UKRAINE: THE SITUATION 729 - FEBRUARY 21, 2024

The prominent independent Russian military blogger Andrei Morozov is said to have committed suicide on February 21, after defying the order of the Russian military command to delete his reports on high Russian losses in the Avdiivka region.

Morozov (also known under the pseudonym Boytsovskiy Kot Murz) was a sergeant in the Russian 4th separate motorized rifle brigade (2nd army corps of the Luhansk People's Republic [LNR]) and a sharp critic of the Russian military leadership and Ministry of Defense (MoD). Morozov published a long farewell letter claiming that an anonymous Russian colonel had ordered him on February 20 to remove his report from February 19, which claimed that 16,000 Russian soldiers had died in combat during the Russian offensive in Avdiivka.

For the first time in more than a year and a half, the Russian forces in Ukraine are conducting a coherent, multi-axis offensive operation to achieve an operationally significant objective. The prospects of this offensive in the Kharkiv-Luhansk region are far from clear, but its planning and initial execution represent a remarkable shift in Russian operational approach at the operational level. Learn more about the Russian Spring Offensive.

The full Russian Offensive Update 729 is available directly on UNDERSTANDING WAR.

UNDERSTANDING WAR