RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE has now begun – It’s ON

NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg says a new Russian offensive has started; video has emerged alleging to show the execution of a former Wagner Group fighter..

Speaking to reporters on Monday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the organisation sees “no sign whatsoever” that Vladimir Putin is “preparing for peace”.

“What we see is president Putin and Russia still wanting to control Ukraine”, Mr Stoltenberg said.

“We see how they are sending more troops, more weapons, more capabilities.”

Ukraine has been bracing for a major new offensive by Russia, previously warning that it needs fighter jets and long-range missiles in order to oppose it.

https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-war-latest-former-wagner-group-fighter-executed-with-a-sledgehammer-as-russia-shifts-front-line-in-four-day-advance-12541713

“We see how they are sending more troops, more weapons, more capabilities,” he added, almost one year after Moscow launched the war.

It comes after Ramzan Kadyrov, leader of the Russian region of Chechnya, said in an interview that Moscow would win the war by the end of this year.

He also told interviewer Olga Skabeyeva, who hosts a stridently pro-war chat show: “If we sit down at the negotiating table with Zelensky, yes, I think that’s wrong.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-russia-wagner-putin-invade-latest-b2281316.html

Russian forces bombard Ukraine’s Bakhmut as defenders brace for assault

The city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine endured heavy Russian artillery fire on Monday in an apparent prelude to a major new offensive as the first anniversary of the war neared. Ukrainian defenders, who have already held out there for months, were braced for new ground attacks, Ukrainian military officials said.

Positions in Bakhmut have been fortified and only people with a military role were being allowed in, a deputy battalion commander said. Any civilians who still wanted to leave the city would have to brave the incoming fire, he said.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/russia-ukraine-war-live-updates-february-13-2023/liveblog/97849498.cms
Russia’s threats of a renewed assault on Ukraine are already coming to pass, a military chief said.

Multiple reports indicate a flurry of Russian attacks along the front line in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine says Russia hasn’t had much success so far but “fighting has intensified,” one soldier said.
https://www.businessinsider.com/it-looks-like-russia-long-feared-new-offensive-in-ukraine-has-finally-begun-2023-2?r=US&IR=T
NATO chief warns > Ukraine is using more munitions than military alliance is producing

Ukraine says it needs main battle tanks, fighter jets and long-range missiles to counter this and to recapture more of its lost territory.

Stoltenberg said he expected the issue of aircraft to be discussed at the upcoming two-day meeting in Brussels of Nato ministers of defence starting on Tuesday.

‘There is now a discussion going on also on the question of aircrafts and I expect that also to be addressed tomorrow at the meeting in Brussels’, he said.

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Stoltenberg also stressed that Nato countries supplying fighter jets to Ukraine would not make Nato part of the conflict.

He said that while there was the ongoing discussion among allies about Ukraine’s demands for jets to be sent to the battlefield, the key focus was on making sure the necessary amounts of weaponry flowed to Kyiv’s forces on time and that allies made good on commitments already made on heavy guns and armoured vehicles.

‘It is clear that we are in a race of logistics,’ Stoltenberg said.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11745119/Russias-feared-new-offensive-begun-says-NATO-chief.html
Putin has begun throwing ‘thousands and thousands more troops’ into a desperate renewed push into Ukraine, Nato’s chief has warned.

Waves of Russian reservists are set to be deployed in battles with dreadful odds of survival to feed the Kremlin’s ambitions of seizing more ground in time for the invasion’s first anniversary.

‘What Russia lacks in quality, they try to compensate in quantity’, Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Tuesday.

Battlefield intelligence suggests the invaders are willing to accept ‘big losses’ and ‘a very high rate of casualties’ if it helps secure quick symbolic victories, he added.

The current epicentre of Russian shelling is the bombed-out city of Bakhmut, which Putin is treating as a prime objective even though the UK’s Ministry of Defence analysis says it has ‘limited operational value’.
metro.co.uk/2023/02/13/russia-has-already-started-new-ukraine-offensive-warns-nato-18274044/
Moscow is thought to be focused on creating a land corridor to Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsular that it annexed in 2014.

“The main objective has to be to have fully occupied the territory of the four provinces annexed by Russia with great fanfare last year,” Jamie Shea, a former NATO official and international defence and security expert at think tank Chatham House, told CNBC.

“Russia is controlling about 50% of the territory of those four provinces so clearly, that has to be the objective because anything less than that — to annex them and not fully control them — would be a humiliation for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” he noted.

www.cnbc.com/2023/02/13/what-to-expect-from-russias-much-awaited-offensive-in-ukraine.html
Moscow said Monday that its forces had pushed forward a few kilometres along Ukraine’s front line.

While Kyiv said its troops had repelled Russian attacks in various areas.

Much of the fighting was concentrated around the eastern city of Bakhmut, with 16 nearby settlements having been bombarded, according to Ukrainian military.

It comes after the head of Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group said Sunday it had taken the village of Krasna Hora, on the northern edge of Bakhmut.

U.S. think tank the Institute for the Study of War said geolocated footage showed Russian forces have captured at least part of the village. However, the claims have not yet been independently verified.

Meanwhile, Poland’s president has said the decision over whether or not to supply Ukraine with fighter jets is “not easy.” He gave no confirmation over the likely outcome of the discussions.
www.cnbc.com/2023/02/13/ukraine-war-live-updates-latest-news-on-russia-and-the-war-in-ukraine.html

h/t TheGodfather2

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