EDF colonel: Russia's Kronstadt naval parade canceled

The naval parade that was due to take place in the Russian city of Kronstadt on July 28, is set to be canceled for the first time in more than eight years, said Col. Ants Kiviselg, head of the Estonian Defense Forces (EDF) Intelligence Center.
"According to public sources in the Russian Federation, the parade in Kronstadt on July 28 will not take place in its usual form, which will be first time that has happened in the last eight years. It seems that the parade will instead take place on the Neva River. Of the four ships from Russia's Northern Fleet that have reached the eastern Gulf of Finland, three have already left the Danish straits and are no longer in the Baltic Sea," Co. Kiviselg said at the Ministry of Defense's weekly Friday press conference.
According to the EDF Intelligence Center, the military threat to Estonia remains low. Russian ground forces are however, likely to continue training new recruits in both Luga and Pskov. After a few weeks of training, those new units will be sent from close to the Estonian border to the Ukrainian border in Belgorod Oblast, where the newly formed 44th Army Corps and 6th General Forces Army, which is fighting in the Kharkiv direction, will receive these additional soldiers.
The arrival on the Ukrainian front of new equipment provided by the West has not, according to Col. Kiviselg, diminished the intensity of Russian attacks.
"Although the weapons sent by the West to Ukraine are gradually arriving on the front in larger quantities, the number of attacks by the Russian Federation's armed forces nevertheless remain at somewhere between 130 and 140 times a day on average, just as they have been in previous weeks" Col. Kiviselg said.
The Russian units on the ground are not yet short of soldiers, Col. Kiviselg said, and their modest progress is being supported by the current spell of good weather.
"At the moment, the Russian Federation does not have a significant shortage of troops to deploy to the front to replace its losses," Col. Kiviselg said.
"Similar activity can be expected in the coming weeks. The weather is also favorable, with relatively long nights and dry ground, which will support larger units. Despite that, the Russian Federation has not carried out any attacks with armored units, but has been able to make tactical progress in Donetsk Oblast."
In recent months, Russia has lost an average of 1,000 soldiers a day, though the number of people Russia is prepared to lose on the front line is considerable, according to Col. Kiviselg.
The EDF colonel added that the Russian military is still concentrating most of its efforts on Donetsk Oblast.
"The territory that Ukraine has been forced to cede is not large. The main lines of movement have been Pokrovsk, Chasiv Yar and Toretsk. This confirms the earlier assessment that Donetsk Oblast remains the main target for the Russian Federation's armed forces," Col. Kiviselg said.
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Editor: Lennart Joosep Lumi, Michael Cole