Putin’s gamble pivots to different kind of battle

Donbas features few places to hide or natural barriers

KYIV, Ukraine — There are fields instead of city streets, farmsteads instead of apartment buildings. Open highways stretch to the horizon.

The battles in the north that Ukraine won over the past seven weeks raged in towns and densely populated suburbs around the capital, Kyiv, but the war is about to take a hard turn to the southeast and into a vast expanse of wide-open flatland, fundamentally changing the nature of the combat, the weapons at play and the strategies that might bring victory.

Military analysts, Ukrainian commanders, soldiers and even President Vladimir Putin of Russia acknowledge that a wider war that began with a failed attempt to capture the capital will now be waged in the eastern Donbas region.

With few natural barriers, the armies can try to flank and surround each other, firing fierce barrages of artillery from a distance to soften enemy positions.

“What we’re talking about is, no kidding, a conventional, very lethal battle of maneuvers where Russian forces are going to attack Ukraine’s fixed positions on ground that is more open,” said Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe.

Donbas is an area the size of New Hampshire, with a front line stretching hundreds of miles; Russia borders it in an arc to the north and east, and most residents speak Russian. Named for the rich Donets Basin of coal seams just below the surface, the region is dotted with Sovietera mining and factory towns across the sprawl of sunflower fields and grassy plains.

Before Russia invaded in February, Ukraine had been fighting Russia-backed separatists there since 2014, when Moscow fomented an uprising and sent in forces to support it. That war had settled into a stalemate, with each side controlling territory and neither gaining much ground.

Now, what may be the decisive phase of Putin’s latest war is returning to that same region, blighted by eight years of conflict and littered with land mines and trenches, as he tries to conquer the portion of Donbas still held by Ukraine. Neither side has made a major move in recent days, and analysts say it will most likely require a long and bloody conflict for either one to prevail.

The plains would seem to favor Russia’s raw advantage in weaponry. But as a defending force, Ukraine has an advantage in striking from entrenched positions at Russian troops as they advance over open ground and into artillery range.

Both sides are mustering troops for a major battle, with the Russian forces regrouping after being battered and driven from Kyiv, their units fragmented by heavy casualties and equipment losses.

Russia has increased the number of battalion fighting groups in the east to 40 — as many as 40,000 troops — from 30 this month, with more reinforcements on the way, Pentagon officials said.

Ukraine’s army in the east had been estimated at about 30,000 troops before Russia invaded. After repelling the Russian assault on Kyiv, the military’s elite units redeployed to eastern Ukraine, but estimating the size and strength of Ukrainian forces there now is difficult. In this new phase of the war, the Ukrainians will need a new arsenal of weapons — particularly long-range artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems. They will also require more armored vehicles to protect their forces and to tow artillery pieces to the front lines.

Western countries are responding to this need. Slovakia this past week provided Ukraine with a potent, long-range antiaircraft missile system, the S-300.

And Wednesday, President Joe Biden announced an $800 million military aid package to Ukraine that for the first time included more powerful weaponry, including 18 155-millimeter howitzers, 40,000 rounds of artillery ammunition and 200 armored personnel carriers.

The weapons from the West have caught Russia’s attention. Moscow sent a formal diplomatic note of protest to warn the United States of “unpredictable consequences” of shipping such arms, U.S. officials said Friday.

Perhaps the biggest difference from the northern phase of the war, fought among towns, woods and hills, will be the terrain. Military analysts are forecasting an all-out, bloody battle on the steppe.

“There’s nowhere to hide,” said Maksim Finogin, a veteran of Ukraine’s conflict in Donbas.

DAVID GUTTENFELDER/THE NEW YORK TIMES Four more freshly dug graves await Saturday among the rows of those added to a cemetery in Irpin, Ukraine, since the Russian invasion began.