– by Tom Balmforth
KIEV (Reuters) – Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is promoting a senior military man to defense minister ahead of an expected Russian spring offensive.
Military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov will replace the civilian Oleksiy Reznikov at the head of the ministry, said MP and Zelenskyi confidant Davyd Arakhamiya on Sunday. Resnikov becomes Minister for Strategic Industries. It was initially unclear when the change would take effect.
“The war dictates a change in personnel policy,” said Arakhamiya, who heads the faction of Zelenskyi’s Servant of the People party. Ministries relevant to security should be headed by people from the security apparatus in times of war. While 56-year-old Resnikov is a lawyer, 37-year-old Budanov can look back on a stellar military career. Politician Reznikov took office in November 2021, a few months before the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022.
Selenskyj had recently replaced a number of high-ranking civil servants and justified this with allegations of corruption. Notable cases included that of a deputy secretary of defense who resigned after a report he disputed that his department had overpaid for rations. Department head Resnikov had firmly condemned corruption and announced that his ministry’s anti-corruption department would be restructured.
Zelenskyj spoke on Sunday of a difficult situation and bitter fighting on the front in the Donetsk region in the east of the country. “But no matter how difficult it may be and no matter how great the pressure there is, we have to endure,” said Zelenskyj in his evening video address. “We have no alternative but to defend and win.” Russia is now trying to make up for the losses it suffered last year.
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE EXPECTED IN FEBRUARY
Ukraine expects a possible new Russian offensive later this month. Presumably, Russia will launch them around the anniversary of the start of the invasion on February 24, Reznikov said on Sunday before his replacement was announced. From a military point of view, however, the Russian reserves are not ready for this. “Despite everything, we expect a possible Russian offensive in February,” said the minister. “It’s just symbolic, it’s not logical from a military point of view. Because not all their resources are ready. But they do it anyway.” Reznikov said Russia is likely to start its offensive in eastern or southern Ukraine.
In the south, Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and wants to expand control over the land corridor to the Kherson region. In the east, Russian troops, together with Wagner mercenaries, are trying to conquer the entire Donbass, the largely industrial area that consists of the two regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. More recently, Russian forces have been gradually gaining ground there. They have been trying for weeks to capture the hard-fought town of Bakhmut and resume their advance after a series of setbacks in the second half of last year.
The founder and head of the Russian Wagner mercenaries, Yevgeny Prigozhin, reported that fierce fighting continued north of Bakhmut. His mercenaries fought “for every street, every house, every stairwell” against Ukrainian troops who did not retreat.
Defense Minister Reznikov estimates that Russia has around 12,000 troops stationed in Belarus, which borders Ukraine to the north. However, this troop strength is not enough to launch a significant attack on Ukraine from Belarus and open a new front, he said.
Resnikov said that not all of the weapons promised by Western partners had arrived in Ukraine before the start of the expected offensive. “But we are ready.” His country has reserves to repel the Russian advance. The defense minister stressed that the longer-range missiles promised by the US would not be used by the Ukrainian military to attack Russian territory. Only Russian targets in the occupied territories would be attacked. “We only shoot at Russian units on temporarily occupied Ukrainian territory.”
(Report by Pavel Polityuk, Felix Hoske, Ron Popeski and Tom Balmforth; written by Sabine Ehrhardt and Jörn Poltz, edited by Katharina Loesche. If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at [email protected] (for politics and economics ) or [email protected] (for companies and markets)