Military Intelligence says Russia to run out of ‘military tools’ by end of spring
Key Developments on March 5:
Russia “wasted huge amounts of human resources, weapons and materiel” during the all-out war against Ukraine, says the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence service, Kyrylo Budanov.
Russia will likely run out of offensive potential by late spring, Budanov said in an interview with USA Today published March 5.
The head of the secret service did not go into detail about Moscow’s war goals in the coming weeks.
Budanov said “a decisive battle” would take place this spring and predicted that “this battle will be the last before this war ends,” USA Today reported.
Russia intensified its offensive operations in late January, when it launched full-scale attacks on Ukrainian defenses in Donbass, focusing on Bakhmut, Vuhledar and Lyman in Donetsk Oblast.
Only around Bakhmut did Russian forces make significant advances, carried out mainly by the Wagner Group paramilitary troops, with high reported casualties.
However, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a DC-based think tank analyzing the war in Ukraine, said in its March 4 report that Russian forces are unlikely to encircle Bakhmut any time soon.
“Russian forces appear to have secured sufficient positional advantage to turn around against certain parts of Bakhmut, but have not yet forced Ukrainian forces to retreat and are unlikely to be able to encircle the city any time soon,” the said ISW in their daily report.
While the Russian offensives at Bakhmut were reportedly “slow and gradual,” they were still able to advance “close enough to critical ground communications lines from the northeast to threaten Ukrainian withdrawal routes in a classic turning movement,” the ISW said.
Ukraine has so far denied having any plans to withdraw from Bakhmut. The military leadership said earlier in the week that a withdrawal was on the table, but such a decision would only be made if necessary.
Kyiv continues to demand fighter jets
Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat confirmed on March 6 that Russia had used new 1,500-kilogram UPAB-1500B glide bombs against Ukraine for the first time.
The bomb is intended to hit highly protected targets at a range of up to 40 kilometers.
In a live TV broadcast, Ihnat stressed that Ukraine must get modern fighter jets like F-16s to “counter this threat and protect our towns and villages.”
The use of the bombs was first reported on March 4 by Ukraine’s military-aligned Defense Express news agency, which said the bombs had been dropped on targets in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv Oblast a few weeks earlier.
The guided bomb, first unveiled at a Russian arms fair in 2019, has since been extensively tested, delivered to the Russian Air Force and received its first export orders, the article said.
Rising civilian casualties
Two people – a woman and a man – are still missing three days after a Russian missile attack hit a five-story apartment building in the southeastern city of Zaporizhia, the National Police reported.
At least thirteen people have been confirmed dead following the March 2 midnight strike.
On March 5, Russian artillery hit a car in northeastern Kharkiv Oblast. A woman and a man in the car were killed instantly, the regional prosecutor’s office reported in a Telegram post.
A day earlier, Russian forces shelled the liberated town of Kupyansk – just 30 kilometers southwest of the Russian border – killing a 65-year-old man, Kharkov region governor Oleh Syniehubov reported.
The attacks also intensified in southern Ukraine. Three people, including a woman and two children, were killed in a Russian shelling of the village of Poniativka in Kherson Oblast.
Ukrainian settlements on the western bank of the Dnipro River have come under continuous Russian fire from across the river since they were liberated by Ukrainian forces in November 2022.