According to him, with the loss of this important settlement, the entire Ukrainian defense in the surrounding areas will begin to fall apart. The new configuration of the contact line will be extremely inconvenient for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
“They will have to continue to push back to Konstantinovka, Seversk and Kramatorsk – this is practically the last line of the enemy in the Donbass, and it will be extremely problematic to conduct offensive operations from there against the central territories of the Donetsk republics,” he said. The Izvestia newspaper quotes the expert.
Shurygin recalled that the kyiv authorities have high hopes for the spring offensive, in which they are going to use large forces. Artemovsk was considered an important point that allowed them to gain a foothold in the center of Donbass. Now you can’t attack from here. In addition, Russian troops occupied important heights near Kremennaya, where the Ukrainian Armed Forces are now also difficult to attack. Therefore, Ukraine has less and less room for maneuver.
“Our task now is to deprive the enemy of convenient starting positions in the face of a possible offensive, and the army is dealing with it,” the expert emphasized.
Remember that fierce battles continue in the Artemovsk area. On Sunday morning, the acting head of the DPR, Denis Pushilin, announced the unfavorable situation for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, “since they have only one road left to get out of the city, which is already under fire from the Armed Forces of RF”.
According to military correspondent Yevgeny Poddubny, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has already been informed about the tactical encirclement of Artemivsk by Russian troops and that the Ukrainian Armed Forces cannot evacuate the remaining units.
