Defense Express expert Ivan Kyrychevskyi said this on Espreso TV.
"We now have to say that the fighting in the South is not just intensifying. Our troops have gone on the offensive, and the Russians have stepped up their shelling of Mykolaiv. We are now entering a bifurcation point that will determine how long the war will last and what its political results will be", he said.
According to the expert, the Russians have reserves that they can transfer to the Southern direction in order to slow down the Ukrainian Armed Forces' advance.
"Even if the Russian 3rd Army Corps has up to 10,000 people who are poorly trained, there is enough equipment and weapons. The organizational structure is built in such a way that at least 6 battalion-tactical groups can be allocated from there, which will operate with the help of tanks and large-caliber artillery", Kyrychevskyi noted.
He believes that the Russians also do not want to enter the winter phase of the war, when they will be unable to conduct combat operations.
"They themselves are inclined to do everything to complete the campaign for themselves by the end of November. It is obvious that they will throw everything into the battle that will be available and unavailable. If there is information that the Russians in some cases discharge sailors ashore in order to throw them into battle as ordinary infantrymen, then it is possible that they will scale up this practice in the occupied Crimea and will transfer such replenishments to restrain our forces in the Kherson region. If the enemy complained that the Ukrainian Armed Forces stopped saving missiles for HIMARS and launched them at infantry, then this means that the Ukrainian Armed Forces will fire at the enemy as intensively as possible, exert a certain fire influence in order to completely destroy the enemy in certain directions", the expert concluded.