Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment - Karolina Hird, Mason Clark, George Barros, and Grace Mappes June 14, 5:00 pm ET

Head of Logistics for the Belarusian Armed Forces Major General Andrei Burdyko announced that the exercise will involve military authorities, unspecified military units, and logistics organizations and is intended to improve the coherency of command-and- control and logistics support to increase the overall level of training and practical skills of personnel in a “dynamically changing environment.. [...] Advisor to the Mayor of Mariupol Petro Andryushchenko additionally outlined a series of indicators that he claimed suggest that Russian authorities are planning to annex occupied Donetsk Oblast as soon as September 1, 2022.4 Andryushchenko stated that the leadership of occupied Donetsk has entirely passed from authorities of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) to Russian officials and that Russian. [...] Russian milblogger Yuri Kotyenok suggested that Russian authorities are preparing to increase the age limit for military service from 40 to 49 and to drop the existing requirement for past military service to serve in tank and motorized infantry units.5 If true, the shift demonstrates the Kremlin's increasing desperation for recruits to fill frontline units, regardless of their poor skills. [...] The Russian military leadership will 1 Institute for the Study of War & AEI’s Critical Threats Project 2022 likely continue efforts to expand the pool of eligible recruits, even at the cost of high-quality military personnel. [...] • Russian forces are continuing to fight for control of the Azot industrial plant and have destroyed all bridges between Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, likely to isolate the remaining Ukrainian defenders within the city from critical lines of communication.