Russians are advancing in the Donetsk region, Kyiv warns conscripts | War in Ukraine

The Russian army has again made territorial gains in the Donetsk region. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) comes to this conclusion. The American think tank states that the Russians have mainly gained ground northwest of Avdiivka. The Russian army is said to have taken Ocheretyne by now. Before the war the town had about three thousand inhabitants.

The capture of Ocheretyne would mean that the Russians have managed to bypass part of the Ukrainian defense line in the area. Ukraine’s military headquarters in the region says troops are struggling and the Russian army is “pulling out all the stops.”

The situation at the front will also deteriorate further in the coming weeks, says Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence. He expects problems for the troops trying to stop the slowly advancing Russians in the east of the country.

“According to our assessment, a rather difficult situation awaits us in the near future,” Budanov said. “But it is not catastrophic, and we have to understand that. There will not be armageddon, as many people are saying now.”

Further south, the town of Novomykhailivka is now completely in the hands of the Russian army, the British Ministry of Defense reports on X.

This would also mean that part of the Ukrainian defense, around the city of Vuhledar, has been bypassed. Russian forces are still believed to be about 30 kilometers away from Pokrovsk, the main Ukrainian base in the region.

The British announced earlier on Tuesday that they will allocate an additional 500 million pounds (581.8 million euros) for military aid to Ukraine this year.

According to the ISW, the Russian army will try to force a wider breakthrough along this part of the front in the coming weeks. New ammunition for Ukraine is expected at the front at the end of May, which may make further territorial gains difficult for the Russians.

Not much later, the effects of the renewed American support should also be visible. The think tank therefore does not expect the Russians to succeed in their breakthrough.

Ukrainian men who have gone abroad instead of helping in the fight against Russia do not have to count on help from the Ukrainian state. This group will no longer receive consular assistance, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba reported. https://twitter.com/DmytroKuleba/status/1782698925100589223. He also seems to be referring to a group of thousands of Ukrainians in the Netherlands.

“This is what it looks like now: a man of military age goes abroad, shows the state that he doesn’t care about his survival and then comes asking for services from this state. It doesn’t work that way,” Kuleba writes. “A stay abroad does not absolve a citizen of his or her duties to the home country.”

The government is taking measures to ensure that all conscripts, whether in or outside Ukraine, are “treated fairly.” However, Ukrainian diplomats will only help the men return to Ukraine.

Kuleba said more information about the measures will be available soon. The Ukrainian embassy in The Hague refers to that statement and says it will make no further statements.

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According to Ukrainian martial law, men aged eighteen to sixty are not allowed to leave the country. Yet not all of them are yet conscripted.

At the beginning of this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that the age at which men can be mobilized would be lowered from 27 to 25. It is still unclear which group Kuleba is referring to.

The latest figures from statistics agency CBS show that more than 24,000 Ukrainian men aged 18 to 60 are registered in the Netherlands. Of these, almost 6,600 are younger than 27 and more than 5,200 are younger than 25.