A US official revealed that the Russian army is facing great difficulty in recruiting volunteers to participate in the war on Ukraine, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Russian forces to flee a counter-attack launched by his forces in the south of the country, which Moscow described as a failure.

A senior US Defense Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Moscow's efforts to recruit new volunteers are unlikely to succeed, noting that the Russian army has historically struggled to achieve its recruitment goals.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an increase in the number of the Russian armed forces by 10%, or 137,000 soldiers, by January 2023.

According to US estimates, the number of Russian army personnel at the start of the attack on Ukraine last February was 150,000 less than the number announced by Moscow at that time, which is one million soldiers.

According to the official in the Pentagon, Russia has already begun to recruit more in order to form at least one battalion of volunteers in each region and create a third corps in the army.


She added that the Russians did this by abolishing the age limit for new recruits, as well as by recruiting prisoners, and "we can note that many of these new recruits were old, in poor physical condition, and lacked training," she said.

The official considered that all these things indicate that the new recruits that Russia may attract by the end of the year will not enhance the fighting power of the country.

Having failed to seize Kyiv at the beginning of the war, Russian forces are focusing their efforts on expanding their control in eastern Ukraine, knowing that the Kremlin has not yet announced a general mobilization, a measure many Russians fear, according to observers.

counterattack

In the context of field developments, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged the Russian forces to flee an attack launched by his forces near the southern city of Kherson, after weeks of relative calm on the war fronts.

In his nightly speech on Monday evening, Zelensky vowed that Ukrainian forces would pursue the Russian army "to the border," adding, "If they want to survive, it is time for the Russian army to flee... Go home, Ukraine is getting back what belongs to it."

"The Russian defenses were breached within a few hours," said Oleksiy Aristovich, a senior adviser to Zelensky.

He added that Ukrainian forces were bombing ferries used by Moscow to bring supplies to an enclave of occupied territory on the western bank of the Dnipro River in the Kherson region.

The long-expected Ukrainian counterattack includes air and ground operations (Reuters)

The Russian forces had taken control of the city of Kherson and parts of its countryside, as well as parts of the nearby Zaporozhye province at the beginning of the war that Russia started on February 24.

Russian novel

On the other hand, the Russian Defense Ministry stated that the Ukrainian forces tried to launch an attack in the Mykolaiv and Kherson regions, but incurred heavy casualties.

"The enemy's attack attempt failed miserably," she added.

But officials in the local authority appointed by Moscow told the agency that a barrage of Ukrainian missiles had cut off water and electricity in the Russian-controlled town of Nova Kakhovka.

And the American network "CNN" (CNN) quoted US officials as saying that the Ukrainian forces began preparing to launch a counterattack in the south of the country targeting Russian forces.

The network reported that the United States believed that the Ukrainian counter-attack, which had been expected for a long time, would include air and ground operations.

It quoted a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian Operational Command in the South as saying that the Ukrainian army began offensive operations in several directions on the southern front in order to liberate the occupied territories.