Russia pushes attack as Zelenskyy seeks aid

KYIV, UKRAINE >> As President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pursued his whirlwind diplomatic mission in Europe on Thursday and lobbied for powerful new weapons, the opening phase of Moscow’s offensive in eastern Ukraine was growing in scale and intensity.

Better trained and equipped Russian divisions have joined tens of thousands of newly mobilized soldiers trying to break through well-fortified Ukrainian lines, Ukrainian officials and analysts say.

Moscow’s forces are attacking from multiple directions along the eastern front, and the tempo of the fighting is expected to increase as Russia rains more artillery fire on the front lines to help its forces grind paths across towns and villages already ravaged by nearly a year of war.

Some of the most intense fighting in recent days has been reported as Russia seeks to push Ukrainian forces back around the eastern city of Kreminna, a small but vital pocket of land in the eastern Donbas region. Serhiy Haidai, the head of the regional military administration, said on the Telegram messaging app Thursday that the number of attacks in the area had grown significantly, although he insisted that Ukrainian forces were holding their ground.

“The Russians are trying to develop success in the Kreminna direction, to push through our defenses, but without success,” he said.

The Russian push in Kreminna also signaled that Moscow was trying to stretch Ukrainian forces, which have been straining to hold off Russia’s advance on Bakhmut, 30 miles to the south. Analysts say that Kreminna may be more strategically important than Bakhmut because it serves as the gateway to the larger city of Lyman to the west and to Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk to the southeast.

Ukrainian forces drove the Russians out of Lyman in the fall before their advance was halted in the pine forests outside Kreminna, and Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk are important industrial centers that fell to Russia after a grueling and costly summer campaign. All are key to President Vladimir Putin’s goal of conquering and annexing the entire Donbas.

Aided by Western allies,

Ukraine is continuing to build its arsenal and train tens of thousands of soldiers for the fight ahead, but it could take months for some weapons to arrive on the battlefield and Russia is moving first. The Institute for the Study of War said Wednesday that Moscow had regained the initiative for the first time since this summer but had yet to score a major strategic gain.

“Russian forces are gradually beginning an offensive, but its success is not inherent or predetermined,” the institute said in its latest daily assessment of the war.

Ukrainian officials said that it was increasingly clear that Russia was concentrating its early offensive efforts in the Donbas.

“There will be an escalation,” Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for the intelligence department in Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, said in an appearance on national television.

Moscow may feign other lines of attack, he added, but they would likely be attempts to divert and stretch Ukrainian forces.

NATO Secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said during a visit to Washington on Wednesday that Ukraine’s allies have provided around $120 billion in military, humanitarian and financial assistance to Kyiv. But Zelenskyy and Ukrainian military commanders say they desperately need longerrange artillery to attack Russian supply lines, fighter jets to secure the country’s skies and more battle tanks to square off against thousands at Moscow’s disposal.

Yuriy Fedorenko, the commander of a Ukrainian artillery aerial reconnaissance company fighting in the east, said that the amount of Russian artillery was like an unrelenting storm.

“The enemy is deploying the maximum number of reserves of manpower, equipment and artillery in an attempt to push through our defense,” he told Ukrainian television.

But he said that Ukrainian forces are meeting the Russian artillery with counter-battery fire and are holding their lines.

Meanwhile, Russia-u.s. relations are in a state of “unprecedented crisis” without any sign of improvement, a senior Russian diplomat said Thursday.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov argued that the White House’s emphasis on increasing weapons supplies to Ukraine to ensure Russia’s defeat leaves no room for diplomacy.

“I don’t see any prospect for a productive political and diplomatic process,” Ryabkov said at a briefing. “We have a very deep and unprecedented crisis in Russia-u.s. relations. The (Joe) Biden administration has driven them into a deadlock.”

Ryabkov warned that the U.S. and its allies must carefully assess the risks stemming from supplying increasingly powerful Western weapons to Ukraine.

“The Americans need to thoroughly and deeply weigh the risks linked to their unabashedly cavalier course,” he said.

Ryabkov noted that Moscow doesn’t trust Western statements about self-imposed restrictions on a range of weapons supplied to Ukraine in order to avoid escalation, adding that such assurances in the past have served as cover for a steady expansion of aid.

“We don’t see any sign of reason in any of the NATO and EU members’ capitals,” Ryabkov said. “What they are doing isn’t going to strengthen their security.”

He rejected the U.S. argument that Russia’s refusal to allow the resumption of inspections of its nuclear facilities represents a breach of the New START treaty.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS