Ukraine is considering delaying the offensive until the summer after the documents were leaked

Ukraine deck postpone their counter-offensive until the summer to be one hundred percent ready, while repelling Russian attacks on Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Mariinka. “All our friends and partners clearly understand that to go on a counter-offensive you need to be one hundred percent ready, and even more,” he said. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhalin an interview with an American newspaper Hill.

Shmyhal assured that Kyiv does not feel pressure from its partners to launch a counter-offensive as soon as possible. The prime minister downplayed the impact of recent leaks on the Ukrainian military command’s battlefield plans, saying only that “Ukraine will liberate its territories.” “We have shown many times that we can. We are asking our international partners for more weapons, such as tanks, ammunition, planes, armored vehicles…,” he said.

Also The Washington Post wrote on Wednesday about the possible delay of Ukraine’s counteroffensive from spring to summer due to “weather conditions” in the combat zone and slow supply of weapons. The media suggest that Ukrainian plans were influenced by leaks about the current status of Ukrainian troops and their weak points.

For her part, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said that the city Bakhmutwhere the fighting does not stop for months, it is on its way to repeat the fate of the destroyed Syrian city of Aleppo. “The enemy has already turned Aleppo (…) part of the city districts”assured the deputy minister, quoted Fakty.ua. According to Malyar, the Russians “usually lose in urban battles” and therefore apply the tactic of completely destroying buildings, positions and “everything they see”, reports Efe.

In this sense, the spokesman of the Eastern Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Serhiy Cherevaty, assures that if the Russians do not change their tactics in Bakhmut, in two months they will be without their main assault force – Wagner’s mercenaries. The Russian Defense Ministry reported on Wednesday that Wagner was continuing to advance in the city, where he had captured three blocks in the last few hours.

Fighting is also taking place at other points on the frontline, such as the towns of Mariinka and Avdiivka, both in the Donetsk region. According to the latest military report from Kiev, it is in Mariinka that the fiercest fighting is now taking place since Bakhmut, which was supported by British intelligence in a recent report.

Washington sanctions

The United States, for its part, this Wednesday sanctioned more than a hundred individuals and companies in more than 20 countries linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including war financers and entities that help evade sanctions.

According to a statement from the US State Department, among those sanctioned are the network Russian millionaire Alisher Usmanov, close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Washington believes that its operations in financial havens and relatives through which it carries out financial transactions allow it to potentially avoid sanctions.

The actions also targeted people in his circle such as Demetrios Serghides, a consultant who allegedly acquires real estate and manages assets for both Usmanov and his family members.

Among the sanctioned subjects are: International Investment Bank, a Russian financial institution based in Budapest, Hungary, which allegedly boosts the Russian intelligence presence in Europe.