Donbas the focus for Moscow with assault from three sides

THE war in the Donbas has hit its fiercest point so far, Kyiv warned yesterday, as Russia pressed on with its attempt to seize the crucial region.

“The fighting has reached its maximum intensity,” deputy defence minister Ganna Malyar said. “Enemy forces are storming the positions of our troops simultaneously in several directions. We have an extremely difficult and long stage of fighting ahead of us.” Three months into its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has abandoned its assault on the capital, Kyiv, and second-biggest city, Kharkiv, and is instead trying to consolidate control of the industrial eastern Donbas region, where it has backed a separatist revolt since 2014.

Thousands of troops are attacking from three sides to try to encircle Ukrainian forces in Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, which stand on the crucial route to the eastern administrative centre in Kramatorsk. If the two cities straddling the Siverskiy Donets river fall, nearly all of the Donbas province of Luhansk would be under Moscow’s heel.

“Russia has the advantage, but we are doing everything we can,” said General Oleksiy Gromov of Ukraine’s general staff. Advancing Russian forces reportedly briefly seized positions on the last highway out of the cities before being beaten back. Luhansk governor Serhiy Gaidai said around 50 Russian soldiers had reached the highway and “managed to gain a foothold”, even setting up a checkpoint. “The checkpoint was broken, they were thrown back ... the Russian army does not control the route now, but they are shelling it,” he said, adding it was possible Ukrainian troops would leave “one settlement, maybe two. We need to win the war, not the battle. It is clear that our boys are slowly retreating to more fortified positions – we need to hold back this horde.” Russian bombardments had killed three people and done extensive damage to a humanitarian aid centre in Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, he added.

Western military analysts see the battle for the two cities as a potential turning point in the war, now that Russia has redefined its principal objective as capturing the east. “Recent Russian gains offer a sobering check on expectations for the near term,” said defence analyst Michael Kofman, director of Russian studies at the Us-based CNA think tank.

Valeriy Zaluzhny, the head of Ukraine’s armed forces, has called for more Western arms, particularly “weapons that will allow us to hit the enemy at a big distance”.

Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, later warned that any supplies of weapons that could reach Russian territory would be “a serious step towards unacceptable escalation”.