Bad weather in Donbass could benefit Ukrainians

A senior Pentagon official said that the rainy weather in Donbass may be in the interests of the Ukrainian army against Russian forces, which continue to prepare for their offensive in this region of eastern Ukraine and want to achieve tangible goals in the coming weeks.

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This senior official who asked noted that with the regular rain that has been hitting the Donbass River for several days and which is expected to continue in the coming days, along with rising temperatures, “it is difficult for them to maneuver away from the paved roads.” Anonymity.

Weather had a role already at the beginning of the invasion in the north of the country, when the fact that the ground was not frozen enough forced Russian tanks to move in long convoys on paved roads, which were prone to resist clash. Ukrainian forces tank systems.

He added that the Donbass River is more suitable for armored movements because it is a great plain, but the Russian army is “used to get supplies using existing roads and railways.” “And because the earth is softer, it will be more difficult for them to do anything outside of the paved roads.”

“The weather will definitely be a factor, as always,” he noted.

At the moment, Russian forces are still in the process of preparing for their new offensive and “it is difficult for us to determine when the Normandy landings will take place,” the senior US Defense Department official noted. “What we see today is what we call shaping processes.”

“We found that helicopters were stationed north of Donbass, in Russian territory, in the past 24 hours,” he said.

“What we think is that they want to achieve concrete goals in Donbass in the coming weeks,” he concluded. “But how far they’ll go, what that means, if this is the end, all that, we don’t know.”

French President Emmanuel Macron recently estimated that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin would focus his attacks in Ukraine on the breakaway regions of Donbass in pursuit of a “victory” on May 9, the commemoration of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in 1945 and Russia’s most important celebration.