In a report released Friday night, the U.S.-based think tank said a “Russian information operation” was claiming troops had made significant progress in the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. The ISW added that it may have reason to be skeptical of the report, given Russia’s false claims of advancement in the past.
“Russian forces are likely falsifying claims of advances in the Bakhmut area to portray themselves as making gains in at least one sector amid continuing losses in northeast and southern Ukraine,” read the report.
Earlier in the month, Russian forces falsely claimed to have captured several towns near Bakhmut, reported the ISW, but Ukrainian forces “held their lines against those Russian attacks,” the think tank said.
“Even the claimed rate of advance would be failure for a main effort in mechanized war,” wrote the ISW. “And the claims are, in fact, exaggerated.”
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu also reported on Friday that Russia had completed its partial mobilization of citizens to fight in the war against Ukraine. In a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Shoigu said that the military had reached its goal of 300,000 men, and would now only recruit troops through volunteers or contracted soldiers.
Ending the mobilization will likely “free up” training opportunities in time for Russia’s next conscription cycle that starts November 1, reported the ISW. However, the think tank added, the Kremlin’s army “likely does not have the capacity” to train newly conscripted troops as well as those already mobilized.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged Russia’s completed mobilization in his video address Friday night, and said that while Putin has been “trying to increase the pressure” along the front lines with additional troops, “they are so poorly prepared and equipped, so ruthlessly used by the command that it allows us to suggest that Russia may soon need a new wave of sending people to war.”
“We are preparing for this,” Zelensky said. “We are preparing for the fact that the current Russian leadership will look for any new opportunities to continue the war. In particular thanks to its accomplices in Iran.”
The ISW added that Putin had acknowledged that mobilized Russian troops had been experiencing supply and logistics issues before, “but [Putin] falsely asserted that these problems affected only the ‘initial stage’ of mobilization and that these problems are now solved.”
The British Ministry of Defense reported in its daily briefing Friday morning that Russian troops were “severely undermanned” as they prepared to defend the occupied southern region of Kherson from a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment.
