Despite the massive Russian bombing of several Ukrainian cities on Thursday, fighting in Ukraine has reached a stalemate, and neither Ukraine nor Russia can make significant progress, says the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov. Meanwhile, Kyiv is waiting for more modern weapons from its Western allies, the BBC reports.

“The situation is simply stagnating,” Budanov said. for the BBC. “The situation is not developing at all.”

After Ukrainian troops recaptured Kherson in November, the fiercest fighting took place around Bakhmut in eastern Donetsk region. Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) believe Russia has also reached an impasse in Bakhmut, with “several indicators supporting the assessment that Russian forces around Bakhmut have reached their peak”.

And this despite the fact that the day before, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said that “only a few civilians” still live in the city of Bakhmut and “there is no place in the city where there is no blood.”

Elsewhere on the front, Russian troops appear to be on the defensive, and the pace of Ukrainian ground operations along the entire 1,000-kilometer front has slowed as winter approaches.

Russia is in a “total impasse.” Budanov believes that Russia will announce a new mobilization

According to Budanov, Russia “now stands at a complete impasse”, suffering very large losses.

He believes that the Kremlin will announce another mobilization of conscripts. But Ukrainian forces still lack the resources to advance on many fronts, he added.

“We cannot completely defeat them on all fronts. Neither can they,” he said.

The movement of Russian troops on the Belarusian-Ukrainian border will force Ukraine to redeploy troops

In December, after a series of withdrawals of the Russian military, Ukrainian officials suddenly spoke about the possibility of a new ground offensive by the Russian military in early 2023 from the territory of Belarus. The Ukrainian military believes that the Russians may make a second attempt to seize Kyiv, which will involve tens of thousands of reservists currently undergoing training in Russia.

Budanov, however, believes that Russia’s actions in Belarus, including the transfer of troops and equipment there, are an attempt to transfer part of the Ukrainian forces from the south and east to the north.

Recently, he said, a train loaded with Russian soldiers stopped near the Belarusian-Ukrainian border and returned several hours later with everyone on board.

“They did it openly in the daytime for all to see, though [noi] we didn’t want to do that,” he added that he doesn’t see a real, immediate threat from Belarusian troops. “So far, I don’t see any signs of preparations for an invasion of Kyiv or the northern regions from Belarus.”

On Wednesday, the head of the Border Guard Service of Ukraine, Serhii Deineko, said that currently Russia has deployed a group of 10,200 troops in Belarus, and this number is not enough for an attack on Ukraine.