‘The offensive has been going on for a long time’

In the Ukraine war, the aggressor Russia is increasingly becoming a target: On Wednesday night, a fuel depot caught fire in the Taman district of southern Russia’s Krasnodar region — not far from a major transhipment terminal for oil shipped across the Black Sea. Sea.

Now, for the second time in a short time, a major fire has broken out at a fuel depot in Krasnodar, just 50 kilometers away from the previous explosion in the town of Ilski. Here, too, the fire was started by an armed drone, according to the Russian state bureau Tass. The tank farm of an oil refinery was hit.

The Russian leadership blames the Ukrainian armed forces for the drone strikes. Although Kiev denies this, the Ukrainian army has repeatedly attacked targets in Russian border regions in the past. With these attacks appearing to increase dramatically, some experts already see it as a harbinger of the planned counter-offensive.

Multiple attacks on Russia’s infrastructure

Last weekend also saw attacks on Russia’s strategically important infrastructure: a drone was used to set fire to a fuel depot in Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014. The flames in the port city of Sebastopol have now covered an area of ​​about 1,000 square meters.

In the western Russian region of Bryansk, two freight trains derailed shortly after each other after explosions. In these cases, too, drone attacks were involved, apparently aimed at interrupting Russian supplies to the front. Much of Russia’s war machine – tanks, equipment, fuel – is shipped by rail to Kremlin troops in Ukraine.

It is also unclear who is responsible for the attack by two drones on the residence of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Moscow Kremlin.

Start of the counteroffensive? That goes without saying

The high number of attacks in a relatively short period of time fueled speculation about a starting counter-offensive by Ukraine. There are several indicators for this:

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov recently said Ukraine’s preparations for the planned spring offensive are “in the final stages”. On Monday, he stated on state television: “I think from today we can go straight into the house and say: yes, everything is ready.” Read more about it here.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, also spoke of the start of an offensive. “They have soldiers and ammunition without end,” Prigozhin reported on his Telegram channel on Wednesday evening. “I assume the offensive (from the Ukrainians) has started.” There is an increase in Ukrainian activities, especially “along the borders” in the Bakhmut area.

‘Offensive has been going on for a long time’

The American think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW), however, sees Prigozhin’s statements more as a goal of putting pressure on the Russian leadership to get more military support for his mercenaries. The Wagner militia has been complaining for months about a lack of ammunition and Prigozhin is now in open conflict with the Russian military leadership.

The military expert Marcus Keupp also assumes that the offensive “has been going on for a long time”: an offensive usually starts with testing weak points on the enemy, with preparatory fire such as artillery and drone strikes, Keupp said on Thursday. “Deutschlandfunk”. “I think we’re in this phase right now.”

feared the war would escalate

The ISW also points out another point: the rumors about the beginning of the Ukraine offensive and disinformation about Ukrainian attacks are intended to mentally prepare the Russian population for a possible expansion of the Russian offensive war. For example, the drone attack on the Kremlin could also be a “false flag” operation to win the Russians over to the war even more, according to the ISW.

However, regarding the recent attacks on Russian infrastructure, Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, points out that weakening enemy logistics is an important part of preparing for a counteroffensive.

Also fueling speculation about a counter-offensive, Kiev is currently apparently withholding details of the spring offensive to prevent classified information from leaking out. This is reported by the American newspaper “Politico”, citing two EU insiders. The reason for this is probably the last American data breach, after which secret documents about the war in Ukraine circulated on the internet for weeks.

However, what the US actually knows about the war is unclear. In any case, the US embassy in Kiev has sent an email to Americans in Ukraine warning of an “heightened threat of missile strikes” in the Kiev area. This is evident from a tweet by American political strategist Jason Jay Smart in Kiev. Whether the email refers to a possible Russian response to the offensive that is about to begin is not known.

In any case, the Kremlin seems to have realized that the Ukrainian counter-offensive is very likely to come: In an interview on Thursday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin warned Kiev and the West about the “inevitable dire consequences” of the offensive. He assured that the Russian army is well prepared for any possible scenario.