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Russian troop buildup may signal new assault, Ukraine says

MARC SANTORA MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ

Moscow has amassed hundreds of thousands of troops in Ukraine and is targeting dozens of places a day in a markedly stepped-up barrage of artillery attacks. Ukrainian forces are struggling to hold their ground on a 225-kilometre stretch in the east, awaiting tanks, armoured vehicles and other weapons systems from the West.

Ukrainian officials have been bracing for weeks foranewRussianoffensivethatcouldrivaltheopening of the war. Now, they are warning that the campaign is under way, with the Kremlin seeking to reshape the battlefield and seize the momentum.

“I think it has started,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said this week.

Along the undulating front line in eastern Ukraine, artillery never goes silent for long. The roads in Ukrainian-held areas are largely empty, except for tanks and armoured personnel carriers and huge trucks filled with boxes of ammunition. The few gas stations still operating are crowded with soldiers savouring hot coffee before returning to the fight.

Hospitals near the front lines are busy, but not overflowing. At one major triage hospital, there are long stretches of quiet and then, suddenly, a parade of ambulances arrives, filling the corridors with wounded soldiers in various stages of consciousness.

Fierce fighting is concentrated around the forlorn eastern city of Bakhmut, where Russian forces have been slowly closing in on vital supply lines. Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost a year ago, Bakhmut had a population of about 70,000 people. But most of those living in the battered city fled long ago, and on Tuesday night, the mayor, Oleksiy Reva, pleaded with the roughly 6,500 who remained to evacuate.

“The city is under constant hostile fire,” he said in a statement. “The enemy does not spare anyone! How much will you ignore the danger?!”

Ukraine and Russia have been locked in gruelling combat for nearly a year. Since the fall, when Ukraine reclaimed territory through counteroffensives in the northeast and south, the fight in the east hascongealedintomuddyandfrozentrenches, each army facing significant losses while managing only negligible gains.

Both sides have been readying for heavier ground combat, with Moscow pressing its goal to capture the entire Donbas region of eastern Ukraine and Kyiv aiming to drive Russian troops out of the country completely.

TheRussianapproachshiftedlastmonthafterthe Kremlin named General Valery Gerasimov to take overitsstrugglingwareffort. Sincethen, Moscowhas steadily added forces in the Donbas, seeking to do with overwhelming manpower what it has so far failed to do with firepower: break through lines that have been fortified for nine years, going back to when Russia first fomented rebellion in Ukraine’s east. Ukrainian intelligence estimates that Russia now has more than 320,000 soldiers in the country – roughly twice the size of Moscow’s initial invasion force. Western officials and military analysts have said Moscow also has 150,000 to 250,000 soldiers in reserve.

Konrad Muzyka, a military analyst for Rochan Consulting, which tracks Russian deployments, said that reported Russian artillery barrages had risen from an average of about 60 a day four weeks ago to more than 90 a day last week. On one day alone, 111 Ukrainian locations were targeted.

Andriy Yusov, who represents the intelligence department in Ukraine’s Defence Ministry, said the fighting would most likely intensify.

“We are on the eve of a very active phase,” he said in an appearance on national television.

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2023-02-02T08:00:00.0000000Z

2023-02-02T08:00:00.0000000Z

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