The hundreds of civilians who are probably in the air-raid shelters of the Azovstal factory will no longer be able to get out. Russian troops have announced that they will observe a ceasefire for today at 1 p.m. Dutch time to give members of the battalion the chance to surrender. But they are not going to do that, which means that civilians are also trapped there.
That’s what former Commander of the Land Forces Mart de Kruif says in the NOS Radio 1 News† “That corridor will no longer be there. The battalion that is there has no future and they know that there too. They will fight there to the last man. That is terrible for the civilians.”
Whether the Russians are really going to break through lines in the Donbas we will only see today or in the coming days, says De Kruif. “We do know that if the Russians do that, it will be accompanied by brute force with a huge concentration of aircraft, tanks and firepower.” Ukraine can then give up ground to try to speed up the attack and launch as many counterattacks as possible. “A guerrilla tactic against a steamroller, that’s how you can see it.”
According to De Kruif, it is very clear that Putin wants to achieve his goals as quickly as possible. The fact that more weapons are supplied to Ukraine will not make any difference at the moment, according to the former commander. “What you could do is to get light weapons that the Ukrainians already know about as quickly as possible. You have to get to know all the new systems. That will take a few weeks or maybe months. That is for the next phase.”
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