Ukraine says Russia plans new mobilization to 'delay their defeat'

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russia is planning to call up more troops for a major new offensive, even as Moscow was facing some of its biggest internal criticism of the war over a strike that killed scores of fresh conscripts.

Kyiv has been saying for weeks that Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to order another mass conscription drive and shut his borders to prevent men from escaping the draft.

"We have no doubt that the current masters of Russia will throw everything they have left and everyone they can round up to try to turn the tide of the war and at least delay their defeat," Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on Tuesday.

"We have to disrupt this Russian scenario.… Any attempt at their new offensive must fail."

Russia's Defence Ministry on Wednesday blamed mobile phone use by its soldiers for a Ukrainian strike on New Year's Eve that it said had killed 89 servicemen — the deadliest incident Moscow has acknowledged for its troops since the start of the war in February 2022.

If Russia is planning a new mobilization, the deaths of scores of conscripts on New Year's Eve could undermine morale. Hundreds of thousands of men fled Russia when Putin ordered the first call-up of reservists since the Second World War in September after military setbacks.

Soldiers' widows group speaks out

Putin said last month there was no need for further mobilization.

But in a sign the Kremlin may now be considering one, a little-known group claiming to represent widows of Russian soldiers called on Tuesday for Putin to mobilize millions of men. The Kremlin has not commented on that appeal.

"We ask our President, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, to allow the Russian Army to carry out a large-scale mobilization," the Soldiers' Widows of Russia group said in a post on the Telegram messaging service.

Russia has effectively shut down all direct opposition to the war, with open criticism banned by severe media rules. But it has given comparatively free rein to pro-war bloggers, some with hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.

Many are increasingly vocal about what they consider a half-hearted and incompetently led campaign — and they've expressed anger this week over the strike that killed Russian troops housed in a vocational school in Donetsk province on New Year's Eve.

Criticism has been directed at military commanders rather than at Putin, who has not commented publicly on the attack.

Armoured vehicles from France

French President Emmanuel Macron told Zelenskyy that France would send light AMX-10 RC armoured combat vehicles to help in the war, a French official said after a phone call between the two men, adding this would be the first time Western-made armoured vehicles are being delivered in support of the Ukrainian army.

In an evening video address Wednesday, Zelenskyy thanked Macron for the announcement and said it showed the need for other allies to provide heavier weapons.

"This is something that sends a clear signal to all our partners. There is no rational reason why Ukraine has not yet been supplied with Western tanks," he said.

An official from the Ukrainian Defence Ministry's intelligence section, Andriy Cherniak, said in comments to the RBC-Ukraine media outlet that Kyiv expected no letup in Russia's offensive this year, despite the heavy human toll.

"According to Ukrainian military intelligence estimates, in the next four to five months the Russian army may lose up to 70,000 people. And the occupying country's [Russia's] leadership is ready for such losses," Cherniak said.

Russian leaders "understand they will lose, but they do not plan to end the war," he said.

Missile-bearing Russian frigate deployed 

In a signal to the West that Russia will not back down over Ukraine, Putin announced on Wednesday the deployment of a frigate to the Atlantic Ocean armed with new generation hypersonic cruise missiles, which can travel at more than five times the speed of sound.

Putin talked about the frigate during a videoconference with Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Igor Krokhmal, the ship's commander. Shoigu said the ship will travel through the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea, in addition to the Atlantic. 

Russia's Defence Ministry later released footage it said was the frigate armed with Zircon hypersonic missiles leaving a Russian naval base in the northern city of Severomorsk, in Murmansk region.

Russia has launched seven missile strikes, recording 18 airstrikes and more than 85 attacks from multiple-launch rocket systems in the past 24 hours on civilian infrastructure in the cities of Kramatorsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

The Kremlin denies deliberately attacking civilians.

The battlefield reports could not be independently verified by Reuters.

Ukraine's General Staff also said that Russian forces continued to concentrate on advancing near the Donetsk province city of Bakhmut, where both sides are believed to have lost thousands of troops in weeks of intense trench warfare.

Ukraine's Interior Ministry said on Wednesday that border guards had repelled a Russian assault near Bakhmut and then captured the enemy's positions after a counterattack. It did not give precise details of where the clash took place.

Ukrainian deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar said Russia would continue to form additional assault units and focus on the capture of Bakhmut and other cities to the north of Donetsk.

Malyar, citing the ministry's main intelligence directorate, wrote on Telegram that significant Russian losses meant Moscow would most likely have to announce a second partial mobilization in the first quarter of the year.

In Washington, a senior U.S. administration official said heavy fighting around Bakhmut is likely to persist for the foreseeable future, with the outcome uncertain as Russians have made incremental progress.

Russia launched what it calls a "special military operation" in Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, citing threats to its own security and a need to protect Russian speakers. Ukraine and its allies accuse Moscow of an unprovoked war to seize territory.