The battle for the Donbas region has become the central conflict of the war in Ukraine, as Russian forces shift their focus away from Kyiv and send additional troops toward eastern cities like Mariupol and Dnipro.
“Officials in eastern Ukraine warned civilians still living in the region that time was running out to escape, as newly released satellite images showed an eight-mile-long convoy of Russian armored vehicles and trucks with towed artillery moving east of Kharkiv, the nation’s second-largest city,” reports The New York Times.
Since Friday, nearly 14,000 Ukrainians have left the eastern part of the country, but reports have emerged that civilians have been killed while attempting to escape.
As the fighting shifts eastward, the nature of the war is also expected to evolve. Urban conflict will likely remain, but elements of a more traditional military contest will be more apparent. The Washington Post explains:
The expected Russian offensive could resemble World War II, [Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba] recently told NATO, with large military maneuvers involving thousands of tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and aircraft. With the atrocities mounting in Ukraine, calls have grown to provide the country with offensive weapons that would allow forces to strike inside Russia. Several foreign allies, including the United Kingdom, have pledged new weapons shipments in recent days to help Ukraine in what is expected to be a tougher battle ahead.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on CBS’s “60 Minutes” again called on Western countries to step up in providing arms. “They have to supply weapons to Ukraine as if they were defending themselves and their own people,” he said in an interview recorded Wednesday and broadcast Sunday. “If they don’t speed up, it will be very hard for us to hold on against this pressure.”
“To be honest, whether we will be able to (survive) depends on this,” Zelenskyy added.
Russia has redoubled its efforts to gain air superiority, a key advantage it was expected to achieve much earlier. Russia’s military claimed it destroyed Ukrainian air defense systems near Dnipro, Mykolaiv and Kharkiv over the weekend.
The Associated Press reports:
On Sunday, Russian forces shelled government-controlled Kharkiv and sent reinforcements toward Izyum to the southeast to try to break Ukraine’s defenses, the Ukrainian military said. The Russians also kept up their siege of Mariupol, a key southern port in the Donbas that has been besieged since nearly the start of the war.
Oleh Synyehubov, the regional governor of Kharkiv, said Monday that Russians shelling had killed 11 people over the last 24 hours, including a 7-year-old child.
The Institute for the Study of War, an American think tank, predicted that Russian forces will “renew offensive operations in the coming days” from Izyum in the campaign to conquer the Donbas, which comprises Ukraine’s industrial heartland.
But it said the outcome “remains very much in question.”
German Lopez, writing in The Times, provides context:
[Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s apparent goal is to cement control over the Donbas region in Ukraine’s east, where Russia-backed separatists have fought for years, and potentially secure a land bridge to Crimea in the south, which Russia has controlled since 2014.
Russia will likely continue to bomb cities across the country to keep Ukraine from sending troops and resources to the east, experts said. But the bulk of Russian soldiers on the ground — including newly hired mercenaries and Syrian troops — will set up camp and fight in eastern Ukraine.
Russian officials “have learned some of their lessons,” my colleague Julian Barnes, who covers national security, told me. “They spread out their forces too much; they’ve realized that. They used poorly trained forces to try to take Kyiv.” He added, “They underestimated Ukrainians.”
Lopez adds:
The conflict is looking more like a war of attrition, Michael Kofman, the director of Russian studies at the national security think tank CNA, told me. And the violence could get even worse in the next phase, as Russian forces directly assault Ukrainian troops and bomb cities in an attempt to cut off Donbas from the rest of the country.
Western officials have said that Putin would like to claim some sort of win by May 9, when Russia celebrates its victory in World War II. The date could act as a deadline for Putin’s decision on the next phase of the war. “I’m not sure the Russian military could sustain current operations much beyond that anyway,” [said Mason Clark, the lead Russia analyst at the Institute for the Study of War].
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer is expected to meet with Putin in Moscow on Monday, the first time a head of state from the European Union is meeting with the strongman since the invasion of Ukraine began.
Nehammer met with Zelensky in Kyiv over the weekend. The Wall Street Journal reports:
Mr. Nehammer said the trip was a “risky mission” but that diplomacy was now needed to end hostilities. “Everything that can be done to help the people of Ukraine and stop the war must be done,” he told reporters Sunday.
Austria has traditionally close ties with Russia but has condemned alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
The outlet adds:
The war is having a devastating economic impact on Ukraine. The World Bank said the country’s economy is expected to shrink by 45.1% this year, though the depth of the decline may vary depending on the duration of the war.
“The Russian invasion is delivering a massive blow to Ukraine’s economy and it has inflicted enormous damage to infrastructure,” said Anna Bjerde, World Bank vice president for the Europe and Central Asia region.
The World Bank said Russia is already in a “deep recession.” Their economy is expected shrink by 11% this year.
