Russian forces will try to develop offensive, waiting for weather – Colonel Kostenko

He said this on Espreso TV. 

“We never said that there would be no enemy offensive. Personally, I said that the enemy is waiting for the spring-summer campaign, which will be decisive. The Russian forces are only waiting for the weather, because they have a problem with the passability of equipment in the areas where they are fighting. The only question is when it will be dry and when they will make this decision,” the SBU colonel noted. 

Roman Kostenko noted that the enemy will try to develop the offensive in some time, and that Russian troops are now actively engaged and mostly using equipment.

“As for the directions of the enemy's offensive, it will be Donetsk, because they still have the desire and plans to capture the Donetsk and Luhansk regions within the administrative borders of these regions, as well as Zaporizhzhia one. We also think that there will be some intermediate direction and it is possible that there may be a northern one to constrain our reserves,” Kostenko said.

• On March 20, Lieutenant General Serhiy Naiev, commander of the Joint Forces of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, said that Russia does not have the forces and means to conduct an offensive in areas other than those in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.

• In addition, Serhiy Zgurets, director of the Defense Express media and consulting company, noted that the Zaporizhzhia front has begun to revive, and the future battlefield is beginning to take shape.

• On March 21, analysts at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported that the Russian troops are stepping up their efforts to achieve at least some success before losing the initiative at the front.