KYIV (Dispatches) -- Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia was planning to call up more troops for a major new offensive.
Kyiv has been saying for weeks that Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to order another mass conscription drive and shut his borders to prevent men from escaping the draft.
“We have no doubt that the current masters of Russia will throw everything they have left and everyone they can round up to try to turn the tide of the war and at least delay their defeat,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address.
Putin said last month there was no need for further mobilization. But in a sign the Kremlin may now be considering one, a little known group claiming to represent widows of Russian soldiers released a call on Tuesday for Putin to order a large-scale mobilization of millions of men. The Kremlin has not commented on that appeal.
An official from the Ukrainian defense ministry’s intelligence section, Andriy Cherniak, said in comments to the RBC-Ukraine media outlet that Kyiv expected no let-up in Russia’s offensive this year.
“According to Ukrainian military intelligence’s estimates, in the next four-five months the Russian army may lose up to 70,000 people. And the occupying country’s (Russia’s) leadership is ready for such losses,” Cherniak said.
In a signal to the West that Russia will not back down over Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin sent a frigate on Wednesday to the Atlantic Ocean armed with new generation hypersonic cruise missiles, which can travel at more than five times the speed of sound.
In its daily update, Ukraine’s military General Staff said Russia had launched seven missile strikes, 18 air strikes and more than 85 attacks from multiple-launch rocket systems in the past 24 hours on civilian infrastructure in the cities of Kramatorsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
“There are casualties among the civilian population,” it said. Russia denies targeting civilians.
Ukraine’s General Staff also said Russian forces continued to concentrate on advancing near the Donetsk province city of Bakhmut, where both sides are believed to have lost thousands of troops in weeks of intense trench warfare.
Putin planned to talk to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Interfax. Turkey acted as mediator alongside the United Nations to establish a deal allowing grain exports from Ukrainian ports.
Russia launched what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine on Feb. 24, citing threats to its own security and a need to protect Russian speakers. Ukraine and its allies accuse Moscow of an unprovoked war to seize territory.