By Tim Lister, Daria Tarasova-Markina, CNN
(CNN) — Russian forces have begun a spring offensive in eastern Ukraine, including the use of dozens of tanks and armored vehicles, according to the Ukrainian military and analysts.
The assault is gathering pace as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he has a “very bad feeling” about the consequences of the Middle East conflict for his country.
“You see that our diplomatic meetings, trilateral meetings, are constantly postponed. There is one reason: war in Iran,” he told the BBC in an interview Sunday.
“Putin will want a long war. For Putin, a long war in Iran is a plus,” he said – as rising oil prices and the suspension of US sanctions on some Russian crude benefit the Russian economy.
Against that background, Russia is stepping up assaults in eastern Ukraine.
“With changing weather conditions, the Russian aggressor has stepped up pressure across several sections of the front,” Ukrainian military chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said Friday.
“For several days running, the number of combat engagements has exceeded 200,” he added – claiming that the Russians were losing more than 1,000 soldiers a day.
“Active troop movements, reinforced artillery, tactical aviation and the widespread use of UAVs (drones) are being observed across all sectors, indicating that the Russian army is preparing for a further offensive,” Dmytro Zaporozhets of Ukraine’s 11th Corps told Ukrainian broadcaster Suspilne on Saturday.
One focus of Russian attacks has been the town of Lyman in Donetsk, at the edge of what’s known as Ukraine’s fortress belt in the region, and a key strongpoint guarding the larger city of Sloviansk.
Ukraine’s Third Corps said Saturday that the Russians had used nearly 30 armored vehicles along with more than 500 infantry in the area. But the Russian “attacks were thwarted on all fronts,” said the Corps’ commander, Brig. Gen. Andriy Biletsky.
The size of the assault represents a change of tactics for the Russians, after using small infantry units for much of last year in an effort to infiltrate Ukrainian positions.
“This battalion-sized assault is considerably larger than most Russian mechanized assaults in recent months,” noted the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
There are signs that Russian forces plan intensified ground operations against other parts of the Fortress Belt to the south, including the cities of Kramatorsk and Kostantynivka, key defensive hubs for Ukraine, according to ISW.
The Russians have brought in armored vehicles and motorized units and doubled their use of artillery and tactical aviation in the Kramatorsk direction, according to Ukraine’s 11th Corps.
Ukrainian forces are heavily outnumbered along much of the front, and highly reliant on drones to break up Russian assaults. But ISW estimates that while Russia may make some tactical gains this year in Donetsk, it’s unlikely to seize the fortress belt. It describes Russian units in the area as exhausted, poorly trained, and overstretched.
Russian forces have reduced basic training for personnel involved in ground assaults from one month to one week, probably because of heavy casualties, according to Maksym Bilousov, spokesman for a Ukrainian unit in the east.
Ukrainian forces also control high ground to the east of Sloviansk. “For the enemy, stopping is tantamount to death, as we will destroy them in the lowlands,” said Zaporozhets of the 11th Corps.
With the war now into its fifth year, the battlefield is increasingly dominated by surveillance and attack drones, making resupply of frontline positions almost impossible in some areas.
“There are constantly (Russian) reconnaissance drones in the sky, constantly searching for targets, and strike drones, such as the ‘Molniya’ and ‘Lancet’,” Bilousov told Ukrainian media Saturday.
One Ukrainian soldier fighting in the south told CNN that because of intense drone activity the grey zone controlled by neither side was growing.
Despite marginal gains in recent months across much of the battlefield, the Kremlin has continued to insist that the capture of the remainder of four eastern regions of Ukraine remains the goal of what it calls the Special Military Operation.
Ukrainian forces still hold about 20% of Donetsk and larger parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. They gained ground in the south last month.
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