ukraine's east
Russian forces are advancing in Ukraine at the fastest rate since the early days of the 2022 invasion, taking an area half the size of London over the past month, analysts and war bloggers said on Tuesday.
Russian troops swept through swathes of Ukraine in early 2022 before being pushed back to its east and south. The 1,000 km (620-mile) front line has been largely static for two years, until the latest, smaller-scale advances that began in July.
The war is entering what some Russian and Western officials say could be its most dangerous phase, with Russia reported to be using North Korean troops in Ukraine and Kyiv now using Western-supplied missiles to strike back inside Russia.
Moscow, which like North Korea has not confirmed or denied the presence of the troops, used a hypersonic intermediate-range missile on Ukraine last week and Ukraine reported the biggest Russian drone attack on its territory so far on Tuesday.
"Russia has set new weekly and monthly records for the size of the occupied territory in Ukraine," independent Russian news group Agentstvo said in a report.
The Russian army captured almost 235 sq km (91 sq miles) in Ukraine over the past week, a weekly record for 2024, it said.
Russian forces had taken 600 sq km (232 sq miles) in November, it added, citing data from DeepState, which studies combat footage and provides front line maps.
On Tuesday, Russia's Defence Ministry reported the capture by its forces of another village, Kopanky, in Kharkiv region, another focus of Russian military activity north of the main theatre of fighting in Donetsk region.
Ukraine's third separate assault brigade, in a post on Telegram on Monday, said it had cleared the village of Russian soldiers.
And Ukrainian media quoted Nazar Voloshyn, a spokesperson for the Khortytsya group of troops, as saying Kyiv's forces had repelled a Russian advance on the logistical centre of Kupiansk, also in Kharkiv region. It was the second time this month that the Ukrainian military reported rebuffing an attack on Kupiansk.
Pasi Paroinen, a military analyst with Finland's Black Bird Group, said Russian forces had taken control of an estimated 667 sq km (257 sq miles) this month, citing data he said could include some October gains noted with a delay.
President Vladimir Putin, who replaced his defence minister in May, has repeatedly said that Russian forces are advancing much more effectively - and that Russia will achieve all its aims in Ukraine, although he has not spelled them out in detail.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said he believed Putin's main objectives are to occupy the Donbas, spanning the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, and oust Ukrainian troops from Russia's Kursk region, parts of which they have controlled since August,
A source on Ukraine's General Staff, said on Sunday that Ukraine now held around 800 of the 1,376 square kilometres of Kursk that they held initially and would hold it "for as long as is militarily appropriate".
Russia controls 18% of Ukraine including all of Crimea, just over 80% of Donbas and more than 70% of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in the south, as well just under 3% of the eastern Kharkiv region, according to open source maps.
RUSSIAN ADVANCE
The thrust of the advance has been in Donetsk region, with Russian forces pushing towards the town of Pokrovsk and into the town of Kurakhove. Russia has increasingly encircled territory and then pummelled Ukrainian forces with artillery and glide bombs, according to Russian analysts.
Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, said on Tuesday that Russia held the complete strategic initiative on the battlefield.
Neither side publishes accurate data on their own losses though Western intelligence estimates casualties to number hundreds of thousands killed or injured, while swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine have turned into wastelands.
Ukrainian officials say it is hard to expand mobilisation without knowing when Western military assistance is going to arrive in practice and how reliable it will be.
The General Staff of Ukraine's military said in an update on Tuesday afternoon that its forces had repelled 23 Russian attempts to advance along the Kurakhove part of the front line that evening. It said 25 attacks were repelled near Pokrovsk,
Russian war bloggers say that if Russia can pierce the Ukrainian defences around Kurakhove, they will be able to push westwards towards the city of Zaporizhzhia while securing their rear to allow a swing towards Pokrovsk.
Ukrainian military officials acknowledge the situation in the east is the worst now that it has been all year. Zelenskiy has blamed several factors including delays of up to a year in equipping brigades, partly because of the long time the U.S Congress took to sign off on a major Ukraine assistance package.
RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE
Moscow preparing response to Kiev’s ATACMS attacks – MOD
Russia is preparing a response to Ukrainian ATACMS attacks on Kursk Region, the Russian Defense Ministry announced on Tuesday. Last week, US President Joe Biden authorized Kiev to use US-supplied long-range missiles against targets deep inside Russia’s internationally recognized borders.
In an official statement on Telegram, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that over the past three days, Ukraine’s forces had conducted two long-range strikes on Kursk Region using Western weaponry.
On November 23, Kiev reportedly fired five long-range ATACMS missiles at village of Lotaryovka, some 37km northwest of the city of Kursk, targeting the position of an S-400 anti-aircraft missile division. The strike resulted in three casualties and damaged the radar, the ministry said.
Additionally, on November 25, Kiev launched another eight ATACMS at the Kursk-Vostochny airfield, located near the village of Khalino. Seven of the missiles were shot down using the S-400 missile defense system and the Pantsir air defense missile and gun system. However, one of the missiles managed to reach its target. As a result, two servicemen were injured while facilities were “slightly damaged,” according to the report.
The ministry noted that inspections of the target areas have “reliably confirmed” that Kiev’s forces had used US-supplied ATACMS missiles to carry out the attacks. The ministry also published several photos of what are purported to be the remains of the US-made rockets.
“The Russian Ministry of Defense is monitoring the situation, and response actions are being prepared,” the report concluded.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the deployment of the country's brand-new hypersonic Oreshnik ballistic missile as a response to Biden's authorization for Kiev to use ATACMS. The new Russian weapon, which is capable of carrying nuclear warheads, was used against a Ukrainian military industrial facility in the city of Dnepropetrovsk.
Putin called the strike a “combat test” of the state-of-the-art weapon and warned that such “tests” would continue, depending on the circumstances and that Russia would respond “decisively and in a mirror-like manner” to the further escalation of aggressive actions by Kiev and it foreign backers.
Reuters/RT
