Ukraine’s defense minister has said Russia is preparing a major new offensive, warning it could begin as early as February 24.
Oleksii Reznikov said Moscow had mobilized thousands of troops and could “try to do something” on the anniversary of the initial attack last year.
The attack will also coincide with Russia’s Defender of the Fatherland Day on February 23, which celebrates the military.
Meanwhile, three people have been killed in an attack on the city of Kramatorsk.
Eight others were injured in the city of Donetsk region after a Russian missile hit a residential building, the provincial governor said.
The death toll is expected to rise as rescue workers search the wreckage.
“The only way to stop Russian terrorism is to defeat it,” Mr Zelenskiy wrote on social media about the attack. “Through tanks. Fighter jets. Long-range missiles.”
Ukraine recently renewed its demand for fighter jets to defend itself against airstrikes after Germany, the United States and Britain agreed to send tanks.
Mr Raznikov said Moscow had mobilized around 500,000 troops for a possible attack.
In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the general mobilization of about 300,000 conscript troops, which he said was necessary to ensure the country’s “territorial integrity.”
But Mr Riznikov suggested that the true number of recruits and deployments to Ukraine could be much higher.
“Officially they announced 300,000 but when we see troops on the borders, according to our assessments it is much higher,” he told the French BFM network. JEE News cannot independently verify this figure.
Despite some heavy fighting in the eastern Donbass region, the war has stalled somewhat in recent months since Ukraine captured the southern city of Kherson.
With the exception of the Russian occupation of the town of Soledar, neither side made major territorial advances.
But a Russian spring offensive — and a Ukrainian counteroffensive — has long been considered a possibility. The US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) recently said that Moscow could try to take “decisive action” and launch a “major offensive” in the east.
Mr Riznikov said Ukrainian commanders would try to “stabilize the front and prepare for a counter-attack” ahead of rumors of a Russian advance.
“I believe that the year 2023 can be the year of military victory,” he said, adding that Ukrainian forces “cannot lose the initiative” gained in recent months.
The defense minister was in France to sign a deal to purchase additional MG-200 air defense radars, which he said would “significantly increase the armed forces’ ability to detect aerial targets, including cruise and ballistic missiles and various types of drones”. .
Mr Riznikov’s comments came as Ukrainian intelligence alleged that President Putin had ordered his forces to capture Donbass before the end of spring.
But speaking on Monday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned that there were no indications that Mr Putin had limited his military goals to seizing eastern Ukraine.
“They are actively acquiring new weapons, more ammunition, increasing their production, but also acquiring more weapons from authoritarian states like Iran and North Korea,” Mr. Stoltenberg said.
“And above all, we’ve seen no sign that President Putin has changed his overall goal of this attack — that is, to control a neighbor, to control Ukraine. So as long as that’s the case, We need to be ready. Long distance.”
