If Russia won, it would try to seize more territory, Vadim Skimitsky said. “They are increasing their troop numbers, preparing for our counterattack [in Ukraine’s south] and perhaps preparing to launch an attack of their own. The south is key for them, mainly because of Crimea,” he said. The Russian troop moves come in response to Ukraine’s announced counter-offensive to liberate the southern occupied regions of Kherson and Zaporizhia. Ukrainian forces have recaptured dozens of villages and towns along the border, according to the region’s military governor, Dmytro Butryi, and are pushing toward the regional capital of Kherson. The Kherson region stretches along the Dnieper River of Ukraine. Earlier this month, Ukraine carried out precision strikes using US-supplied weapons on the Antonovskiy Bridge in the Kherson region, destroying a key Russian supply line. The Institute for the Study of War in Washington said Ukrainian forces and rebels also destroyed the only other two bridges linking the occupied Kherson. On Saturday, Ukraine’s military said it had killed dozens of Russian soldiers and destroyed two ammunition dumps while fighting in Kherson. Telling residents to stay away from Russian munitions dumps, first deputy head of the Kherson regional council, Yury Sobolevsky, said “the Ukrainian army is throwing it at the Russians and this is just the beginning.” According to Skibitsky, Russia withdrew regular airborne forces groups from Donbass two weeks ago and moved them to occupied Kherson. Russia is also moving troops from its eastern military district, which was used to attack Sloviansk, a city in Ukrainian-held Donetsk, and was a reserve in Russia’s southern Belgorod region. The open source research group, Conflict Intelligence Team, partially confirmed Skibitsky’s claim last week. Meanwhile, in occupied eastern Ukraine, a prison holding Ukrainian prisoners of war was struck on Thursday night. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy denounced the strike as a “war crime”, accusing Russia of carrying out the attack to cover up the mistreatment of prisoners. Russia has denied responsibility and said Ukrainian forces hit the prison with rockets. Zelensky said at least 50 people had died. Ukrainian authorities say they do not yet know the identities of the dead. Despite moving its regular battalion groups south from the Donbass, Russia will continue to attack the region, albeit with less intensity, Skimitsky said. In the Kharkiv region, he said, Russia focused on defending positions and stopping Ukrainian forces from reaching the Ukraine-Russia border. If Russia were to win the battles in southern and eastern Ukraine, it would continue new offensives to seize more Ukrainian territory using units it was currently forming in Russia, Skimitsky said. “They are currently creating reserve weapons battalions in every Russian military district and a third army corps in [Russia’s] western military quarter,” he said. Training and equipping the new corps had begun under the direct supervision of Russia’s minister and deputy defense minister. Where Russia used the new corps would depend on how the battle in Ukraine’s southern and eastern regions played out, Skibitsky said. He warned that one of the “positives” of the Russian military lies in its ability to move troops and equipment quickly. He said Russia practiced this during military exercises leading up to the war and showed how Russian forces withdrew from the northern regions of Ukraine in March and reappeared in the Donbass two weeks later. “We know they can return to Belarus in two to three weeks if necessary,” he said. Skimitsky said that in addition to more weapons, Ukraine needed help training troops abroad. He said Russia was actively targeting Ukrainian training bases, citing several examples, including a strike on a military base northeast of Kiev that killed 87 Ukrainian soldiers in May. Last Thursday, Russian forces struck a military base northwest of Kiev, according to Ukraine’s armed forces. It was unclear if there were any casualties. Ukraine has not disclosed military casualties for strategic purposes since the start of the war. MI6 chief Richard Moore tweeted on Saturday that Russia was running out of steam after losing dozens of men and being forced to use Soviet-era weapons. Skimitsky said Russia was running out of high-quality missiles, but stressed that it had a “huge amount” of old, Soviet missiles left in its stockpile. For the past two months, Russia has been using Soviet anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles against land targets. “They’re using missiles that are, say, past their sell-by date – over 30 years old – so they’re less effective,” he said. “But they have enough of them and any missile works to scare the populace.” Russia was ramping up production of new weapons, he added. In early July, the Russian parliament approved war economy measures to compel businesses to supply the military with goods and force some employees to work overtime. Although Western sanctions on high-tech components that could be used for military purposes have made things slower and more difficult, Russia seems to have found ways around them. US authorities have blacklisted dozens of companies that helped the Russian military evade sanctions since the invasion. “We’re going into winter,” said Skibitsky, who said Ukraine would need weapons as well as food and funding from the West to see it through. Meanwhile, Ukrainian ships loaded with grain spent another day in port. The ships are ready to start exporting goods, but the country is waiting for the green light from the UN and Turkey, which brokered a deal with Russia to allow Ukrainian ships safe passage. The shipments from the ports of Odessa, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi will be overseen by a joint coordination center based in Istanbul, involving Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish and UN officials.