Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed on Tuesday that Moscow had achieved the “main goals of the first stage” of its invasion of Ukraine and that it would now refocus its attacks on the eastern Donbas region.
“Overall, the main goals of the first stage have been accomplished,” Shoigu said, according to Russian news agency Tass.
Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, colonizing the southern Crimean peninsula and arming proxy forces in Donbas. After eight years of intense war in the region, Russian leader Vladimir Putin announced on February 24 that he would launch a “special” mission in Ukraine featuring military attacks throughout the country, including the heavy bombing of major urban centers like Mariupol, Kharkiv, and the capital, Kyiv. Putin declared Russia’s two proxy entities in Donbas, the Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics,” to be independent countries and claimed their “governments” had requested Russian military aid against Ukraine.
At the time of the launch, Putin said the goal of Russian invasion was to “de-Nazify” Ukraine; Russian officials accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of being a “neo-Nazi.” Putin also claimed that Ukraine had no “tradition” of being a country and that the idea of a Ukrainian state was “completely created by Russia.”
Zelensky has repeatedly denied Nazi accusations, noting that he is Jewish and lost family in the Holocaust.
Shoigu did not mention the alleged overarching goal of “de-Nazifying” Ukraine in remarks on Tuesday, as reported by Tass. Instead, he claimed that “the liberation of Donbas” was the objective of the mission.
“First, about the special military operation of Russia’s armed forces on Ukrainian territory. Overall, the main goals of the first stage have been accomplished,” Shoigu said, according to Tass. “The combat potential of the Ukrainian armed forces has significantly decreased which allows to focus the main attention and main efforts on achieving the main goal — the liberation of Donbass.”
Shoigu claimed that Ukraine had suffered “substantial losses” and that its navy has “ceased to exist.”
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, whom Putin has recruited into a major role in the war against Ukraine, similarly claimed major Russian successes on Tuesday. Kadyrov, whose forces have been fighting in the south of the country, asserted that Russia now controls most of the key port city of Mariupol.
“Russian servicemen have carried out tremendous work to liberate the city, a significant part of the enemy’s manpower and armoured vehicles has been destroyed,” Kadyrov wrote on Telegram, according to the Russian state outlet Sputnik. “At the moment, most of the city is under the control of the Russian armed forces.”
Shoigu’s and Kadyrov’s claims of success starkly contradict continuous reports since the latest invasion began in February that Russian troops had dramatically underperformed against the much smaller Ukrainian military. As recently as last week, the Pentagon claimed that low morale had caused substantial problems for Russian forces in the country and prevented any significant territorial conquest.
“We continue to see indications that the Russians did not properly plan for logistics and sustainment,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters. “We know that they continue to have fuel issues across their force, and that they’re still struggling with food.”
“We’ve seen increasing indications that morale and unit cohesion is a problem and yes, absolutely translates into potential military effectiveness issues,” Kirby said.
The United Kingdom’s Defense Ministry in a briefing this week similarly blamed low morale for Russia making no progress in ousting Ukrainian forces from their captured territory for at least 24 hours. Last week, British reports claimed Russian fighters near Kyiv may have been surrounded.
“There is a realistic possibility that Ukrainian forces are now able to encircle Russian units in Bucha and Irpin,” a U.K. Defense Intelligence update asserted on March 23.
The Ukrainian army claimed that it had “liberated” Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv, on Monday.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine claimed on Tuesday that Russia had lost 17,200 soldiers since the full-scale assault began in February.
“The enemy also lost 597 tanks, 1,710 armored combat vehicles, 303 artillery systems, 96 MLR systems, 54 air defense units, 127 planes, 129 helicopters, 1,178 vehicles, 7 vessels, 73 fuel tank trucks, 71 UAVs of the operational and tactical level, 21 units of special equipment, and 4 mobile SRBM systems,” according to state media outlet Ukrinform, which also alleged Ukraine is holding back all Russian advances.
Russia has denied Ukraine’s death tolls for its soldiers repeatedly and has mostly abstained from publishing its own statistics on soldiers killed. Friday, the Russian government claimed that it had identified 1,351 soldiers killed in the war.
Shoigu himself has prompted speculation that Russia’s position in Ukraine is not as strong as Moscow has claimed. The Russian defense minister failed to appear in public for two weeks — about half the duration of the current invasion — prompting unverified reports that he had suffered a heart attack or fallen out with Putin. The Russian government called the Shoigu rumors “obviously fake” following his return to the public eye this weekend.
While Ukraine has pushed back on Russia’s claims of success, it has not denied advances in Mariupol, as declared by Kadyrov. Ukrainian officials, including Zelensky himself, have accused Russian troops of war crimes in the city, however, including egregious targeting of civilians.
“What the Russian troops are doing to Mariupol is a crime against humanity, which is happening in front of the eyes of the whole planet in real time,” Zelensky said on Tuesday.
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