Ukrainians seem to be facing this threat at face value.  In the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, local officials are urging many communities to evacuate, opening humanitarian corridors to allow civilians to flee to safer parts of Ukraine.
Authorities are evacuating the towns of Barvinkove and Lozova in the northeastern Kharkiv region.  In Dnipro, a regional capital in central-central Ukraine, Mayor Boris Filatov called for women, children and the elderly to leave.
“The situation is gradually heating up in Donbas and we understand that April will be quite hot,” Filatov said recently.  “Hence a huge request: All those who have the opportunity (as I have repeatedly said) to leave – first of all, this applies to women, children and the elderly who are not involved in vital infrastructure work.”
Can Russia launch another horrific offensive in the east?  The latest satellite images collected and analyzed by Maxar Technologies show a 13-kilometer Russian military convoy heading south through the eastern Ukrainian city of Velkyi Burluk, east of Kharkiv.
Speaking on national television on Saturday, Vadim Denishenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said Kharkiv was being “bombed almost all day” and that a Russian attack on the Kharkiv region was expected from Izium.
Military experts and Western officials also speculate that Putin’s generals are feeling the pressure to achieve some sort of result before May 9, when Russia marks Victory Day, the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. But a new analysis by the Institute Studies of War (ISW), a US-based think tank, is questioning Russia’s ability to muster the forces needed to make a breakthrough in Donbass.
“We estimate that the Russian army will find it difficult to assemble a large and combat-ready force of mechanized units that will operate in Donbas in the coming months,” the analysis said.  “Russia is likely to continue to drop partially damaged and partially rebuilt units on offensive operations that generate limited profits at great cost.”
Military analysts and observers say Russia may find it difficult to reorganize its forces, which have been hit by the Ukrainian army, especially in defense of Kiev and northern Ukraine.
Prior to the invasion, Russia had lined up about 120 regular battalion groups around Ukraine.  According to a European official, about a quarter of these forces are “virtually inactive” after heavy losses and material destruction.  A U.S. defense official on April 8 gave a slightly different assessment, saying Russian forces were now “less than 85 percent of their estimated available combat power” gathered before the February 24 invasion.
These US defense assessments, the ISW said, “inadvertently exceed the current capabilities of the Russian military to fight.”
According to the ISW, “the dozens of Russian Battalion (BTG) regiments that retreated from around Kyiv probably have combat power that is a fraction of what the number of units or the total number of personnel with these units would indicate.  “Russian units that have fought in Ukraine have suffered terrible damage.”
The appointment of a new commander-in-chief to lead Russia’s war in Ukraine appears to be an attempt to tackle another problem that has hampered Russian forces: a lack of coordination.
“The Russians are obviously trying to solve one of the problems from their initial invasion by making the commander of the Southern Military District, General Alexander Dvornikov, the only commander-in-chief of operations in Ukraine,” the ISW said.
“This simplification of the Russian command structure may not solve all the problems of the Russian administration, however … the Russian forces will probably continue to fight to create coherent and effective command and control arrangements for the immediate future.”
This does not mean that the coming weeks will be easy for Ukrainian forces fighting in the east.  The ISW said the Russian military “would probably make a profit, however, and could either trap or destroy Ukrainian forces enough to secure much of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, but it is at least as likely that these Russian attacks will peak before achieve their goals, as similar Russian operations have become “.
In a statement on Sunday, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Ukraine was prepared for intense fighting.
“Ukraine is ready for big battles,” Podolyak said.  “Ukraine must beat them, especially in Donbas. And after that, Ukraine will have a stronger bargaining position, from which it can dictate certain conditions. After that, the presidents [of Ukraine and Russia] they will meet.  That can take two or three weeks. “
The coming weeks may prove whether this is an overly optimistic scenario.  But it presents what appears to be a negotiating position as well as a military assessment: Putin can speak now, otherwise he risks being significantly weaker later.
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