Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – With its aspirations for a quick victory dashed by a strong Ukrainian resistance, Russia has increasingly focused on wearing down Ukraine’s military in the east, hoping to persuade Kyiv to hand over part of the country to force the country to possibly end the war war.
The bulk of Ukraine’s army is concentrated in eastern Ukraine, where it has been locked in fighting with Moscow-backed separatists in a nearly eight-year conflict. If Russia manages to encircle and crush Ukrainian forces in Donbass, the country’s industrial heartland, it could seek to dictate its terms to Kyiv and possibly attempt to split the country in two.
The Russian military said on Friday that the “first phase of the operation” was largely complete, allowing Russian troops to focus on their “primary objective – the liberation of Donbass”.
Many observers say the change in strategy may reflect President Vladimir Putin’s admission that his plan for a lightning strike in Ukraine has failed, forcing him to narrow his objectives and shift tactics amid a catastrophic war that is turning Russia into a pariah and decimated its economy.
US and British officials have also noted that Moscow is increasingly focused on fighting Ukrainian forces to the east, while digging in around Kyiv and other major cities, shelling them with rockets and artillery.
Ukraine’s military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said Sunday the change of focus may reflect Putin’s hope of splitting Ukraine in two, like North and South Korea, and imposing “a dividing line between the occupied and unoccupied regions.”
“It cannot swallow the whole country,” Budanov said, adding that Russia appears to be trying to “pull the occupied territories into a single quasi-state structure and pit them against independent Ukraine.”
Putin and his generals have not announced specific military objectives or a planned timeline, but the Kremlin clearly expected a quick victory as Russian troops invaded Ukraine from the north, east and south on February 24.
But Russian attempts to quickly capture Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, the country’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, and other major cities in the northeast were thwarted by well-organized Ukrainian defenses and logistical challenges that stalled the Russian offensive.
Russian forces have been bombarding the outskirts of Kyiv with long-distance artillery and air strikes while shelving their ground offensive, a tactic they also used in attacking Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Sumy to the northeast.
In some sectors, including the city of Makariv, which lies near a strategic highway west of Kyiv, Ukrainian troops have pushed back the Russians.
Associated Press reporters saw the body of a Russian rocket launcher, a burned-out Russian truck, the body of a Russian soldier and a wrecked Ukrainian tank after fighting there a few days ago. In the nearby village of Yasnohorodka, the AP witnessed positions abandoned by Ukrainian soldiers moving further west, but no sign of the presence of Russian troops.
Mykola Sunhurovskyi, a military analyst at the Kyiv-based think tank Razumkov Center, said Russia has abandoned attempts to storm Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities for the time being and is laying siege to them to try to weaken Ukraine and buy time.
“Russia has changed tactics … to redistribute its forces and prepare for the next active phase of the war,” Sunhurovskyi said.
Russian forces encircled the strategically important port of Mariupol and besieged it for weeks, pounding it with rockets and artillery in a carnage that killed thousands of civilians. The fall of Mariupol would unleash Russian forces there, allowing them to take part in a possible pincer movement along with another group of troops arriving from Kharkiv in the northeast to try to encircle the Ukrainian military to the east.
“Russian forces appear to be concentrating their efforts to try to encircle Ukrainian forces directly confronting the separatist regions in the east of the country, advancing from Kharkiv to the north and Mariupol to the south,” Britain’s Defense Ministry said Sunday.
A senior US defense official also noted the recent Russian focus on Donbass. The official said Putin can now hope to take full control of the east while other Ukrainian forces are busy defending Kyiv and other areas, and then try to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to take control of To formally cede Donbass and recognize Russia’s ownership of Crimea. which Moscow annexed in 2014.
An analysis released Saturday by the Institute for the Study of War in Washington says the extent to which the Russians can press ahead with an accelerated move to lockdown Donbass will depend in part on how quickly their forces gain full control of Mariupol and how severely damaged they will emerge from this fight. It also noted that halting the Russian offensive on Kyiv “might reflect the incompetence of Russian forces rather than a postponement of Russian objectives or efforts at this time.”
As the Russian military increasingly focuses on bleeding Ukrainian troops to the east, it continues to use its arsenal of air and sea-launched cruise missiles to systematically attack fuel depots, military arsenals and weapons factories across the country.
Philips P. O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at St Andrews University, described Saturday’s cruise missile attacks on Lviv near the border with Poland as part of Russia’s strategy to cut off supplies to Ukrainian forces fighting in the east.
“They’re still going to want to disrupt as much as possible the flow of goods and supplies from west to east, many of which begin their journey around Lviv,” O’Brien noted.
On the Black Sea coast, the Russians quickly took the port of Kherson and advanced to the outskirts of the main shipbuilding center Mykolayiv, where their offensive stalled.
If Russian forces manage to encircle Mykolaiv, Odessa and several other Black Sea ports, they will have completely cut off Ukraine’s access to their coast, dealing a devastating blow to their economy. The capture of Odessa will also allow Moscow to establish a link with Moldova’s separatist region of Transnistria, which is home to a Russian military base.
Despite Ukrainian and Western fears, the Russian army has so far made no effort to bypass Mykolayiv and march on Odessa. Ukrainian authorities have noted that Russia’s failure to press ahead with its offensive along the coast could be explained by the fact that most of its troops to the south are involved in the Battle of Mariupol, where they suffered heavy casualties.
On Friday, the Russian military reported it had lost 1,351 soldiers killed and 3,825 wounded since the campaign began, but NATO estimates 7,000 to 15,000 have been killed – possibly as many as the Soviet Union lost in the entire 10-year war in Afghanistan.
The heavy casualties and slow pace of the Russian offensive may be a factor that forced Putin to scale back his ambitions and take a more realistic approach.
Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the independent Penta Center based in Kyiv, said Russia’s declared shift east could be an attempt to put a good face on its failed attack and regroup ahead of the next phase of the battle.
“Both sides now need a break for various reasons, and the Kremlin is using it to regroup its forces and look for new tactics without changing its strategic goal of subduing Ukraine,” Fesenko told the AP.
“Tactics could change from lightning strikes to sieging cities, destroying economies and infrastructure with bombing, blocking ports and doing other things. Putin has a wide arsenal of leverage.”
“Ukraine’s fierce resistance could turn the war into a protracted conflict, and then the issue of financial and military resources, including fighter jets and tanks, which Zelenskyy is urging the West to provide, will become paramount,” he said.
___
Karmanau reported from Lemberg, Ukraine. Robert Burns and Matthew Lee in Washington and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine