Ukraine is building up troops and equipment near Bakhmut, which indicates that Kyiv is preparing to stage a large-scale battle in this area, retired lieutenant colonel of the People’s Militia of the so-called LPR Andriy Marochko said on Monday, the agency reports. writes the Russian press TASS.

“Now we are observing the accumulation of forces and resources in this area. Zelensky stated that they will not leave Artemivsk (M/n Bakhmut) and backed it up with real actions, as more and more fresh forces are being sent there. The armed forces of Ukraine continue to gather there in groups. <... > Now Zelensky has decided to stage a grand battle there. Maybe he has in mind some counteroffensive actions,” Marochko told Komsomolska Pravda radio.

He also reported that now Ukrainian servicemen who have been trained in Western training camps are beginning to arrive in the war zone. According to Marochko, they are quite well prepared.

He said that armored vehicles from the West are already moving from western Ukraine to the contact line. There have been no reports of tanks approaching the war zone yet. It is known that there is a large amount of wheeled armored vehicles on the road, as well as a salvo fire system, Marochko said.

“We find it. Ukrainian troops really have strength, thanks to the so-called Western partners,” he said.

Earlier, Marochko told TASS that Ukraine had significantly strengthened its troops in the main settlements west of Bakhmut: Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Druzhkivka. According to him, at night, convoys of wheeled and tracked armored vehicles pass through these cities to move towards Bakhmut.

After the start of the war with Russia, the West stepped up the supply of arms and military equipment to Kyiv, currently receiving billions of dollars in aid. For example, at the beginning of this year, Germany announced that it would send 14 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.

Great Britain, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, the USA, France and a number of other countries have also announced plans to supply Kyiv with Western-made tanks.

Many countries began to invite the Ukrainian military for training in the operation of Western equipment. According to Ukrainian General Viktor Nazarov, currently about 50,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been trained in the West according to NATO standards.

The head of Wagner’s mercenaries warns that the Ukrainian offensive is inevitable: They want to surround us

The head of Wagner’s mercenaries, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said in a public letter to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu that a Ukrainian offensive is imminent and that it aims to isolate his fighters from the rest of Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, Reuters reports.

In a letter published on Monday by the press service of Concordia, his catering company, from which the nickname “Putin’s chef” is derived, Prigozhin says that Kyiv is planning a “large-scale attack” in late March or early April.

“I ask you to take all possible measures to prevent the private military company Wagner from being cut off from the main forces of the Russian army, which would lead to negative consequences for the conduct of a special military operation,” Prigozhin wrote.

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