Russian assault heralds new phase of conflict
RUSSIA yesterday heightened its battle for control of Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, intensifying assaults on cities and towns along a front hundreds of miles long in what officials on both sides described as a new phase of the war.
After a Russian push to Kyiv failed to claim the country’s capital, the Kremlin declared that its main goal was the capture of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. That would give President Vladimir Putin a vital piece of territory and a badly needed victory to present to the Russian people amid the war’s mounting casualties and the economic hardship caused by the West’s sanctions.
In recent weeks, Russian forces that withdrew from Kyiv have regrouped in preparation for an allout offensive in the Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces for the past eight years and have declared two independent republics that have been recognised by Russia.
While Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and other officials said the offensive had started, observers noted that it was just the beginning of a massive onslaught.
Ukraine’s military said that a “new phase of war” began when “the occupiers made an attempt to break through our defences along nearly the entire front line”.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said that “another phase of this operation is starting now”, while Russia’s defence ministry spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov, said air-launched Russian missiles destroyed 13 Ukrainian troop and weapons locations while the air force struck 60 other military facilities, including missile warhead storage depots, while Russian artillery hit 1,260 Ukrainian military facilities and 1,214 troops concentrations over the last 24 hours.
The assaults began along a boomerang-shaped front that stretches more than 300 miles from northeastern Ukraine to the country’s south east. Russia said it struck several areas with missiles, including the north-eastern city of Kharkiv as well as areas around Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro, west of the Donbas.
Associated Press journalists in Kharkiv said at least four people were killed and three wounded in an attack on a residential area of the city, which is near the front lines and has faced repeated shelling. An explosion also rocked the eastern city of Kramatorsk, killing at least one person and wounding three, according to journalists at the scene.
On Monday, President Zelensky said in a video address that a “significant part of the entire Russian army” is now concentrated on the battle for the Donbas. “No matter how many Russian troops are driven there, we will fight,” he vowed. “We will defend ourselves.”
In the UK, Government ministers were briefed by a senior national security official, who said the next phase of the war was likely to be “an attritional conflict” which could last “several months”.
Ukraine remains in a “perilous” position, despite recent setbacks suffered by the invading Russian forces, Boris Johnson warned.
The Prime Minister, who stressed the need to step up international support to Ukraine, told the Cabinet that President Putin had been angered by the defeats inflicted on his troops but remained “determined to claim some sort of victory, regardless of the human cost”.