Ukrainian soldiers stand on their armored personnel carrier (APC), not far from the front line with Russian troops, in the Izyum region, Kharkiv region on April 18, 2022.
Anatoly Stepanov | Afp | Getty Images
Russia’s new offensive in the Donbass region could prove extremely significant and decisive in the war, analysts warn, and could determine what the country’s territorial borders look like in the coming weeks and years.
“Russia’s military machine in the east could quickly become a very painful threat to Ukraine,” Maximilian Hess, a fellow at the Institute for Foreign Affairs, told CNBC on Tuesday.
“It is quite clear that Russia’s military goals remain quite broad,” Hess added, adding that the battle for Donbass “will determine how much of Ukraine east of the Dnieper (the river that separates Ukraine) [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is cutting.
“I think it’s pretty clear that annexation is Putin’s long-term goal, the question of how much annexation it is,” Hess added.
Russian officials say their main goal in this new phase of the war is the “complete liberation” of the two breakaway, Russian-backed “people’s republics” of Luhansk and Donetsk. But most analysts believe the wider Donbass region, an industrialized coal-rich region, will be annexed by Russia.
Moscow has fueled separatist sentiment in the region for the past eight years since annexing Crimea in 2014, although it has refused to support rebels in the region.
Russia’s long-awaited offensive in the east appears to have begun in earnest on Monday with its military forces launching attacks in a number of areas, with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky saying the “battle for Donbass” has begun.
By Tuesday morning, the Russian Defense Ministry said it had hit more than 1,200 targets in Ukraine overnight, and later that day there were numerous reports of intensifying missile and artillery shelling in eastern Ukraine. Officials said Russian forces had taken control of Kremina, a town in the Luhansk region where street battles were reported.
On Wednesday morning, the UK Ministry of Defense said in an intelligence update that Ukrainian forces were repelling “numerous attempts to progress” by Russia in the eastern region of Donbass.
The refocus on eastern Ukraine comes after Russia withdrew many of its troops from areas around the capital Kyiv and other northern parts of the country after failing to achieve military success there. The Pentagon believes Russia has significantly increased its fighting power in eastern and southern Ukraine now, with more battalion tactical groups relocated to the area last weekend.
The weapons are exhausted
Allied world leaders discussed the new phase of Russia’s invasion in a video conversation Tuesday with a number of countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, promising to send more artillery systems to Ukraine, while others, such as Germany, pledged more money to help Ukraine buy. more weapons.
How quickly new weapons will arrive in Ukraine is a moot point, with fears that the war-torn country could fight to rearm quickly in the east, especially if Russia increases the frequency of its attacks on its ammunition depots.
Sam Crane-Evans, a research analyst at Britain’s defense think tank RUSI, told CNBC on Tuesday that there was much uncertainty about how the battle for Donbass would continue and that although both sides had exhausted their respective materials (military materials and equipment) in the last two months Ukraine may be in a more vulnerable position.
“The only thing I’m quite comfortable saying is that I think so [the battle] will last a very long time, “with both sides demonstrating” resilience “, he noted.
“There are several questions about the availability of ammunition for Ukrainians, and this could become a key issue, especially in the early stages of massive artillery shelling and air strikes. If you don’t have the ammunition to fight back against such things, then they really have a dramatic psychological and physical effect, and they destroy things, obviously. “
However, he noted that Russia “is probably in very limited hours in terms of what it can do with its human resources and financial capabilities.”
“The Russians have spent an awful lot of missiles in this war so far, which will be quite difficult to replace … and there are additional questions about how exhausted the Ukrainians will be in the Donbass,” he said.
Tanks of pro-Russian troops drive on the road during the conflict between Ukraine and Russia in Ukraine, April 17, 2022.
Alexander Ermochenko Reuters
Krani-Evans said it was not impossible to predict a situation in which the Ukrainians would be able to repel the Russians in Donbass, as they had shown that they were stubbornly capable of doing so elsewhere.
“If they can get organized and if they can equip their troops properly, they can do it. And some analysts are cautiously optimistic that Ukraine may even be able to win this war … many are really looking to the next phase of the conflict and will show which country is likely to win, “he said.
Who wins?
The reason why analysts find it difficult to assess how significant the battle for Donbass could be in the wider war is that it is difficult to assess what Putin’s ultimate goals are in Ukraine.
Krani-Evans of RUSI noted that the big question remains whether, focusing on his self-proclaimed mission to “liberate” Donbass, Putin has abandoned his “maximalist goal of regime change in Ukraine and the conquest of Kyiv” or can accept -Limited victory in the east.
For Ukraine, he said, there may be a difficult price to pay if he loses the battle for Donbass and Russia annexes the region. In any case, determining the winner and the loser in the war will not be an easy task against the background of the already enormous destruction observed in Ukraine.
“[You could say] that Ukraine won because its country still exists, but if it loses Donbass completely, is this really a victory? Does this mean that peace will last forever? Or will Ukraine have to wage a new war in 10 years? There is a big bet for the Ukrainians, “said Krani-Evans.
Ukrainian civilians and soldiers who lost their lives during the war with Russia were buried in the cemetery in Irpin, Ukraine, on April 18, 2022.
Anatolian Agency Anatolian Agency Getty Images
Assessing what could lead to the next phase of the conflict, the US-based Institute for War Studies said Monday that Russia’s offensive is “unlikely to be drastically more successful than previous Russian offensives”, but warned that its forces “They may be able to exhaust Ukrainian defenders or make limited profits.”
The think tank noted that Russian forces have not taken the “operational pause” needed to “rebuild” and properly integrate damaged parts withdrawn from northeastern Ukraine into operations in eastern Ukraine.
“As we estimated earlier, the Russian forces withdrawn from around Kyiv and returning to fight in Donbass have, at best, been patched up and filled with soldiers from other damaged units, and the Russian army has few, if any, cohesive units. “They have not been stationed in Ukraine before to target new operations,” the statement said.
It added that frequent reports of catastrophically low Russian morale and ongoing logistical challenges showed that “the effective combat power of Russian units in eastern Ukraine is part of their strength on paper in the number of battalion tactical groups.”
The institute noted that while Russian forces could destroy Ukraine’s positions through “strong concentration of firepower and huge numbers”, this would come at a “high price” and that Russia’s sudden and dramatic offensive success remained very unlikely.
Add Comment