 White House. Russian plans to renew offensive operations in spring. Russia is using the winter period to replenish personnel and rearm in order to resume offensive operations in Ukraine in the spring. About it told John Kirby, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications. What we see is that the Russians continue to conduct offensive operations in the Donbas area. The fighting around Bakhmut remains pretty vicious. At the same time, Kirby expressed the US assessment that Vladimir Putin would try to take advantage of these winter months to re-stock, re-supply, re-arm, contribute to his manpower in renewed offensive operations come spring. Kirby emphasised that the US and other allied countries have increased the supply of military aid to Ukraine during the last weeks to help the Ukrainians prepare for whatever the Russians might be planning in the spring. According to Kirby, as the weather improves, the fighting will probably get more vicious. Ukrainian troops along the southern and eastern fronts have for months been bracing for an expected Russian spring offensive, which Moscow hopes will put its forces back on the front foot after a year of major retreats, incremental advances and heavy losses. Now, an uptick in fight on both the southern and eastern fronts may herald the arrival of the long-feared Russian push. Gustav Gressel, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations told Newsweek he believes the offensive is starting slowly. Gressel said a gradual increase in intensity and scale of Russian attacks is more likely, that a sudden concentrated push given Moscow's need to reinforce and refit units badly mauled by almost one year of combat in Ukraine. A chronic lack of officers and other well-trained soldiers, Gressel said, will constrain the coming offensive. It will slowly grow, grow, grow and then culmination point, Gressel said. What we see in deployments are basically that they are along the existing axes of operations. They will continue to strengthen them and to reinforce them and it will basically get nastier for the Ukrainians every day.