Moscow says it is not planning to bolster forces in Ukraine

Moscow has said it is not planning mass mobilisation to bolster its forces in Ukraine, where they are believed to have suffered heavy losses in a two-pronged counterattack by Kyiv’s military that has freed hundreds of settlements from Russian occupation.

The Kremlin also warned Russians to be “very careful” about criticising their president, Vladimir Putin, and other top officials and the military over events in Ukraine, as Kyiv urged allies to send more weapons urgently to help it liberate the entire country.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy says his country has retaken some 6,000sq km of territory from Russia’s invasion force this month, in a rapid sweep through the eastern Kharkiv region and parts of neighbouring Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and in slower-moving operations in the southern province of Kherson near the Black Sea.

Deputy defence minister Hanna Malyar said on Tuesday that in the last week alone in Kharkiv, “3,800sq km, over 300 settlements and approximately 150,000 of our people were freed from occupation. The operation is ongoing, it is planned to continue until the complete liberation of the Kharkiv region.”

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What's happening with Ukraine's counter-offensive?

Listen | 19:43

Dan McLaughlin reports on the counter-offensive carried out in recent days by Ukrainian Armed Forces that has recaptured swathes of territory from the Russians in the northeast and south. Will the operation change the course of the war and how will Russia react?

Ukrainian officials and officers say the country’s military has also retaken settlements in Donetsk and Luhansk regions — known collectively as Donbas — where the flow of fuel, ammunition and reinforcements to Russian troops could be disrupted by their loss of strategic towns in Kharkiv.

Fierce fighting continues in Donbas and Kherson, however, and Russia continues to fire salvos of missiles and shells at Kyiv-controlled towns and cities, including Kharkiv itself, the regional capital, where power and water supplies have been severely disrupted this week by rocket attacks.

Moscow has acknowledged ceding control of much of the Kharkiv region, but insists it was part of a planned and orderly regrouping of forces in Donbas, while failing to explain why ranks of armoured vehicles and big ammunition stores were simply abandoned.

While Russia’s officials, top brass and state media insist its “special operation” in Ukraine is going to plan, military bloggers with close links to the armed forces have lambasted the performance of some senior officers and called for the mass mobilisation of reservists to overwhelm Kyiv’s resistance — a plea echoed by some politicians.

“At the present time, no, there is no discussion of this,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of mobilisation on Tuesday.

He also warned that there were limits to how much criticism the Kremlin and Russian military were willing to take, as dozens of city councillors, most of them in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, signed a petition calling on Mr Putin to resign after 22 years in power.

“As for other, critical points of view, as long as they remain within the framework of current legislation, then this is pluralism. But the line is very, very thin. You have to be very careful here,” Mr Peskov said.

“Public opinion is so sensitive to what is happening in the framework of the ‘special military operation’ that it ... reacts very, very emotionally,” he added, while insisting that “Russians support the president, this is confirmed by the mood of the people and their actions.”

Ukraine says it needs more powerful western weaponry now to keep driving Russia back, and singled out Germany for criticism on Tuesday for its alleged reluctance to send Leopard tanks and Marder infantry fighting vehicles to Kyiv.

“Disappointing signals from Germany while Ukraine needs Leopards and Marders now — to liberate people and save them from genocide,” Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter.

“Not a single rational argument on why these weapons cannot be supplied, only abstract fears and excuses. What is Berlin afraid of that Kyiv is not?”