The first month of the war has passed: recapturing of occupied lands in progress

UKRAINE - In Brief 26 Mar 2022 by Dmytro Boyarchuk

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The first month of the war has passed. Apparently, Kremlin miscalculated readiness of Ukrainians to defend their freedoms. If the eastern part of the country might had had some illusions about Russia before 2014, they had a chance to see an excellent demonstration what “Russian world” is in occupied Donbas. Finally, all doubts had evaporated with first bombs falling on February 24, 2022. That’s why Russians are facing fierce resistance from civilians even in the eastern part of Ukraine which used to be traditionally sympathetic to Russia. The offensive was stopped already on the first week of the war. Russian forces managed to expand at the South mainly because Ukrainian defense was concentrated at the main cities and there were no large forces in the steppes of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. The key forces at the South concentrated on defense of Odesa, Mykolayiv, Mariupol, Kryvy Rih, Zaporizhzha and Dnipro. Though the front did not move much already after the first week of the war, Russians have been throwing more and more troops on fortified areas of Ukrainian forces near big cities and strongholds of Ukrainian forces in Donbass disregard heavy losses they had. As we now see Ukrainian army is maneuvering actively on all areas of actions except for the cities which were defined as strategic. And the main focus is on the supply lines. Mobile groups extensively attack supplies of fuel and ammo of Russians which was one of the main activity of Ukrainian forces over the recent weeks. In the mid of March first counter-attacks were reported. General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine does not target to retake territories at any price and run counterattacks on the secti...