“Russia has its plan, we have ours and the battlefield will judge the outcome,” he added. In the coming weeks, officials expect Russian forces to resupply and reposition themselves in order to launch a brutal new offensive in Donbas, which includes the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, NATO Secretary-General Jens Sto said on Tuesday. “We are now seeing a significant movement of troops away from Kyiv for reconstruction, re-equipment and supply, and a shift of focus to the east,” he told reporters in Brussels. “This is a critical phase of the war.” Already, much of the area has been relentlessly attacked. Russian forces are trying to wipe out the besieged southeastern city of Mariupol “from the face of the earth,” a Ukrainian military commander currently in Mariupol told CNN on Wednesday night. Serhiy Volyna, Deputy Commander of the Marine Corps in Mariupol, who has been fighting in the region since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, described the situation as “critical”. “It is a humanitarian catastrophe. The military who took part in active hostilities here are completely surrounded. There are problems with water, food, medicine and general supplies. It is a very difficult situation.” “We have been besieged in Mariupol for more than 40 days. Our enemy is numerically superior and in terms of weapons, its artillery, they have naval artillery, tanks, armored vehicles and of course mortars. It is difficult for us,” Volyna said. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) also listed the towns of Volnovakha, Izium and Popasna as “places where there have been allegations of heavy civilian casualties”. Russian troops struck 27 times in residential areas of the northeastern city of Kharkiv on Tuesday night, the head of the Kharkiv Regional Military Command, Oleg Sinegubov, told the Telegram. Taking control of Mariupol would allow Russia to create a land corridor linking Crimea to Donbass, allowing troops to move freely across the southern peninsula to bolster its units on the mainland. But Russian troops have not yet been able to penetrate the Ukrainian resistance in the east. They will probably try to encircle Ukrainian fighters in the east in the coming weeks, and whether or not they can do so could be crucial in determining the course of the war.
Russia is back on track
Since the start of the war, Russia has deployed a devastating series of airstrikes across much of the country – using extremely destructive missile and artillery fire that has spread well into the central and western parts of the country. But a campaign of stalemate and a series of military failures – especially around the capital Kyiv and in the north – means that Moscow has made far less progress in land grabbing than most analysts had expected. Russian fighter jets withdrew from the Kiev region this week after Ukrainian troops regained control of the area containing the capital, while Russia also failed to achieve full air superiority over Ukraine and suffered heavy personnel losses since the invasion began. Now, Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to be changing course. Putin has revised his war strategy to focus on trying to seize control of Donbass and other areas of eastern Ukraine by a target date in early May, according to several U.S. officials familiar with the latest US intelligence estimates. To that end, Stoltenberg said NATO expected Russia to launch a “highly concentrated” offensive in the east to occupy the entire Donbas region. It is too early to say whether Putin has given up on his goal of conquering Kyiv and overcoming resistance across Ukraine. But his change of focus follows a series of losses in other parts of the country that stopped his invasion and expanded his forces.
Basic new battlefields
Russian troops are now expected to try to cut off Ukrainian forces in the east and deploy their troops throughout the region. This means that attention will probably soon turn to the city of Sloviansk, with an advance of Russian units from Izium to the north. “The efforts of Russian forces from Izyum to seize Slovyansk are likely to prove to be the next major battle of the war in Ukraine,” said the Washington-based Institute for War Studies (ISW) think tank. Monday about the conflict in Ukraine. His report uses alternative transcripts of Ukrainian toponyms. A successful Russian attack on the city would give Moscow the option of deploying troops to those fighting in Rubizhne, northeast of Sloviansk, or moving them south, to Horlivka and Donetsk, in an effort to encircle Ukrainian fighters there, the group added. club. . But “if Russian forces fail to occupy Sloviansk at all, Russian frontal attacks in Donbas are unlikely to split Ukraine’s defenses independently and Russia’s campaign to occupy all of Luhansk and Donetsk regions is likely,” he said. the ISW. Vadim Denishenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, agreed on Thursday that the “most difficult situation” Ukraine now faces is in the east of the country, where Ukrainian military officials say they have seen an accumulation of Russian forces. “Unfortunately, the Russians continue to do what they did before in Kharkov, Sumy, Chernihiv and so on – to destroy civilian infrastructure,” he said. “The situation is very difficult now in the direction of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk,” Denisenko said. “These are the key points at this stage of this war. I believe, in fact, the results of at least this stage of this war will largely depend on the fighting in the east.”
What is the situation in the east now?
Cities all over eastern Ukraine have been under constant and destructive Russian attack for several weeks. Mariupol, on the southern edge of the Donetsk region, has been heavily decimated and has become a symbol of the barbarity of the Russian war. At a roundtable on Wednesday, Mariupol Mayor Vadim Boichenko said more than 90 percent of the city’s infrastructure had been destroyed by Russia and that at least 40 percent was “no longer recoverable”. 5,000 people died in the city in the first month of the invasion, including about 210 children, Boychenko said, citing preliminary estimates. Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation in Mariupol is “growing and deteriorating,” International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) spokeswoman Lucille Marbo told CNN on Wednesday. “Right now, there is nothing, no water, no electricity, almost no connection,” Marbo said. But Mariupol is not alone. Ukrainian officials said Wednesday that heavy fighting was taking place in eastern Ukraine, with the regional military governor of the eastern Luhansk region urging civilians to evacuate certain cities. Vadim Denishenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, said: “If we are talking about the main directions where the battle will continue – it is Sloviansk [Donetsk region] and Barvinkove [Kharkiv region] directions, in the Luhansk region are in the Popasna and Rubizne regions and, of course, in Mariupol “. Serhii Haidai, the military governor of Luhansk Oblast, issued a statement Wednesday calling for the evacuation of several cities in the region. “The Russians are destroying the railway connections in the Donetsk region,” he told the Telegram. “We will take them all out if the Russians allow us to reach the assembly sites,” he said. As you can see, they do not always observe the “ceasefire regime”.
What does Putin want in eastern Ukraine?
Pro-Russian separatists seized control of parts of the Donbas region in 2014 when Moscow reacted to demonstrations that toppled a Kremlin-friendly Ukrainian president, sparking an uprising in eastern Ukraine. The battles have lasted there ever since. When Putin began his invasion by sending troops to eastern Ukraine on February 22, he claimed that the protection of the people of Donbass from “genocide” by the Ukrainian authorities was among the motives – a false claim that was categorically rejected by Ukraine and international community. This followed days of baseless allegations of Ukrainian sovereignty and Russia’s decision to recognize two territories in Luhansk and Donetsk held by pro-Russian separatists. And since a full-scale war broke out two days later, the alleged liberation of Donbass has played a central role in Kremlin rhetoric. The first weeks of the invasion saw bombings of cities and towns far beyond this part of Ukraine. Russia has invaded from the north, east and south, focusing on Kyiv and other major cities, with strikes reaching as far as Lviv in western Ukraine. But the revised strategy sees Putin return attention to the area that has been at the center of his efforts to justify the invasion. The Russian Defense Ministry’s daily summaries sought to focus on success in those areas, and last week several Russian officials described the Donbass region as the main target of the operation, while other actions were designed solely to limit Ukrainian troops. “In the coming weeks we expect a further Russian push in eastern and southern Ukraine to try to occupy the whole of Donbass and build a land bridge to occupied Crimea,” Stoltenberg said on Tuesday. After six difficult weeks of war, Putin is under pressure to prove he can show victory, and eastern Ukraine is the place where he is most likely to do so quickly, said several US officials familiar with the latest US intelligence estimates. US intelligence shows Putin is focusing on May 9, Russia’s “Victory Day,” according to one official. But other officials note …
