Russia has deployed more than 420,000 soldiers in the occupied territories of eastern and southern Ukraine, the general of Ukrainian military intelligence said on Saturday, according to AFP.

“The Russian Federation has concentrated more than 420,000 military personnel on our temporarily occupied territories, including Crimea,” Vadym Skibitskyi, deputy head of the intelligence department of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, said at the conference.

This figure “does not include the National Guard of the Russian Federation and other special structures designed to maintain the occupying power in our territories,” Skibitskyi added.

According to him, over the past month, Russia has used Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, which it annexed in 2014, to “attack port infrastructure” in southern Ukraine.

“Drones stationed in Crimea are being used against our ports of Izmail and Reny,” through which Ukrainian grain was transported across the Black Sea before Moscow’s withdrawal from the international agreement in July, the official said.

Deputy Minister of Defense Hanna Malyar, for her part, said that the Russians seek to regain the territories in the Kharkiv region (northeast) liberated by the Ukrainian army a year ago.

“They want revenge,” she said. “Their task in the east is also to deconcentrate our forces so that we cannot concentrate them in the Bakhmut area, where we are successfully advancing,” Malyar emphasized.

The Russian army continues to have an advantage over the Ukrainian army in terms of weapons against the background of the slow Ukrainian counteroffensive, which has been ongoing since June, she admitted.

“We have to admit that the enemy is strong, that he has more people and more weapons,” said Malyar.

Last week alone, the Russian army fired “almost 400,000 shells” at Ukrainian positions on the eastern front, while “we can use eight times less” ammunition, she added. (Agerpress)