Russian-backed militants continue intensive artillery fire upon Ukrainian troops at the forefront positions and send more reconnaissance subversive groups in the direction of the Donetsk-Mariupol road. The Russian command has set a target for its divisions and local gang formations to paralyze the road at Mariupol direction, as Dmytro Tymchuk, head of the Information resistance group reports on his page on Facebook.
“Attempts to infiltrate the area west of Mariupol by the enemy’s reconnaissance subversive groups to block the road Novoazovsk – Odesa (E58) are increasing. Ukrainian troops take active measures to find and neutralize these groups,” he said.
The expert reports that enemy groups conduct reconnaissance in the area of Mariupol (checkpoints, roadblocks, command posts, positions, base camps of Ukrainian troops). Additionally, they conduct reconnaissance of the results of their shellings. The enemy tries to inflict fire damage to Ukrainian troops at the front line using intense artillery fire.
Using the same pattern (zeroing, then massive fire strikes on stationary targets) Russian-backed militants have been conducting combat operations at Volnovakha direction (Volnovakha is North West from Mariupol). Lay-out of objects and evaluation the impacts of fire has been also conducted by enemy’s reconnaissance subversive groups.
Earlier UNIAN reported that the commander of the Azov battalion assumed that Russian backed militants would attack Berdiansk rather than Mariupol.
A kettle (encirclement) could occur near Berdiansk in the Donetsk Oblast. This kettle could bring even greater losses than during the Ilovaisk tragedy, said the commander of the regiment Azov Andriy Biletskyi.
As he said on air of Channel 5, Russian-backed militants will strike not Mariupol but Berdiansk near the river Byrd in case they advance. This could ensure cutting off Ukrainian army units in Mariupol.
According to him, the situation in Donbas is exascerbating and worsening. In particular, fighting intensified in the Novoazovsk direction, where there were casualties among Ukrainian army servicemen during last few days.
Translation by Dr. Vitalii Usenko, MD, MBA, expert of the Center of Military-Political Studies in the sphere of psychology of communications and by Dmytro Usenko, student at Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
