What’s next for Ukraine after Russia’s Donbas offensive?

Analysis: Indiscriminate tactics of Russia’s grinding progress in east could characterise next phase of war

The recent Russian advances in the Donbas lead to an inevitable question: whether the indiscriminate tactics the Kremlin deployed there will be a template for future offensives.

With reports of large numbers of troops, artillery and rocket launchers mustering across the border near the Russian city of Kursk – in an area that borders Ukraine’s Sumy province – it is an urgent issue.

While much has been made of the painfully slow and grinding pace of Russia’s recent offensive in the Donbas, the speed of territorial gains is not the only metric.

The Russian tactics that have shaped the battle in the Donbas have also posed a brutal dilemma for Ukraine’s defenders – to hold their ground amid rapidly mounting casualties, or withdraw and risk giving the attackers momentum.

While other parts of the 300-mile frontline in Ukraine’s east lack some of the same vulnerabilities that existed around Sievierodonetsk – which sat in the midst of a Ukrainian salient that Russia exploited – in any future offensive the Kremlin is likely to offer Kyiv the same hard choices, attempting to stretch its ability to respond.

Russia's advance on Sievierodonetsk

7 May

Popasna falls to Russian forces and there is active fighting in Bilohorivka, Vojevodivka and Lysychansk, in an indication that Russia might try to encircle Sievierodonetsk from the south

20 May

Russian troops push west of Popasna and attempt to gain ground to the north of Sievierodonetsk. Volodymyr Zelenskiy says the ‘brutal’ bombing of Sievierodonetsk is turning the area into ‘hell’

30 May

Russian tanks advance towards the centre of the city from the east. Local authorities sound alarm over thousands of civilians who haven't left

Perhaps the first and most pressing issue – if and when Russian forces fully take Sievierodonetsk – is whether they then attempt to cross the Siverskyi Donets River, after disastrous attempts at crossing elsewhere were targeted by Ukrainian artillery with deadly effect.

Whether or not Russian forces attempt to cross the Siverskyi Donets River – a natural barrier – at Sievierodonetsk or elsewhere within Ukraine, Russian forces appear to be preparing for a fresh push farther north amid evidence that they are regrouping near the Ukrainian town of Izium to renew their stalled efforts against Slovyansk, rebuilding a railway bridge near Kupyansk to facilitate the movement of troops and equipment to the area.

What is more difficult to assess is the level of attrition inflicted on both sides, and what impact that will have on further offensives and Ukraine’s ability to defend and counterattack.

While the UK’s Ministry of Defence has made much of Russian losses throughout the war – most recently the mounting casualties among junior officers – Russian gains in the Donbas appear to tell a different story, for now at least. Increasing anecdotal evidence suggests that Ukraine has suffered heavy casualties during recent fighting in the east, largely from shrapnel, and there are reports of equipment and supply issues.

What may well be true is that despite evidence of fresh Russian preparations, the difficulty of the fighting and heavy losses may limit Russia’s ambitions beyond controlling the Donbas, the south and its key coastline.

“After almost a hundred days of war,” Michael Clarke of the Royal United Services Institute wrote in the Times earlier this week, “the Russian offensive in Ukraine is finally beginning to look more coherent, if not yet strategically wise or sustainable.”

Predicting a prolonged war, however, the former Australian general Mick Ryan disputed the notion that either Russia or Ukraine was close to exhaustion in a lengthy Twitter thread examining the current military position and likely trajectory.

“In April and early May, after Ukraine’s victory in the battle of Kyiv, a degree of triumphalism crept into Ukraine war narratives. But as the Russians have shown recently, by concentrating their forces on smaller regions of Ukraine, they can generate tactical victories,” he said.

“Neither belligerent has demonstrated the capacity to land a strategically decisive blow against the other. Despite the Ukrainians demonstrating superiority in global influence, strategy and leadership, the Russians keep generating the combat power to attack them in the east.

“Despite the Russians and Ukrainians losing people and equipment in the hundreds (if not thousands), neither are exhausted nations. The Russians have reserves of manpower and equipment in storage. Ukraine has masses of military aid flowing across its borders.”

In spite of continuing Russian shelling around Kharkiv and in the south around Kherson, where two limited Ukrainian counteroffensives have stalled, the Russian objective in both those areas – according to the Ukrainian general staff – is to consolidate defences and supply lines and to disrupt Ukrainian forces where they have managed to advance.

Elsewhere, however, as the US-based thinktank the Institute for the Study of War suggests: “Russian advances remain limited and are unlikely to increase in pace in the near term, particularly as Russian forces continue to prioritise assaults on Sievierodonetsk at the cost of other lines of effort.”