Russia is pounding the Donbas region of Ukraine with relentless artillery and air raids, making slow but steady progress to seize the industrial heartland of its neighbor.
With the conflict now in its fourth month, it’s a high-stakes campaign that could dictate the course of the entire war.
It seems to be working: The better-equipped Russian forces have made gains in both the Luhansk and Donetsk regions that make up the Donbas, controlling over 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 Russia has “thrown pretty much everything non-nuclear at the front.” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier put the daily death toll at up to 100.
On Thursday, he drew parallels between the Ukrainian conflict and the 18th century wars with Sweden waged by Peter the Great. Now, as in those czarist times, “our lot is to take back and consolidate” historic Russian lands, Putin said. Moscow has long regarded Ukraine as part of its sphere of influence.
A senior Western official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the sensitive issue in public said the Russian campaign “continues to be deeply troubled at all levels,” noting that Moscow’s forces are taking “weeks to achieve even modest tactical goals such as taking individual villages.”
Moscow’s earlier territorial gains in the south, including the Kherson region and a large part of the neighboring Zaporizhzhia region, have prompted Russian officials and their local appointees to ponder plans to fold those areas into Russia or declare them to be independent, like the so-called “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Such ambitions all hinge on Moscow’s success in the east. A defeat in the Donbas would put Kyiv in a precarious position, with new recruits lacking the skills of battle-hardened soldiers now fighting in the east and supplies of Western weapons insufficient to fend off a potentially deeper Russian push.