Russia won't have enough forces to turn tide in summer breakthrough — Defense Express

He shared the information on Espreso TV.

“It should be noted that the front line currently shows that Russian forces are trying to concentrate their main efforts on the Pokrovsk direction. In the past 24 hours alone, 74 Russian assault attempts were repelled there. It seems they are trying to advance toward the Dnipropetrovsk region’s borders. But it’s important to remember that Ukraine’s Defense Forces deliberately forced the Russians to focus their main forces in this area. Now their efforts are heavily concentrated there. However, the terrain and the conditions of this area don’t allow them to hold positions for long. They simply can’t stop, because any halt would put them at a disadvantageous position,” he explained.

At the same time, Valerii Riabykh noted that otherwise, Russian troops could be pushed back to deeper positions dictated by the terrain, somewhere near Kurakhove.

Because Russia is forced to hold numerous reserves on the Pokrovsk axis, they are unable to redeploy troops to other directions where they would like to improve their position.

“That’s why it may seem like Russian forces are making gains, but they have no other choice. This draws numerous reserves to this direction and prevents them from focusing on other axes where they would also like to improve their position. Accordingly, the Novopavlivka sector, where Russian troops attempted to breach the Ukrainian Defense Forces’ lines 26 times, serves to support their main effort on the Pokrovsk axis. And this, in fact, gives us some grounds for an optimistic outlook — that the Russians won’t be able to amass enough forces to fundamentally change the situation by launching a new summer offensive campaign. They simply won’t have enough troops to accomplish the objectives they might set for themselves,” Riabykh believes.

• On April 9, Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, stated that Russian troops have effectively launched an offensive on Ukraine’s Sumy and Kharkiv regions.