– We have no doubt that Russia will use everything it has and everyone it can muster to try to turn the war around, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address on Tuesday.
Claims also came on Wednesday that the Russians are planning to increase the flow of forces to the occupied areas of the Donbass region from the United States.
– The Russians will increase the flow of forces to tip the balance in the Donbass region, a White House statement said according to Reuters.
Deadly attack
The claim comes days after a Ukrainian attack on New Year’s Eve killed what may have been several hundred newly mobilized soldiers at Makijivska in Donetsk.
In a rare casualty admission, Russia admits it lost 89 soldiers in the attack, while Ukraine says the figure is 400.
Criticism greets: – Attention
Kiev has been saying for several weeks that the Russians are planning a new mobilization of personnel to be sent to Ukraine.
They also said Putin would again order the borders closed to prevent men of fighting age from fleeing the country, as hundreds of thousands did last fall.
Putin has denied that Russia needs to mobilize more forces.
It was in September that Putin announced what he calls a partial mobilization for the war in Ukraine, which is still called a special military operation in Russia.
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Russia says it has mobilized 300,000 new soldiers. However, there should be more signs that Russia is planning a new mobilization, according to the Institute For The Study Of War (ISW) think tank.
In a ISW report published on November 18, points to several indicators in social media.
– Every house is a fortress
Incidentally, photos of the mobilization letters with attendance orders will be released in January, even though Putin announced the end of the mobilization on October 31st.
Russian nationalist military bloggers have also said that a full mobilization will begin in the new year.
However, experts believe that full mobilization would be a very risky move for Vladimir Putin. Even according to Kremlin opinion polls, Russian support for the war in the neighboring country is waning.
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Immediately after the September mobilization order NIBR-OsloMet senior researcher Jørn Holm-Hansen told Dagbladet that Putin’s regime is afraid to attack the population, and that this is probably why only partial mobilization was announced this autumn.
– This is precisely because they do not have a full democratic mandate. What people may think they are doing is something they really care about, he said Holm-Hansen in September.
Furthermore, these days the military is receiving very harsh criticism from different quarters within its ranks.
Several nationalist bloggers and politicians are calling for a crackdown in the military leadership after the attack on Makiivka in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region.
The military is being heavily criticized for herding large numbers of soldiers into the school building, which is within 80-kilometer radius of the Ukrainians’ US HIMARS missiles.
Attacked for mobile claims
Russia has said the attack was caused by unauthorized use of cell phones among its own soldiers, an explanation that has met with opposition from high-profile friends of Putin.
Fears are gripping: – Death sentence
Propaganda celebrity Semjon Pegov, alias WarGonzo, was personally decorated with the Order of Courage by Vladimir Putin on December 20, just over two weeks ago, for his “courage and selflessness in his professional practice.”
Now the blogger and correspondent, otherwise loyal to Putin, takes a strong stand against the Kremlin’s explanation.
– It looks like a normal attempt to designate soldiers as scapegoats, he writes in a Telegram post, according to Reuters.
Other methods
He claims that the Ukrainians had several ways of finding out the location of the barracks.
DECORATED: On December 20, Vladimir Putin decorated blogger Semjon Pegov with the Order of Courage. Photo: Mikhael Klimentjev / Kremlin / swimming pool
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This has long been confirmed even by the Ukrainian military. The spokesman of the Ukrainian military in eastern Ukraine, Serhii Cherevatji, called the explanation “ridiculous” in a statement.
– Geolocation of mobile phones is not the main reason. It’s just that they failed to hide the deployment of soldiers. We took advantage of it he says according to CNN.
