War in Ukraine | Apparent stagnation in the Donbass

Heavy fighting continues in southern and eastern Ukraine, where Russian troops are advancing with difficulty. The Kremlin claims that the military aid offered by Western countries has slowed down its “special operation”, but will not prevent it from achieving its objectives.

Marc Thibodeau
The Press

Ukrainian troops resist

Russia and Ukraine are continuing intense fighting in the east and south of the country which, according to Moscow, has claimed the lives of hundreds of soldiers in recent days without fundamentally changing the situation on the ground. Russian troops are progressing very slowly in particular in the Donbass, which remains the priority of the regime. “They seem to be stagnating. The progress is almost meter by meter, from one village to another,” underlines Pierre Jolicœur, vice-rector for research at the Royal Military College Saint-Jean.

Many analysts judged that the geographical configuration of the region would be likely to favor the advance of Russian forces, but that was without counting, notes Mr. Jolicoeur, on the increased military capacities of the Ukrainian army, supplied with weapons increasingly sophisticated by several Western countries.

Eugene Rumer, an expert on Russia attached to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, believes that the Russian army is still struggling, after suffering heavy losses in the Kyiv region, to implement a “coherent strategy” likely to ensure substantial gains in the field. The frustration felt by Moscow is manifested by an intensification of the bombardments, underlines the analyst, who evokes a “war of attrition” likely to last for months.

Conflicting information regarding Mariupol

Contradictory information circulated on Thursday on the situation in Mariupol, in the south of the country, where hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians remained holed up in a huge steel complex still beyond Moscow’s control.

According to Reuters, one of the Ukrainian commanders there posted a video in which he said that “bloody” fighting had been going on for three days. The soldier accused the Russian “enemy” of not respecting his promise to allow the evacuation of civilians.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov assured his side that no attack was underway and that Russia maintained its intention to open a humanitarian corridor to allow other evacuations. According to Pierre Jolicoeur, the complete capture of the city would be an “important symbolic victory” that President Vladimir Putin may want to brandish on the occasion of Victory Day, May 9, which commemorates the capitulation of Nazi Germany.

A new UN convoy is also expected this Friday to evacuate the last civilians entrenched in the Azovstal steel complex, without however assurance of a truce in the fighting. Despite this uncertainty, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Martin Griffiths, announced on Thursday that this new convoy was heading for the martyr city.

Arms Supply

According to the Institute for the Study of War, Russia has stepped up its strikes in western Ukraine on transportation infrastructure in hopes of stemming the flow of weapons from several Western countries.

The United States notably recently announced its intention to step up its armed support for the regime of President Volodymyr Zelensky, who continues to call on his allies to do more in this area. Washington says that the current campaign aims to stop the Russian army, but also to weaken it to the point of preventing any recurrence of the military operation launched in Ukraine.

American aid also goes through the provision of strategic intelligence on the advances of Russian forces. the New York Times indicated Thursday that this information would have enabled Ukrainian fighters in particular to kill several high-ranking officers deployed on the ground, which the American Department of Defense denied. It’s true that the United States is passing intelligence to Kyiv “to help the Ukrainians defend their country,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said. But, he added, “we do not provide information on the whereabouts of senior military commanders on the battlefield, nor do we participate in targeting decisions made by the Ukrainian military.”

According to the American channel NBC, information provided by the United States helped Ukraine to sink the Russian cruiser Moskva, flagship of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, on April 14. According to anonymous officials quoted by the chain, the Ukrainian forces asked the Americans for information concerning a ship cruising in the Black Sea. The Americans would then have identified the building as being the Moskva and would have clarified its position.

Dmitry Peskov says the actions of the US, UK and other NATO countries had prevented the ‘rapid completion’ of the Russian operation, but would not prevent the achievement of the set objectives by Moscow.

Security guarantees for Sweden

While the situation stagnated on the ground, the diplomatic maneuvers relating to the war continued unabated. NATO said on Thursday it would step up its presence in the Baltic Sea and near Sweden’s borders to protect the country should it apply to join the organization.

Its secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said he was hopeful that “solutions would be found” to prevent any Russian attack during the transition period. Both Sweden and Finland must decide soon whether to go ahead with the process, as Moscow raises the possibility of retaliation.

Vladimir Putin also apologized to Israel to calm a diplomatic crisis sparked by a recent outing by its Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov. He claimed Sunday on Italian television that Adolf Hitler “had Jewish blood” in an attempt to justify the fact that Moscow claims to want to “denazify” Ukraine, while Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish. The intervention of the diplomat had aroused the indignation of the Israeli leaders, who were careful, unlike most Western countries, to impose sanctions on Russia for its intervention in Ukraine.

With Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press