Russia preparing 100,000 soldiers for major offensive as Kremlin says it is ‘at war’

Russia is amassing a new force of 100,000 troops for a potential summer offensive, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces warned on Friday.

Lieutenant General Oleksandr Pavliuk said Russia would want to maintain momentum after capturing the city of Avdiivka, in the Donetsk region.

Moscow’s forces have made grinding gains since the fall of Avdiivka in February, in part fuelled by Kyiv’s lack of weapons supplies from its Western partners.

The warnings of a possible new offensive came as Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin admitted it was in a “state of war” with Ukraine, after launching a barrage of 90 missiles and 60 suicide drones at Ukrainian towns and cities.

Russia has been careful not to present its “special military operation” as an actual war. Putin’s spokesman said the West had made the conflict into a “de facto war”.

Ukraine’s warnings about Russia’s attack plans come as Moscow makes incremental gains on the front line. Russia this week said it was creating four new “armies”, likely to be a regrouping exercise.

Lt Gen Pavliuk said: “We do not know Russia’s plans to the fullest extent. We only know the data they have, what they are creating. They are creating a group of more than 100,000 people.

“It will not necessarily be an offensive. Perhaps they will use it to replenish their units that are losing their combat capability,” he added. “But there is a possibility that by the beginning of summer, they may have some forces to conduct offensive operations in one of the directions.”

He added that Russian forces were “not slowing down” advances around Avdiivka. Ukraine has previously acknowledged mass build-ups of Russian troops in the north-eastern Kharkiv region, in what sources have said could be a potential target to create a buffer zone between territory held by Kyiv and the Russian frontier regions of Belgorod and Kursk.

The two regions have been repeated targets for cross-border raids by pro-Ukrainian Russian rebels, as well as longer-range Ukrainian strikes. Despite the anti-Kremlin militias pushing into the Russian mainland, Lt Gen Pavliuk said Russia was able to terrorise Ukrainian border communities in the north.

He said a lack of air defence systems and munitions were preventing Ukraine from warding off jet-launched aerial bombs being deployed by Russia more frequently. Moscow said it carried out mass strikes “in response” to attacks by pro-Kyiv soldiers on Russian border cities over the past week, the defence ministry said in a statement.

Kharkiv experienced a near city-wide blackout with water supplies cut off, according to local reports. Elsewhere in Zaporizhzhia, strikes on Europe’s largest nuclear power plant left the facility in an “extremely dangerous” position, while Ukraine’s largest dam, a hydroelectric power plant in Dnipro, was in a “critical” condition following a missile attack, officials reported.