War in Ukraine enters new phase as Putin seeks to salvage "victory" in the eastern Donbas

The war in Ukraine is entering a new phase which could determine the outcome of the six-week-old Russian invasion ordered by president Vladimir Putin.

Despite heavy losses in men and tanks, the Russian military is regrouping in the east and south of the country in an effort to salvage a partial victory after failing dismally to take the capital Kyiv and oust the government of president Volodymir Zelensky.

The fear among some Western officials is that Ukraine will lose further territory to Russia and the war could go on for a long time.

“While what the Ukrainians have done is impressive, and the withdrawal of Russian forces from the north is good, the war is far from over,” Gen Tim McGuire, former deputy commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, told Univision. “ While wounded, the Russian bear remains deadly. The war could continue for months or years to come in the east/south,” he added.

But Putin appears to be in a hurry to claim some sort of a victory.

According to U.S. intelligence reports, he has set a target for Russian forces to get his so-called “special military operation” wrapped up in time for May 9, the anniversary of the conclusion of the Second World war, and normally marked by a big ‘Victory Day’ parade in Moscow.

An analysis from the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War suggests the Russians “have conducted active preparations to resume offensive operations” in the east, including stockpiling supplies, refitting damaged units, repairing bridges and conducting reconnaissance in force missions.

New Russian offensive underway in eastern Ukraine

Russian artillery has already turned its attention on towns and cities in south-central Ukraine, including key fuel depots on the Dnipro river, essential to maintain the Ukrainian war effort. Reporters in the east say long queues of traffic can be seen driving west towards relative safety, while streets are deserted in the towns and cities of the Donbas, an industrial coal mining region in the east, where Russian troops and separatist militias already control a large part of Ukrainian territory.

On Friday, a missile strike at a train station in Kramatorsk, in the north of the Donbas, killed at least 50 people and injured another 98 as hundreds gathered to evacuate to safer parts of the country, authorities said.

After the evidence of horrific war crimes emerged this week of slaughtered civilians in towns liberated from Russian troops in the north this week, civilians in the east have come to realize what to expect if they fall under occupation.

Putin's strategy in the Donbas

Ukrainian forces have been defending the Donbas for eight years already after Putin ordered the invasion of Crimea in 2014. But Russia was never able to establish a land bridge linking the Crimea, on the Black Sea, to Russian territory further inland on the Sea of Azov.

Putin instead began building a two-mile road and rail bridge spanning the Straits of Kerch which separates the Black Sea from the Sea of Azov. It was opened in 2018-2019.

Russia now controls more than half of the Donbas region, that was also seized in 2014.

“Putin is not even close to giving up on this invasion. On the contrary, I see April as a very, very bloody month of fighting,” said Erich de la Fuente, a Ukraine expert at Florida International University. “He is realizing the whole thing is a bigger task than he expected. But he’s not giving up on the objective,” he added.

Russia has already announced a final offensive to take what is left of the flattened city of Mariupol, once a bustling port on the shores of the Sea of Azov, with a population of 500,000. According to the mayor of Mariupol, some 100,000 people still remain under siege in the city where as many as 10,000 people may have died.

Meanwhile, in the south, intense fighting continues on the edge of the city of Mykolaiv, where Ukrainian troops have blocked the Russian advance west towards Odessa, Ukraine’s third largest city, and strategic port on the Black Sea.

“If the Russians can make another push to Mykolaiv, and they can landlock Ukraine, it might turn the war around for them,” said de la Fuente.

It remains unclear how much breathing room Ukraine’s forces will have before the next offensive begins in earnest. According to the Institute for the Study of War think-tank, the Russian units retreating from around Kyiv are unlikely to "regain combat effectiveness for some time".

The cost of Putin’s war

More than 60% of Putin's foreign reserves - $350 billion out of $604 billion - have been frozen by sanctions but he is still earning an estimated $2 billion a week from sales of oil and gas.

“They still have the vast majority of their combat power still available to them,” the Pentagon’s spokesman, Admiral John Kirby, said on Friday. “They are going to be concentrating that now in a more confined, smaller geographic area,” he added.

Russia’s forces have been badly depleted, both in terms of men and machinery. For example, an estimated 400-600 Russian tanks – maybe as much as half of those involved in the first wave of the invasion - are believed to have been destroyed, damaged, or abandoned, according to Lawrence Freedman, Professor of War Studies at King's College London.

Ukraine has estimated that 18,900 Russian soldiers have died since the beginning of the war, citing its own recovery of bodies and intercepted Russian communications. The casualties – wounded and captured as well as killed - could account for 20 percent of the initial invasion force of 190,000, according to Freedman’s newsletter on military affairs.

“ They have taken a physical beating. They must be demoralized,” said Col Liam Collins, who was the U.S. military’s Senior Defense Advisor to Ukraine from 2016-2018. “They never thought they would encounter this sort of resistance. They have already expended their best units and have shown no strategy in this war. Clearly they lack leadership and training.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov conceded on Thursday that Russia had sustained "significant losses" in Ukraine, calling it “a huge tragedy for us." Russia's defense ministry said 1,351 Russian soldiers had been killed and 3,825 wounded, in its last update on March 25.

On top of that, Freedman says there are reports that many of the replacement weapons being brought out of storage are inoperable due to poor storage, lack of parts and corruption. Russian aircraft and helicopters have also proven to be more vulnerable than expected to Ukrainian air defenses, and many have been shot down.

Ukraine pleas for more weapons

In order to be ready for the next offensive, Ukrainian officials are appealing for major reinforcements of weapons and military equipment for the West, including tanks, heavy armored vehicles, and anti-ship missiles to defend against an attack on Odessa from the sea.

"Either you help us now - and I'm speaking about days, not weeks, or your help will come too late, and many people will die, many civilians will lose their homes, many villages will be destroyed," Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told a NATO meeting on Wednesday.

While Ukraine has shown it has highly motivated and well-trained soldiers, it needs more anti-tank missiles, as well as heavy weapons, experts say.

“This means keeping up supplies of the equipment they already use, but also providing the extra armor, aircraft, and artillery to raise their game for the coming operations,” according to Freedman’s assessment of ‘The Russo-Ukraine War: Phase Two'.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday that members of the alliance “recognize the urgency” of providing more support for Ukraine.

Over 30 countries have provided military aid to Ukraine, including more than $1bn from the EU and $1.7bn from the US.

So far Western supplies have been limited to arms, ammunition, and defensive equipment like anti-tank and anti-aircraft missile systems.

NATO members fear that supplying Ukraine with heavier offensive equipment like tanks and fighter jets could lead to direct conflict with Russia. That position may be shifting. The UK is preparing to supply Kyiv with heavily armored Mastiff armored patrol vehicles, armed with grenade launchers and machine guns and designed for heavy combat.

This week, it was reported that the Czech Republic is sending Soviet-era T-72 tanks to help Ukrainian forces.
The U.S. is also considering providing anti-ship weapons to counter the bombardment of towns and cities along the coast from Odesa eastwards.

The battle for the Donbas: new logistical challenges

The new Russian offensive also presents logistical challenges for Ukraine, according to military experts.
“Western lethal aid and logistic support from western Ukrainian depots, has much further to travel than that provided to the Battle for Kyiv,” noted Maj Gen Mick Ryan, an Australian officer and scholar at the Modern War Institute at West Point. The Donbas is more than 600 miles from the main depots in Lviv, near the border in Poland. At the same time, it sits right on Russia’s border, making it easier for Moscow to supply after troops are redeployed from the north.

“Both sides are racing to build up forces in the east. The Russians and Ukrainians will understand that the more rapidly they reinforce their forces, the more quickly they can launch operations,” said Ryan in a tweet thread on Thursday.

Ryan and other have heaped praise on the Ukrainian military’s ability so far to out-maneuver the superior strength of the Russians. “They have planned and executed a magnificent military strategy so far,” he said.
Experts question the ability of the Russians to pull off their new strategy in the east, given what they have shown so far on the battlefield.

If they keep up the current momentum, the Ukrainian forces could even push Russia back into the Donbas.
“I feel fairly optimistic about the east,” said Collins. “Russia still has overwhelming combat power but they have had that since Day One and have not been able to leverage it. So, there’s no reason to believe they can miraculously turn it around. The things that take time are training, leadership and culture. You can’t turn that around overnight,” he added.

Even if Russia does fully conquer the Donbas, that leaves Putin with a longer-term dilemma. His hopes of an easy conquest are already in tatters, and he has also ended up destroying a once productive, industrial region while also defeating his purpose of supposedly uniting culturally united lands.

“For all his talk about historically close bonds, his approach has been brotherly only in the sense of Cain and Abel. Taking over the Donbas now would mean oppressing a hostile population, reconstructing shattered towns and cities, and guarding against future Ukrainian military action,” Freedman wrote in his newsletter this week.