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Ukrainian and Russian forces are locked in combat along a 300-mile (480km) frontline in eastern Ukraine. President Zelensky said the situation in embattled Mariupol remained "as tough as...
Mar 28, 2023 · Moscow has struggled to capture new ground in eastern Ukraine but its bombardment has laid waste to cities and towns. Here is what we’re covering: A rare glimpse of Avdiivka reveals a ruined...
May 30, 2022 · Ukraine’s push in Kherson came as its forces were desperately battling to hold off Russia’s efforts to conquer and cut off a strategic strip of Eastern Ukraine that is central to Moscow’s...
- Overview
- From industry to invasion
- 'Dancing in Donbas'
ON THE ROAD TO KYIV, Ukraine — For weeks, Ukraine and its Western allies have been waiting for Russia’s promised offensive in the Donbas — an eastern region of the country that borders Russia — in the wake of Moscow’s hasty retreat from around the capital, Kyiv.
Now, that offensive has begun.
With troops concentrated for a major ground assault, airstrikes bombarding cities and Ukraine’s forces steeling for what could be a series of decisive battles, many expect the Russian offensive to be better equipped and organized than the failed first phase of the war.
So why has Russian President Vladimir Putin refocused his military's efforts on this region of eastern Ukraine, and what should we expect in the days and weeks to come? NBC News takes a look.
Simply put, the region is of territorial and ideological significance, and making gains there could provide the Kremlin some form of victory after it struggled to achieve its initial objectives in the war.
Valeriy Akimenko, a senior research associate at the Conflict Studies Research Centre in England, said Russia sees the land as valuable and “as historically Russian, ‘gifted’ to Ukraine during the Soviet era.”
“It is also part of the ‘Russian World’ concept Moscow aims to construct,” he added.
The region, almost twice the size of Belgium, is an industrial powerhouse filled with valuable coal and metal deposits and processing centers, as well as strategically important ports on the Sea of Azov, which sits between Russia, Crimea and Ukraine.
Since Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, Moscow-backed separatists have battled Ukrainian forces in the Donbas. The conflict lasted eight years and killed an estimated 14,000 people, according to the United Nations, until Russia invaded its neighbor nearly two months ago.
The move followed Putin's recognition of the independence of two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine, the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic” and the “Luhansk People’s Republic.” They are named after the two main areas that together make up the Donbas.
But Ukraine and its military, which have been able to maintain heavy resistance and produce effective counterattacks in the region, see neither of those options as tenable.
The Ukrainian military said that over the past 24 hours its forces had repelled seven Russian attacks in the Donbas that were supported by strategic bombers, drones and surface-to-air missile systems.
The country has created a defensive belt through the heart of the region, from the north to the southeast, said Leonid Polyakov, Ukraine’s former vice minister of defense, who has remained in Kyiv through the war.
“South of Kharkiv they tried to break through toward Kramatorsk, toward the administrative border of Donetsk Oblast,” he said, using a word that refers to an administrative region. “Luhansk is largely under their control except for major populated areas, while Donetsk is largely under our control. We resist there for the moment.”
Polyakov said the Ukrainians are trying to encircle their foes and keeping their forces highly maneuverable to find weak points in the Russian lines, but he admitted they have also been forced back at points by Russia's greater numbers.
That includes a town in the Donbas, Kreminna, where local officials said Moscow's troops seized control in the hours after they launched their intensified assault.
- 2 min
- Phil McCausland
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