Russia has no intention of reducing the intensity of the conflict in Ukraine and is preparing to fight for at least the next five years. It is an alarming scenario that Russian President Vladimir Putin described to his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping during his visit to Moscow in March this year.
Sources at the Japanese weekly Nikkei said Putin's words would deny the Kremlin's openness to a ceasefire, which The New York Times reported last week. The illusion of a ceasefire – or even peace – could be a ploy by the tsar to increase support for him ahead of the Russian presidential elections in March.
On the ground, the end of 2023 proved very complicated for the Ukrainian armed forces. December was the most difficult month of the year, “the Russians stormed Marinka and Avdiivka relentlessly, suffered significant losses, but continued to advance,” said the spokesman for the Tavria group of troops, Oleksandr Shtupun. But Moscow's army is moving not only in these directions, trying to advance on seven fronts between the Donetsk region and the Luhansk region.
The Kiev General Staff's daily briefing reported that Ukrainian forces had repelled “serious attacks in the Kharkiv region, in the Kupiansk direction, in Lyman, in Serebryansk,” while fighting also continues on the front line in Bakhmut. Meanwhile, the bombing of the southern Zaporizhia region killed three more people, including two fishermen from Bilenke, a village on the banks of the Dnieper. The Russian war effort was also aided by the exponential increase in arms production. According to Sergey Chemezovha, CEO of Rostec holding, Moscow has increased the production of tanks seven times in two years.
However, according to Rostec's CEO, the production of armored vehicles would have increased more than five times, and that of ammunition, from small arms to artillery shells, even fifty times. It is difficult to understand how real these statements are, considering that Chemezovha did not disclose the figures of the increase.
Moscow is also trying to assert its strength on the Black Seaor. After another attack on Crimea, which resulted in the destruction of the Novocherkassk landing ship, the Kremlin increased the pressure by deploying three warships simultaneously. In addition to two submarines, the Admiral Makarov also returned to sea, reported Natalia Humenyuk, spokeswoman for the Defense Forces of Southern Ukraine. The frigate was damaged in a Ukrainian attack on the port of Sevastopol in October 2022, shortly after becoming the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet following the sinking of the Moskva.
“The missile carriers have not been in combat use for a long time,” Humenyuk explained, adding that the three Russian ships could be armed with up to 16 Kalibr missiles. In addition to the Novocherkassk, Russia had so far lost two other amphibious ships: the Saratov, which sank on March 24, 2022, and the Minsk, which was destroyed in dry dock on September 13, 2023. The Kremlin had well planned the operation. Its amphibious force “launched significant attacks during the invasion” and therefore “doubled the number of these ships in the Black Sea during war preparations,” British intelligence reported in its daily report. Over time, however, ships were used primarily for logistical support.
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