The battle that could decide the course of the Ukrainian War began in the early hours of Monday (18), according to the government in Kiev. “We can say that Russian forces have started the battle for Donbass, for which they have been preparing for a long time,” said President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Donbass is the name of the Russian-majority region of eastern Ukraine that has been partially held by pro-Moscow separatists since 2014, and one of the reasons given by Vladimir Putin for starting his war almost two months ago.
Zelensky drew his conclusion from the facts of the day, without an assessment on the part of the Kremlin. Russian forces carried out one of the biggest missile strikes of the conflict during the early morning and early morning hours, hitting 315 military targets, according to the Defense Ministry in Moscow.
The bombings, with cruise and ballistic missiles, took place throughout the territory. Lviv, Ukraine’s so-called “capital of the west” on the Polish border, has recorded its first seven deaths after passing through the conflict untouched – four Iskander ballistic missiles hit the city, three at military installations and one, by mistake, in a car repair shop. .
With that, the attention of the Kiev Armed Forces had to be dispersed throughout the country’s territory, while two movements took place in the area that Moscow said was its strategic objective at this stage of the war: the Donbass.
There, there were attacks to the north, in two cities near Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest urban centre, vital for a combined pincer offensive with Russian forces to the south: Popasna and Rubizhne.
Furthermore, the chances of any miraculous exit for the remaining defenders of Mariupol to the south are basically gone. About 1,000 soldiers are holed up in a metallurgical complex in the city and, having refused to surrender, seem destined to be part of the ruins of the city whose siege has become the symbol of the brutality of the Russian attack.
Be that as it may, it is only a matter of time before Mariupol falls, as authorities in Kiev now admit. From there, the junction between the part already controlled by the Russians of the Donbass and Crimea, further to the southwest, will be made.
This will allow such a pincer movement to try to encircle some 40,000 Ukrainian soldiers, who form the country’s military elite, with extensive experience in the eight-year civil war against separatists in the region.
It will not be easy for Moscow, even here the battle suggests armored manoeuvres, without so much urban combat – in which friction is inevitable, as the destruction of Mariupol demonstrated, and for which Russian tactics proved insufficient in the face of Ukrainian resistance armed with sophisticated western portable anti-tank systems.
There is the numerical issue. The US Department of Defense estimates the number of Russian tactical battalions concentrated in Donbass at 76, 11 of which have gathered in recent days. There is no fixed number of soldiers for each of these units, but it is somewhere around 1,000, 1,500 men.
As a result, Moscow has twice as many troops as Kiev for battle, something that defies military manuals, which predict a 3-to-1 ratio for a successful attack against well-defended positions. The point is how well-armed the Ukrainians are: the Polish tanks and tanks that were sent to help the effort don’t seem to make a difference.
There are intangible issues such as morality. Ukraine is in good shape, having seen Russians withdraw from around the capital and surrounding cities in the northwest of the country. Has just sunk, or has seen Russian naval incompetence make a blunder, Moscow’s main battleship in the Black Sea.
It is estimated that the Russians started the war on February 24 with 125 of their 170 tactical battalions. They would have lost, according to experts, 30 of them — in equipment, not necessarily associated personnel. It’s a blood-salted count, the highest proportion of dead and wounded since World War II.
Putin, however, still has time. According to the Pentagon, there are 22 more groups of tactical battalions being prepared in areas north of the Donbass for action. And theoretically, all forces are now under coordinated action by General Alexander Dvornikov, who made a reputation as ruthless in Russian command of the 2015-16 Syrian civil war.
Zelenski said in a Sunday night interview with CNN that what happens in Donbass could define the fate of the war. He didn’t exaggerate, as is his wont, this time.
In short, the action could result in Russian failure and immeasurable pressure on Putin, which makes observers fear some desperate action (chemical weapons, tactical nuclear weapons) to maintain his position of power.
Or it could end in Russian victory, as Kiev seems to fear in its statements. It remains to be seen whether it will be an overwhelming victory, with the destruction or Ukrainian surrender, or partial, with the flight of Zelensky’s forces to the region to the east, near the capital.
There the terms of an eventual ceasefire will have to be discussed. Russia declares that it wants Ukraine out of NATO (which seems guaranteed in practice), demilitarize the country (which it does with its missiles) and keep Donbass independent (also feasible, even more so with the corridor to Crimea).
Rightly, Kiev refuses to openly accept the terms under fire, fearing to see Russia in a position of military force to try to finish the service. With all the pressure of Western sanctions on its economy and the costs of keeping the war machine running, it seems unlikely, but so did his attack.
There, the 9th of May, which many see as a symbolic end desired by Putin, given that it is the day of victory over Nazi Germany in 1945, may just be the beginning of a new stage of the conflict.
