The 3rd day of decisive battle for Donbas: no great progress in offensive observed

UKRAINE - In Brief 20 Apr 2022 by Dmytro Boyarchuk

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The big battle for Donbas was "officially" started on Monday, April 18, when President Volodymyr Zelenskiy reported in public that fighting has intensified. In fact, the intense efforts of Russians to push the frontline in the East and South have not eased over the last two weeks. However, intensified air strikes and bombardment across the board from the start of this week, coupled with attempts by massive armored groupings of Russians' rushing onto fortified positions of the Ukrainian army, gave the grounds to claim that the widely expected offensive on Donbas is already at full-steam. Good news – we do not have any evidence of noticeable progress in Russian offense after three days of heavy fighting. Bad news – this time fighting is really very tough. Unlike near Kyiv and Chernihiv (on their first attempt), the Russians are not advancing with long queues of convoys. This time, the Russians have deployed their battalions in combat order and are treating the Ukrainian army more seriously. The strategy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine remains unchanged: our soldiers target to destroy as many enemy units as they can from well-prepared fortified positions. The Ukrainian army just sits and waits for new waves of frontal attacks to come. There is no need for our forces to incur extra losses when it’s clear that the Russians will be throwing more and more units into the attack, trying to make at least some progress that might be claimed a victory by May 9. This disposition is very convenient for Ukrainian army to destroy as many invaders as possible. Against this backdrop we can expect that over the next two-three weeks there will be not much change at the...