Russian soldiers fighting around Bakhmut in Ukraine’s Donbas region have complained that supplies of artillery shells have run low, and men mobilised into the Russian army have said that their kit is substandard. No official reason has been given for Mizintsev’s sacking.

Putin has been accused of acting as an armchair military enthusiast throughout the war, switching military commanders and tinkering with orders despite never being a soldier.

In January, he sacked the general in charge of his military in Ukraine and installed Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff, as his campaign commander.

With his white hair and icy pale-blue eyes, Mizintsev is one of the few Russian army generals with any profile in the West.

He allegedly oversaw Russia’s brutal bombing of Aleppo during the Syrian civil war.

The National Defence Management Centre, which Mizintsev ran until September 2022, co-ordinates the Russian military’s response to events and hosts a super-computer designed to predict the outcome of conflicts and the development of rival armies.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s defence minister has warned expectations of a counter-offensive by his country in the northern spring are “over-heated”.

Oleksii Reznikov said Ukraine’s success in defending itself against Russia, and recapturing territory, had led to an assumption of victory.

“It is definitely over-heated, everyone wants another victory,” he told the RBC-Ukraine website. “We didn’t believe in victory before. We used to want Ukraine to survive at least minimally. But when the Ukrainian armed forces showed success, everyone began to believe in victory.”

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Reznikov insisted Kyiv would require further Western support to expel Moscow’s forces.

“This is not a sprint,” the minister said. “When I realised that this is not a sprint, but a marathon, then I said to myself, ‘Wait, in order to run the last 195 metres of the marathon distance, you need to hold on for 42 kilometres before that’.”

Ukrainian officials have long said they were planning new operations to liberate land captured by Russia since the invasion in February last year.

Operational details are said to be known only to a small group around President Volodymyr Zelensky. The counter-offensive is likely to focus on southern Ukraine in the direction of the occupied Crimean Peninsula.

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Western analysts have suggested Kyiv could also launch attacks on contested towns in the eastern Donbas region, such as Bakhmut, Vuhledar and Avdiivka, which Moscow has expended vast resources attempting to capture.

A recently leaked US intelligence assessment suggested Kyiv could fall “well short” of its forthcoming goals because its forces would struggle to sustain the offensive. But on Wednesday, the senior American commander in Europe signalled that Washington was now less concerned about Ukraine running out of supplies.

“Over 98 per cent of the combat vehicles are already there,” said General Christopher Cavoli, who is also the supreme allied commander of NATO. “I am very confident we have delivered the material that they need, and we’ll continue a pipeline to sustain their operations. The Ukrainians are in a good position.”

NATO allies have equipped at least nine of Ukraine’s 12 new brigades in the lead-up to the long-heralded offensive, delivering more than 230 tanks and 1550 armoured vehicles, according to Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. “This will put Ukraine in a strong position to continue to retake occupied territory,” he told a news conference on Thursday.

Ukraine is not expected to launch a single large-scale offensive but smaller pinpointed efforts designed to break Russia’s defensive positions at several points along the front line, Western officials added.

The Telegraph, London

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