Russian forces are regrouping for a new offensive in the hopes of regaining the initiative, after initial setbacks in Ukraine.
Nearly seven weeks after launching its full-scale attack on Ukraine, the Russians are regrouping for a new offensive in the hopes of regaining the initiative. Russia’s attempts to capture the capital city of Kyiv have failed, for now. Ukrainian troops have decimated Russian special operations and conventional forces on the Kyiv front. Russia is now expected to concentrate its forces in the Donets Basin region of Ukraine, known as the Donbas, to encircle Ukrainian forces that have been fighting separatists in the eastern part of the country. Commercially available satellite images on Friday showed a Russian military convoy that stretched for eight miles headed to the eastern Ukrainian city of Izium. The convoy is made up of hundreds of armored vehicles and trucks. Yet it’s important to note that the problems that have sapped the Russian military’s effectiveness so far have not gone away, said Khrystyna Holynska, a defense and security policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, a non-profit research organization. “While it is expected that Russian forces will regroup and restart their offensive, it is very important to remember that this is still the same Russian military with low morale, distrust in the ranks, weapons systems and logistics problems, and many other issues that have been widely discussed,” Holynska told Task & Purpose. “These problems cannot be solved quickly. Building the airplane in flight is likely not a task Russia is able to fulfill successfully in the coming weeks or months.” Subscribe to Task & Purpose Today. Get the latest in military news, entertainment, and gear in your inbox daily. One issue the Russians have sought to address is clarifying the chain of command by appointing one overall commander for the invasion: Gen. Alexander Dvornikov. Since 2016, Dvornikov has led Russia’s Southern Military District, which has purview over Ukraine’s Donbas region, the focus of Russia’s impending offensive, tweeted former Marine Capt. Rob Lee, who spent a year with a defense-focused think tank in Moscow Much like the fighting on the Eastern Front during World War II, the conflict in Ukraine has become a war without pity. When the Ukrainians liberated the suburb of Bucha, the world was aghast to discover that Russian forces had killed scores of civilians.
