After three months of full-scale war against, in which ground troops invaded from several directions and missiles hit targets across the country, right up to the western border with Poland, the focus of the current phase of the conflict is back on the region where Russia has been fighting Ukraine for the past eight years: Donbas., given manpower availability and access to extensive Western military support … But the local balance in the Donbas during this phase is a different story.
“I don’t think the Russian offensive looks stalled, and while sluggish, there is no good way to predict when it will culminate,” wrote Kofman.There is no longer any doubt that Russia plans to fully annex parts of Ukraine, as it did with Crimea in 2014. Then, Moscow declined to do the same with the areas it controlled in east Ukraine, preferring instead to prop up separatist administrations there.
The areas have seen an increased crackdown on pro-Ukrainian sentiment, as well as reports that Russia is introducing the rouble and Moscow time zone, announcements that teachers will be retrained in the Russian curriculum, and a series of sinister videos of locals announcing on camera that they had been through “a course of denazification” and no longer support Ukraine.
Life in the Ukrainian capital feels more normal by the week. The occasional air raid siren and men with guns on the streets are reminders of the war, but cafe terraces are busy, the opera has reopened and the curfew has been pushed back to 11pm. Since the Russians withdrew at the beginning of April, there has been no artillery threat, and no repeat of the booms from the suburbs that characterised the first weeks of the war.