Russia’s massive, new offensive in eastern Ukraine reflects Moscow’s hope to reverse its battlefield fortunes after a catastrophic seven weeks of war. Russian forces have sharply intensified artillery barrages and airstrikes on Ukrainian positions in the industrial heartland known as the Donbas. A look at the war in Ukraine so far: A FALTERING START Russian troops rolled to the outskirts of the capital of Kyiv days after invading Ukraine on Feb. 24, but the offensive was quickly stymied by staunch resistance. The Russian military incurred heavy personnel and equipment losses, and the failed Kyiv offensive boosted the morale of the Ukrainian forces, allowing its leaders to rally vast international support and secure more weapons from the West. That raised the costs of war for Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin switched the focus to the Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian government forces since 2014, after the Kremlin’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. After the retreat from Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and other areas in northeastern Ukraine, Russian forces pulled back to the territory of Moscow ally Belarus, as well as areas in western Russia to be rearmed and resupplied for the new offensive. Gen. Alexander Dvornikov was named the new commander for the campaign. At 60, Dvornikov is one of Russia’s most experienced officers, credited with leading Moscow’s forces to success in Syria in a ruthless campaign to shore up President Bashar Assad’s regime in a civil war that saw whole cities flattened and millions displaced. His appointment is seen as reflecting the Kremlin’s awareness to quickly improve poor coordination among various forces that hampered previous efforts THE NEW OFFENSIVE Ukrainian officials said the push began Monday in the Donbas, with Russia trying to press the offensive along an arc-shaped front line stretching for more than 300 miles (480 kilometers) from the northeast to the southeast. In what appeared to be a sharp increase in bombardment Tuesday, Russia said that in the last 24 hours, it struck 60 Ukrainian military facilities with its warplanes and 1,260 with its artillery, while attacking 1,214 troop concentrations. The claims could not be independently verified. The Pentagon described the stepped-up campaign as “shaping operations” setting the stage for a broader offensive. Justin Crump, a former British tank commander who leads Sibylline Ltd., a defense consultancy, said the Russians had escalated bombardments and appeared to be moving gradually to take chunks of territory, focusing mostly on the destruction of Ukraine’s most capable forces in the Donbas. “They are hoping to destroy effectively the largest part of the Ukrainian prewar regular army, the best Ukrainian forces,” Crump told The Associated Press. THE RUSSIAN BATTLE PLAN Ukrainian and Western experts expect Russia to try to encircle Ukrainian forces with a pincer movement by advancing from Izyum in the north and Mariupol in the south. Once Russian forces crush the last remaining pocket of Ukrainian resistance at a giant steel mill in Mariupol, they expect that will allow those forces to be freed up to enable the offensive to gain its full tempo. Some predict Russia also may try to use its forces north of Crimea to try to capture the industrial hubs of Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro on the Dnieper River, effectively cutting Ukraine in half. During the eight years of fighting the separatists, the Ukrainian government […]

The post EXPLAINER: How Russia’s Eastern Push In Ukraine May Unfold appeared first on The Yeshiva World.