Day after day, Russia hits the Ukrainian region of donbas with relentless airstrikes and artillery, and is moving slowly but steadily to seize the industrial heartland of its neighbor. With the conflict now in its fourth month, it is a high-stakes campaign that could dictate the course of the entire war.
If Russia prevails in the battle of Donbas, it will mean that Ukraine will lose not only territory but perhaps most of its military forces. more capable, opening the way for Moscow to seize more territory and dictate its terms to Kyiv. A Russian failure could lay the groundwork for a Ukrainian counteroffensive and possibly spark political upheaval in the Kremlin.
After the first failed attempts in the invasion to capture Kyiv and the second largest city of Kharkiv without proper planning and coordination, Russia focused its attention on Donbas, a mining and manufacturing region where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014.
Learning from your missteps, Russia is proceeding more carefully there, relying on longer-range bombardments to soften the Ukrainian defenses. It appears to be working: better-equipped Russian forces have made gains in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions that make up Donbas, controlling more than 95% of the former and about half of the latter.
Ukraine is losing between 100 and 200 soldiers a day, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told the BBC, as Rusia has “thrown virtually everything non-nuclear to the front lines”. Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov described the combat situation as “extremely difficult”, referencing an ancient sacrificial deity by saying: “The Russian Moloch has many means of devouring human lives to satisfy his imperial ego.”
When the war was going badly for Russia, many thought that the president Vladimir Putin it could claim victory after some gains in Donbas and then emerge from a conflict that has badly hit the economy and drained its resources. But Kremlin has made it clear that it expects Ukraine to recognize all the achievements Russia has made, including its annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014something Kyiv has ruled out.
Russian forces control the entire coast of the Sea of Azov, including the strategic port of Mariupolthe entire Kherson region, a key gateway to Crimea, and a large part of the Zaporizhzhia which could help to delve deeper into Ukraine. Few expect Putin to stop.
On Thursday, he drew parallels between the war in Ukraine and the 18th-century wars with Sweden waged by Peter the Great “to recover and consolidate” historic Russian lands, Putin said. Moscow has long considered Ukraine as part of its sphere of influence.
Unlike previous failures on the battlefield, Russia seems to be using more conservative tactics now. Many expected him to try to encircle the Ukrainian forces with a massive pincer movement, but instead he has used smaller moves to force a Ukrainian withdrawal and not overextend his supply lines.
Keir Giles, A Russia expert at London’s Chatham House think tank said Russia is “concentrating all its artillery on a single section of the front line to push forward crushing everything in its path.” Russian forces shelled residential blocks, a hotel and a medical center on Sunday night in the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. Firefighters extinguished the flames from the shelling, which injured three people.
Western officials still praise the ability of Ukrainian forces to defend their country, fighting back fiercely, relying on artillery and retreating in some sections while launching frequent counterattacks. “Ukraine has been following a flexible defense policy, ceding ground where it makes sense to do so instead of holding on to every inch of territory,” Giles said.
A senior Western official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the sensitive issue in public said the Russian campaign “remains deeply concerned at all levels,” noting that Moscow’s forces are taking “weeks to achieve even modest tactical objectives like taking individual villages.”
Last month, the Russians lost nearly an entire battalion in a failed attempt to cross the Siverskyi Donets River and establish a bridgehead. Hundreds of people were killed and dozens of armored vehicles were destroyed. “There is a sense of strategic improvisation or muddle-heading,” the official said.
Russia has a clear advantage in artillery in the battle of donbas, thanks to an increased number of heavy howitzers and rocket launchers and abundant ammunition. The Ukrainians have had to be economical in the use of their artillery, and the Russians are constantly targeting their supply lines. Ukraine has started receiving more heavy weapons from Western allies, who have provided dozens of howitzers and now plan to start delivering multiple rocket launchers.
Putin has warned that if the West gives Kyiv longer-range rockets that could hit Russian territory, Moscow could hit targets in Ukraine that it has so far avoided. The Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrovalso said Russia could respond by taking more land as a buffer zone.
Moscow’s previous territorial gains in the south, including the region of Kherson and a large part of the neighboring region of Zaporizhzhiahave led Russian officials and their local appointees to move toward incorporating those areas into Russia or declaring them independent, as the so-called “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Ukrainian officials and Western analysts have expressed concern that Moscow may try to press its offensive into the heavily populated and industrialized Dnipro region further north, a move that could split Ukraine in two and pose a new threat to Kyiv.
“Russian objectives in the context of this war are changing in relation to the situation on the ground,” said Eleonora Tafuro Ambrosetti, an analyst at the Milan-based Italian Institute for International Political Studies. She pointed out that Russia could try to further damage Ukraine’s economy by seizing its entire coastline to deny access to shipping.
A senior Russian general has already spoken of plans to cut off Ukraine from the Black Sea by seizing the regions of Mykolayiv and Odessa to the Romanian border, a move that would also allow Moscow to build a land corridor to the breakaway region of Moldova. Transnistria which houses a Russian military base.
Such ambitions depend on Moscow’s success in the east. A defeat in Donbas would put Kyiv in a precarious position, with new recruits lacking the skills of the seasoned soldiers now fighting in the east and insufficient Western arms supplies to fend off a potentially deeper Russian advance.
Ukrainian officials brushed off such fears, expressing confidence that their army can hold out to stop Russian advances and even launch a counterattack. “Ukraine’s plan is clear: Kyiv is wearing down the Russian military, trying to buy time for more deliveries of Western weapons, including air defense systems, in the hope of launching an efficient counteroffensive.”said analyst Mykola Sunhurovsky of the Razumkov Center, a Kyiv-based think tank.
Philip Breedlove, a retired Army general US Air Force who was NATO’s top commander from 2013 to 2016, warned against any ceasefire, saying it would only codify Russia’s gains on the battlefield. “This is like raising a 2-year-old,” he said. “If you allow bad behavior to continue, or worse yet, if you reward bad behavior, you will have more bad behavior.” When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, Washington’s response was inadequate, as was its response when Moscow seized Crimea in 2014, he said.
Now that Russia is back for more territory, the West has another chance to respond. “How we end this war will decide, in my opinion, if we are going to see more of this in the future,” he added.
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