With the one year anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine coming up in about two weeks, some observers suspect Russia is looking for some positive gains to help put a better spin on the “special military operation.” Ukraine sees evidence that Russia is stockpiling ammunition to prepare for another big push sometime soon.

The Russians “are bringing in ammunition, but they do not waste as much of it as they used to,” Serhiy Hayday, head of Luhansk region military administration, said Monday on VotTak television.

“Meaning they are saving ammunition load because they are getting ready for the full-scale offensive,” he added.

Hayday said that the Russian military continues to mass mobilized troops in Ukraine. He said he believes there are tens of thousands of mobilized troops in the occupied Luhansk region, not including regular army personnel like paratroopers.

Even before the big offensive starts, Russia has been massing troops in the fight to take back the city of Bakhmut.

The first stages of the Russian offensive have already begun. Ukrainian troops say that Bakhmut, an eastern Ukrainian city that Russian forces have been trying to seize since the summer, is likely to fall soon. Elsewhere, Russian forces are advancing in small groups and probing the front lines looking for Ukrainian weaknesses.

The efforts are already straining Ukraine’s military, which is worn out by nearly 12 months of heavy fighting.

Troops say they have tanks and artillery pieces, but not enough of either, and have far less ammunition than their adversaries. Russian forces have also started to field more sophisticated weaponry, like the T-90 tank, which is equipped with technology capable of detecting the targeting systems of anti-tank weapons like the American made Javelins, limiting their effectiveness.

Mostly, though, the challenge comes down to numbers.

“It’s particularly difficult when you have 50 guys and they have 300,” said a 35-year-old infantry soldier named Pavlo, who was struck in the eye with a piece of shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade near Bakhmut. “You take them out and they keep coming and coming. There are so many.”

A young Ukrainian soldier compares the endless waves of Russian attacks to a zombie movie.

🇺🇦This is Roman who is in Bakhmut #Ukraine
He tells of an army that come like zombies pic.twitter.com/ExzDvEn74C

— Sofia Ukraini (@SlavaUk30722777) February 6, 2023

So Russian forces have been advancing thanks to their greater numbers but with both sides taking heavy losses it’s really a question of which side can hold out longest.

The Ukrainian military said on Tuesday that Russian forces were attacking in five different directions along the crescent-shaped front line in the east, relying on masses of troops to try to overrun Ukrainian positions. The tactic has allowed Russia to make incremental gains in recent weeks and to slowly tighten a noose around the key Ukrainian-held city of Bakhmut, but at a cost of hundreds of dead and wounded soldiers each day, according to U.S. officials…

Moscow’s latest push along the eastern front has relied upon inexperienced new recruits and former convicts to rush toward Ukrainian positions, straining Kyiv’s forces but also producing heavy casualties. A Russian opposition publication, Mediazona, has said that fewer Russian prisoners are willing to sign up for combat because of reports of high casualties among penal colony recruits.

[Ukrainian governor of Luhansk, Serhiy] Haidai said on Tuesday that Ukrainian officials had observed Russian commanders keeping newly arriving units of freshly mobilized soldiers separated from each other. The reason, he said, was to keep word of losses in the Russian ranks from spreading.

“They have a huge number of dead and wounded, and the commanders are trying to prevent panic among fighters in this way,” Mr. Haidai said.

Can Russia keep that going for several months at a time with units made up of conscripts who don’t want to be there in the first place? On the other hand, can Putin continue to push this war as a necessity if he can’t show some positive movement a full year into it? And the losses on the Ukrainian side are nearly as great.

FRANCE 24 just did a piece about Ukrainian losses

Emotions are very high. In the cemetery, a lot of the KIA are from Bakhmut

A Bakhmut commander refuses to say how many KIA his battalion has suffered, and says just thinking about it gives him "uncontrollable emotions" and pain. pic.twitter.com/yNT4ItjdIT

— Tom (@tom_username_) February 6, 2023

Now would be a great time for Ukraine to be able to resist this latest push by Russia using some western tanks. Unfortunately, it looks like the best case scenario will see the first, older model tanks arriving a few months from now.

Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands announced a joint initiative on Tuesday to send around 100 Leopard 1 tanks to Ukraine, some of which could arrive “within a few months.”

That is a far shorter timeline than the more advanced tanks Ukraine’s Western allies have pledged as they seek to bolster the embattled nation ahead of an expected new Russian offensive.

The new plan, announced as Germany’s defense minister met with President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, comes in addition to Germany’s agreement last month to send 14 of its more modern Leopard 2 tanks and a U.S. pledge to send 31 of its own main battle tanks, Abrams M1s.

Finally, I can’t wrap this up without a reference to the Russian media which seems as deranged as ever. Here’s lunatic Vladimir Solovyov explaining that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is a secret Nazi who will be put on trial at the point of a Russian bayonet. The rest of the segment is the head of RT whining about CNN.

And one more bonus clip. This is Russian TV rewriting the history of WWII. In this clip the audience is told that Russia fought “the collective west” in Stalingrad. So I guess the UK and the US were fighting for the Axis? Is that it? This is revisionist history like something right out of Orwell’s 1984.