Russia launches new offensive to take Ukraine’s east
A new phase in the war has begun, with Russia focusing on the east territories and south coast, but the US and EU are also stepping up weapons deliveries
The war in Ukraine massively intensified during its eighth week. Ukraine sank Russia’s flagship in the Black Sea, Russia launched a new phase of the war with a concerted bid to take over the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, the the United States began to ship heavy artillery to Ukraine.
This military escalation stood in contrast to the lack of diplomatic or economic developments. Russian-Ukrainian talks have stalled and the West has stopped escalating sanctions, instead shipping more weapons to Ukraine.
“This morning, almost along the whole front line of Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv regions, the occupiers attempted to break through our defenses,” said Oleksiy Davilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security council, told Ukrainian media on April 18. “Fortunately our military is holding out. They passed through only two cities – Kreminna and another small town.”
Russian attacks were reported along a 500km front. In the area of Kharkiv, Ukrainian forces retook the towns of Bazaliivka, Lebyazhe, and Kutuzivka, as well as smaller villages, in a counteroffensive begun on April 16. Ukrainian counterattacks also continued just west of Kherson, in the southwest of the country.
Days earlier, the US announced an $800mn tranche of military equipment deliveries to Ukraine, bringing its total delivered so far to $2.5bn. For the first time, the US is providing armoured personnel carriers and 155mm long-range howitzer artillery for the defence of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, along with 40,000 artillery rounds. Also included will be 11 Soviet-designed Mi-17 helicopters.
“The war has changed, because now the Russians have prioritized the Donbas area, and that’s a whole different level of fighting, a whole different type of fighting,” said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby on April 13.
Russia’s defence ministry says it has worn down Ukraine’s ability to fight through attrition, destroying a total of 140 aircraft, 487 UAVs, 252 anti-aircraft missiles systems, 2,353 tanks and other armoured combat vehicles, 256 multiple rocket launch systems, 1,014 field artillery and mortars, and 2,208 units of special military vehicles of the Ukrainian armed forces.
Russia’s deep resources suggest time is not on Ukraine’s side. Yet many observers believe Russia cannot press its natural advantages of proximity to the theatre of war and numerical superiority in arms and men.
“The Russians could overwhelm the Ukrainian defenders by the sheer number of different axes of advance forcing the Ukrainians to spread themselves too thinly. But the Ukrainians’ demonstrated will and ability to hold much larger Russian forces at bay in built-up areas for a considerable time suggests that many if not most or even all of these Russian drives will stall,” said a report from the Institute for the Study of War on April 16.
Morale is a major problem for Russia. Some of the units brought to the Donbas were evacuated from Kiev after suffering heavy losses. “Frequent reports of disastrously low Russian morale and continuing logistics challenges indicate the effective combat power of Russian units in eastern Ukraine is a fraction of their on-paper strength in numbers,” says ISW.
Ukraine’s Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported that the number of Russian personnel refusing to join the war effort is increasing, including 60-70% of contract soldiers in the 150th Motor Rifle Division of the 8th Combined Arms Army—the primary Russian combat force in eastern Ukraine.
Mariupol still not quenched
Dramatic developments also took place in Mariupol, a symbol of Ukrainian resistance, which is also key to linking up Russian forces in the Donbas and in the Crimea.
Russian forces stormed the Ilyich metallurgical plant on April 13 but failed to encircle its remaining defenders, who escaped to the adjacent Azovstal steel plant. Russia has tried sticks and carrots, pounding Azovstal with bunker busting bombs, and offering safe passage to an estimated 2,500 men still fighting.
“Taking into account the catastrophic situation at the Azovstal metallurgical plant in the city of Mariupol, from 14:00 (Moscow time) on April 19, 2022 the Russian armed forces have opened a humanitarian corridor for the withdrawal of Ukrainian servicemen and militants of nationalist formations who voluntarily laid down their arms,” the Russian defence ministry’s statement said.
The commander of Ukrainian forces, Major Serhiy Volyna, told the Washington Post that his men will not surrender but continue to conduct their operations as directed, because no-one trusts the Russians not to open fire on surrendering troops. In the meantime, the outnumbered and outgunned garrison continued to defy the Russians with limited counterattacks.
Russia’s defence ministry said 1,026 Ukrainians from the 36th Marines Battalion had surrendered, but Petro Andryushenko, an advisor to the mayor of Mariupol, told the BBC fewer than 200 marines had surrendered. “It’s wrong, the numbers- of course some marines have surrendered, but it’s not a thousand, it’s… some less than 200.”
On April 16 Ukraine said fighting was escalating in the port. "The Russian army is constantly calling on additional units to storm the city," Ukrainian defence ministry spokesperson Oleksandr Motuzyanyk told a televised briefing.
On the day the Ilyich plant fell, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy mocked Russian president Vladimir Putin’s assertion that the war is going to plan.
"In Russia it was once again said that their so-called 'special operation' is supposedly going according to plan. But, to be honest, no one in the world understands how such a plan could even come about," Zelenskiy said in a video address. "How could a plan that provides for the death of tens of thousands of their own soldiers in a little more than a month of war come about? Who could approve such a plan?"
Officially, Russia admits to fewer than 1,500 fatalities.
Could it get worse?
Russia has tried and failed to control Ukraine through different strategies – political intrigue, diplomacy, ultimatum, and outright conquest, says Jose Miguel Alonso-Trabanco, a researcher at New Zealand’s Massey University. Now it’s trying partition.
“The Russians are concentrating their efforts on Eastern Ukraine, a shift that could indicate their interest in negotiating from a position of strength, or the partition of Ukraine so that they can directly control the Donbass, the coastline (including places like Mariupol and Odessa) and much of what lies east of the Dnieper River,” Alonso-Trabanco said, expressing his personal opinion.
However, if even partition fails, he believes the war could become one of complete annihilation.
“If the Russians are unable to reach a quick victory and this military intervention becomes a long war, then Moscow could likely refocus its efforts and capabilities towards the outright dismantlement of Ukraine as a functional national state,” said Alonso-Trabanco. “That would entail the massive obliteration of infrastructure, territorial fragmentation, political and economic instability and an even larger exodus of population. A country under such chaotic conditions can’t have a viable future.”
Timeline: Week eight of Russia’s war in Ukraine
April 13-19
April 13
Russian forces storm the Ilyich metallurgical plant in Mariupol, one of two steelworks where Ukrainian defenders are making a last stand.
The mayor of the city of Kharkiv in the east says shelling has intensified.
The US announces an $800mn tranche of military equipment deliveries to Ukraine, bringing its total delivered so far to $2.5bn.
US president Joe Biden calls US military aid “critical in sustaining [Ukraine’s] fight against the Russian invasion.” Russian deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov says Russia will view NATO vehicles transporting aid to Ukraine as legitimate targets.
Biden’s weapons pledge comes a day after he called the Russian invasion a genocide. “I called it genocide because it has become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of being able to be Ukrainian and the evidence is mounting," Biden told reporters in Iowa.
Biden renews for one year the state of emergency regarding Russia’s “specified harmful foreign activities” in the US and allied countries. He specifies Russian efforts to undermine free elections, target journalists, corrupt politicians and mount cuber-attacks.
French forensic experts arrive in Bucha to investigate alleged war crimes by Russia. Hundreds of civilian bodies have been found there since the Russian withdrawal.
The presidents of Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania visit Zelenskyy in Kiev in a show of support, and also visit the town of Borodyanka, where Russian troops are said to have committed war crimes against civilians.
Finland and Sweden reach important milestones in their process of decising whether to join NATO. Finland issues a security report to lawmakers while Sweden initiates a review of security policy options.
April 14
Ukraine says it has sunk the Russian Black Sea Fleet flagship Moskva, after hitting it with two Neptune missiles. Russia acknowledges that the ship has sunk while being towed to port after a fire on board, but not the attack. An earlier announcement says its crew has been evacuated, but it is unclear what has become of the roughly 500 servicemen of the Moskva.
Vadym Denysenko, advisor to Ukraine’s interior minister, denies the Russian claim of a day earlier that marines had surrendered Mariupol in its entirety. “The battle over the seaport is still ongoing today,” he tells Current Time TV.
Putin ally Dmitry Medvedev says that if Sweden and Finland decide to join NATO, Russia will redeploy nuclear missiles to its enclave in Kaliningrad. “There can be no more talk of a nuclear-free status for the Baltic. The balance must be restored,” says Medvedev, who served as president in 2008-12, and now sits as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council.
IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva says the war in Ukraine has made energy and food inflation around the world “much worse” and “threatens to further increase inequality.” She warns that the IMF will cut its global growth forecast for 143 countries.
“For the first time in many years, inflation has become a clear and present danger for many countries around the world. This is a massive setback for the global recovery,” she says.
Georgieva also says sanctions against Russia were leading to a potential breakup of the global economy. “These double crises—pandemic and war—and our ability to deal with them, are further complicated by another growing risk: fragmentation of the world economy into geopolitical blocs—with different trade and technology standards, payment systems, and reserve currencies. Such a tectonic shift would incur painful adjustment costs.”
She said this was “perhaps the most serious challenge to the rules-based framework that has governed international and economic relations for more than 75 years.”
April 15
Russian missiles hit a facility on the outskirts of Kiev Russia says makes and repairs anti-ship missiles, in retaliation for the sinking of the Moskva a day earlier. "The number and scale of missile strikes on targets in Kyiv will increase in response to any terrorist attacks or acts of sabotage on Russian territory committed by the Kyiv nationalist regime," the Russian defence ministry says in a statement.
"The successes of our military on the battlefield are really significant, historically significant. But they are still not enough to clean our land of the occupiers.,” says Zelenskyy in a late night address.
Russia formally announces it has captured the Ilyich steel plant in Mariupol.
The European Central Bank’s Survey of Professional Forecasters doubles its inflation estimate for 2022 to 6%, and halves its Q2 growth estimate to 0.5%, on account of the Ukraine war.
April 16
Russia says it shot down a transport plane carrying Western-supplied armaments to Ukraine in the Odessa region, and that its armed forces “destroyed 67 areas of concentration of personnel and U2345krainian military equipment during the day.”
Its defence ministry says Russian forces now control the port of Mariupol. “The remnants of the Ukrainian group are currently completely blocked on the territory of the Azovstal metallurgical plant," the defence ministry says. The ministry insists that 1,464 Ukrainian servicement have so far surrendered. It estimates no more than 2,500 remain in the Azovstal steelworks.
The Ukrainian Resistance Centre, which co-ordinates activities inside Russian-occupied territory, says its artillery destroyed ten rail cars of Russian ordnance in Tomak, in southwestern Ukraine.
An assessment of the day’s events by the Institute for the Study of War states that Russia continues to build up its forces around the eastern city of Izium, but that attacks in the area “have not made significant gains so far.” The ISW believes that Russia’s army is is not ably enough led to take advantage of its numerical superiority.
April 17
Russia says it has shot down two Ukrainian MiG-29 aircraft and struck two dozen targets including ammunition dumps.
Fighting takes place in Mariupol’s Primorsky district, belying Russia’s claim to have reduced resistance to the Azovstal plant. Russian Tu-22M3 strategic bombers pound remaining defenders in the city.
April 18
Russia forces launch a new, large-scale offensive in east Ukraine to take full control of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts. Russian units fighting on a 500km front from Kharkiv to Mariupol focused their fire on the towns of Popasna, Marinka and Rubizhne, supported by artillery. A Ukrainian security council official says Ukrainian forces are holding out, and that the Russians have overrun only Kreminna and another small town.
Russian missile strikes hit three military facilities in the western city of Lviv, killing seven people. Lviv is a conduit for US and EU military aid to Ukraine that is shipped through Poland.
Zelenskyy formally submits a completed questionnaire to the European Union, fulfilling the first step on the road to EU membership for Ukraine.
April 19
The Russian defence ministry declares a ceasefire and humanitarian corridor to the Azovstal steel plant for Ukrainian servicemen to surrender.
Russia says it is providing three convoys from the plant, each consisting of 30 cars and buses and 10 ambulances.
Mariupol municipal advisor Petro Andryushenko says Russian forces did not mark the corridor, and that the offer was likely a trap.
Ukraine says its fighters in the port city continue to resist. There are reports of Russia using bunker-busting missiles, heavy bombs and chemical and biological gas to ferret out defenders from tunnels said to run under the facility.
A US defence official says seven planeloads of military equipment will head to Europe in the next 24 hours.