Ukrainians brace for major offensive in the east

Moscow and Kyiv are preparing for a new phase of war. 

Ukrainians in the east of the country are bracing themselves for a major offensive amid a shift in Russian tactics. After a failed attempt to capture the capital, Russian forces are re-focussing their efforts on consolidating Moscow’s hold over the eastern segment of the Ukraine – or, as they might describe it, the aim is now “complete liberation” of the Donbas. 

Western military analysts predict the fighting will intensify in the coming weeks, as Russia doubles – or perhaps even triples – its troop numbers in the Donbas.

The Donbas broadly refers to Ukraine’s eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, located along border with Russia, which run from outside Mariupol in the south all the way to the northern border.

Open-source images have revealed a build up of Russian military vehicles heading toward the Ukrainian city of Izyum, just outside the Donbas. And the UK’s Ministry of Defence says Russian troops are travelling via Belarus in order to redeploy in eastern Ukraine.

The appointment of General Alexander Dvornikov to lead Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine has heightened fears about the looming eastern offensive. This is a man widely referred as the “butcher” for his brutal military tactics in Syria. 

Of course, prior to Putin’s invasion, there was already a significant Russian presence in this Donbas. It is home to two breakaway areas held by the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic. These Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces for over seven years and already control just over a third of the Donbas. Since 2014, this bloody rebellion has claimed 14,000 lives. And on the eve of his invasion, Putin recognised the entirety of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions as independent states. 

The question now is whether Moscow prevail in this next phase of war.

According to predictions from the Conflict Intelligence Team, Russia could probably muster enough manpower to outnumber the Ukrainian forces by as much as 50 per cent.

Then again, we could be about to underestimate Ukrainian resilience once again . 

The government forces who have been fighting Russian-backed separatists in the region since 2014 have built up extensive fortifications. And, as James Heappey, the armed forces minister, argued today, some of Ukraine’s best-equipped and best-trained battalions are stationed in the Donbas. What’s more, many of the Russian forces now being deployed to the region are relatively untrained and unskilled compared to troops sent into Ukraine at the start of the invasion. 

A Russian victory in the east is certainly not inevitable, Heappey argues: “I think it’s quite likely it could be the other way around, and therefore nobody in the West should be rushing to trade away Ukrainian territory.”

For any sort of Moscow-Kyiv peace deal to be reached, it’s often been thought that Zelensky would ultimately have to make some heavy concessions over the Donbas region.  

But if Heappey’s predictions bear true, the likelihood of the Ukrainian president doing so will be slim – leaving the grounds on which the war could possibly end even more uncertain.