Russia has deployed forces to Ukrainian hospitals and schools to use the civilians as “human shields” from an expected counteroffensive, according to Ukrainian officials.
“The adversary continues to use educational institutions of the temporarily occupied territories, having them re-purposed as military facilities, hiding behind a human shield of schoolchildren and the teaching staff,” the Ukrainian General Staff asserted in a Friday evening update.Ukrainian officials are preparing for a major effort to reclaim some of the southern and eastern Ukrainian territory seized when Russian troops poured out of Crimea and the occupied regions of Donbas last February.
The strike could deliver the first substantial advance of Ukrainian troops since the fall counteroffensive spurred Russia to withdraw from key territories and begin to mobilize conscripts. Ukrainian forces are expected to attempt to break through the so-called land bridge linking Russian forces in the southern peninsula of Crimea to Donbas and mainland Russia further north, though recently leaked U.S. intelligence assessments cast doubt on the likely extent of their success.
The exact path of the impending counteroffensive is a closely guarded secret — “no more than five people” have access to the battle plans, a senior adviser to Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksii Danilov said on April 6 — but Russian officials have added new fortifications around Zaporizhzhia, a partially occupied region north of Crimea and Kherson but south of Donbas.
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