Hanna Malar made the assessment in a media interview on Tuesday, Poland’s wp.pl website reported.
She said: “In recent days, the epicentre of combat operations has been the Donetsk direction and the Donetsk region; the opponent hasn’t abandoned plans to seize the territory of the entire province.”
Malar added: “At the moment, the intensity of armed operations is exceptionally high there, because the opponent is carrying out dozens of attacks every day, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Defence Forces, are repelling these attacks.”
“The opponent is incurring massive losses, but it’s not abandoning its objectives,” Malar said, as cited by Polish state news agency PAP.
Meanwhile, the Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank, reported on Tuesday night that Russian forces continued offensive operations around the city of Bakhmut, in the Avdiivka-Donetsk City area and in the western Donetsk region.
Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi said on November 3 that Russian forces had tripled the intensity of fighting in certain sections of the front, and were conducting up to 80 attacks a day, wp.pl reported.
Meanwhile, Malar assessed on Tuesday that in the immediate future, Russia would focus on eastern Ukraine, seeking to capture all of the Donetsk region.
Fighting continued elsewhere on the frontlines, but with slightly less intensity, she added.
Russian forces seeking to 'deceive' Ukrainian army in Kherson region
According to Malar, Russian forces were trying to "deceive" the Ukrainian army in the southern Kherson province by retreating from parts of the region while strengthening their positions elsewhere.
For some time, reports about Russian operations in the Kherson region have been contradictory, wp.pl reported.
Some official statements and actions suggest Russia is forcing civilians to evacuate and partially withdrawing its forces and equipment, while other evidence shows that Russian forces may be planning to defend the regional capital Kherson City against a Ukrainian counteroffensive, military analysts said.
Experts say it is not possible to decipher Russia’s intentions at this point, wp.pl reported.
According to Malar, Russia has several different scenarios at its disposal and will choose one of them depending on the situation, the Polish website said.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s General Staff said on Tuesday night that Russian forces continued to loot the occupied parts of the Kherson province and were destroying its civilian infrastructure, including dismantling and stealing mobile communication towers, the PAP news agency reported.
Wednesday is day 259 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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Source: PAP, wp.pl, iswresearch.org