Russia is moving a large number of troops into southern Ukraine for battles against the country’s forces across the newly occupied territories and Crimea, according to Ukraine’s deputy head of military intelligence.
If Russia won, it would try to capture more territory, Vadym Skibitsky said. “He’s increasing his troop numbers, preparing for our counteroffensive [in Ukraine’s south] and perhaps preparing to launch an offensive of his own. The south is key for them, especially for Crimea,” he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy corroborated these reports in his latest national address, saying Russia was moving troops from eastern to southern Ukraine to advance on the regional capital of Kherson as well as the Zaporizhzhia region.
“Now the Russian army is trying to strengthen its positions in the occupied areas in the south of our country, increasing activity in the relevant areas,” he said, adding that “strategically, Russia has no chance of winning this war”.
The Russian troop movements are in response to Ukraine’s declared counter-offensive to liberate the occupied southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
Ukrainian forces have retaken dozens of towns and cities along the border, according to the region’s military governor, Dmytro Butrii, and are pushing towards the regional capital of Kherson.
The Kherson region straddles the Dnieper River in Ukraine. Earlier this month, Ukraine carried out precision strikes with US-supplied weapons on the Antonovskiy Bridge in the Kherson region, damaging a key Russian supply line. The Institute for the Study of War in Washington said Ukrainian forces and supporters also damaged the only two bridges connecting occupied Kherson.
On Saturday, the Ukrainian military said it had killed dozens of Russian soldiers and destroyed two ammunition dumps while fighting in Kherson.
Telling residents to stay away from Russian ammunition dumps, the first deputy of the Kherson regional council, Yuri Sobolevsky, said that “the Ukrainian army is dumping it against the Russians, and this is just the beginning.”
According to Skibitsky, Russia withdrew tactical groups of airborne forces from the Donbas two weeks ago and moved them to occupied Kherson. Russia is also moving troops from its eastern military district, which was being used to attack Sloviansk, a Ukrainian-controlled city of Donetsk, and which was in reserve in Russia’s southern Belgorod region.
The open-source research group Conflict Intelligence Team partially confirmed Skibitsky’s claim last week.
Meanwhile, in occupied eastern Ukraine, a prison with Ukrainian prisoners of war was ransacked on Thursday night. Zelenskiy denounced the strike as a “war crime”, accusing Russia of carrying out the attack to cover up its abuse of prisoners. Russia denied responsibility and said Ukrainian forces had hit the prison with rockets. Zelenskiy said at least 50 people were killed. Ukrainian authorities say they do not yet know the identities of the dead.
Despite moving its tactical battalion groups south from the Donbas, Russia would continue to attack in the region, albeit with less intensity, Skibitsky said.
In the Kharkiv area, he said, Russia focused on defending positions and preventing Ukrainian forces from reaching the Ukraine-Russia border.
If Russia won the battles in southern and eastern Ukraine, it would pursue new offensives to capture more Ukrainian territory using units it was currently training in Russia, Skibitsky said. “Currently they are creating reservist rifle battalions in every Russian military district and a third army corps in [Russia’s] western military district,” he said.
The training and equipping of the new corps had begun under the direct supervision of Russia’s Minister and Deputy Minister of Defense.
Where Russia used the new corps will depend on how the battle unfolds in Ukraine’s southern and eastern regions, Skibitsky said.
He warned that one of the Russian military’s “positives” lies in its ability to move troops and equipment quickly. He said Russia practiced it during pre-war military exercises and noted how Russian forces withdrew from the northern regions of Ukraine in March and reappeared in Donbas two weeks later. “We know they can return to Belarus in two or three weeks if they need to,” he said.
Apart from more weapons, Ukraine needed help training troops abroad, Skibitsky said. He said Russia had been actively targeting Ukrainian training bases, citing several examples, including an attack on a military base northeast of Kyiv that killed 87 Ukrainian soldiers in May.
Last Thursday, Russian forces struck a military base northwest of Kyiv, according to Ukraine’s armed forces. It was unclear if there were any casualties. Ukraine has not disclosed military losses for strategic purposes since the war began.
MI6 chief Richard Moore tweeted on Saturday that Russia was running out of steam after losing dozens of men and had been forced to use Soviet-era weapons.
Skibitsky said Russia was running out of high-quality rockets, but stressed that they had “a huge amount” of old, Soviet rockets left in their stockpiles. In the past two months, Russia has been using Soviet anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles on ground targets.
“They’re using rockets that are, shall we say, past their expiration date, over 30 years old, so they’re less effective,” he said. “But they have enough of them and any rocket works to scare the populace.”
Russia increased production of new weapons, he added. In early July, the Russian parliament passed war economy measures to force companies to supply goods to the military and force certain employees to work overtime.
While Western sanctions on high-tech components that could be used for military purposes have made things slower and more difficult, Russia seems to have found ways around them. US authorities have blacklisted dozens of companies for helping the Russian military evade sanctions since the invasion.
“We’re going into winter,” said Skibitsky, who said Ukraine would need weapons as well as food and funding from the West to get through it.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian ships loaded with grain spent another day in port. The ships are ready to start exporting goods, but the country is waiting for the go-ahead from the UN and Turkey, which brokered a deal with Russia to allow safe passage for Ukrainian ships.
Shipments from the ports of Odesa, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi will be overseen by a joint coordination center based in Istanbul, which will include Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish and UN officials.