A20 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, APRIL 10 , 2022
war war in ukrainein ukraine
to launch a sweep into the capital
was thwarted by fierce Ukrainian
resistance, U.S. officials say.
Those troops are in the process of
being refitted and resupplied,
apparently for redeployment to
the east, the Pentagon says.
In one sign that Russia is trying
to fix some of the problems it
initially encountered, the
Russians have appointed a
general with extensive experience
in Syria and U kraine’s Donbas
region to oversee the war effort,
marking the first time a single
commander has taken control of
the entire Ukraine operation, a
senior U.S. official said Saturday,
speaking on the condition of
anonymity because of the issue’s
sensitivity. The appointment of
Gen. Alexander Dvornikov, the
commander of Russia’s southern
military district, signals an
attempt by Moscow to bring some
coherence to what military
experts describe as a chaotically
executed operation so far that has
taken the lives of seven generals.
The new focus of the battle is
expected to be the Donbas, which
has been contested since Russia
invaded in 2014 and seized a
portion of the oblast, or province.
Ukraine has since been fighting to
maintain control of the rest of the
area, and some of its best and
most battle-hardened troops are
stationed there.
The Russians are widely
expected to attempt to push south
from the Kharkiv area and north
from the city of Donetsk to
encircle the Ukrainian troops in
the Donbas, maneuvers that will
play to Russia’s numerical
superiority in terms of tanks and
other armored vehicles. In recent
days, Ukrainian military officials
said, the Russians have begun
pushing south from the town of
Izyum toward Slovyansk, with the
aim eventually of seizing
Kramatorsk, the capital of
Donetsk province and site of the
missile attack on a train station
EAST FROM A1 that killed more than 50 people
Friday.
The Ukrainians could find
themselves confronting a tougher
fight in the terrain of the east than
they did in the forested north,
analysts say. There, trees
provided cover for lightly armed
fighters to sneak behind Russian
lines to fire at tanks and other
armored vehicles, using antitank
weapons such as the Javelins
supplied by the United States that
have helped tilt the war in
Ukraine’s favor.
The battles in the east will look
more like those of “the Second
World War, with large operations,
thousands of tanks, armored
vehicles, planes, artillery,”
Ukraine’s foreign minister told
NATO last week, making an
appeal for urgent supplies of new
and different kinds of arms.
The shifting environment
underpins Ukraine’s demand for
NATO countries to supply more
and different kinds of weaponry
including tanks, other armored
vehicles and artillery, U.S.
officials say.
“The fight down in the
southeast, the terrain is different
than it is in the north. It is much
more open and lends itself to
armor mechanized offensive
operations on both sides,” Gen.
Mark A. Milley, chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a
congressional hearing last week.
The Ukrainians need additional
armor and artillery, he said. The
United States is looking to NATO
allies to come up with the right
equipment because the kind used
by the United States would
require months of training for the
Ukrainians to learn how to use, he
said.
Fighting in the east also will
require the Ukrainians to adopt
different tactics from those they
used around Kyiv, where they
were able to blunt and ultimately
reverse the Russian assault.
The Ukrainians were able to
fight a guerrilla-style war against
advancing columns of Russian
Ukrainian fighters face
new challenge against
Russian troops in east
armor that were confined to the
roads because of mud and trees,
contributing to the buildup of
vehicles that formed the
infamous 40-mile convoy-turned-
traffic jam. The onset of warmer
weather will further help Russia
by giving its armored formations
greater freedom of movement.
“This time around the
Ukrainians will need to be
moving in open country where
they can easily be spotted,” said
Jack Watling of the London-based
Royal United Services Institute.
“They will be in combat battles
where both sides see each other,
and if they are not in armored
vehicles they will be vulnerable.”
The logistical problems that
Russia encountered in its initial
push into Ukraine should be less
of an issue in the east, Watling
said, because Russia already
occupies part of the Donbas
region, which b orders Russia,making it easier to send supplies
directly from Russia.
The Russians have had time to
adjust to the reality of Ukraine’s
ability and will to resist Russian
advances, he said. “They know
what they are up against, and
their supply lines will be shorter,”
he said.
Russia can meanwhile draw on
vast quantities of mechanized
armor including tanks and
armored vehicles, where it
possesses a clear advantage over
the smaller Ukrainian army, said
retired Gen. Philip Breedlove, a
former supreme allied
commander of NATO. Russia also
possesses artillery systems that
have longer ranges than
Ukrainian weapons, creating
difficulties for Ukrainian forces
when they face each other, said
Breedlove, who is now with the
Middle East Institute.
“That makes it really hard onthe Ukrainians and imposes a
shoot-and-move philosophy on
the Ukrainians that they would
like to be imposing on the
Russians,” he said.
Many observers doubt,
however, that Russia’s already-
exhausted and depleted forces
have the strength to take much
more territory from Ukraine
anytime soon. Russia has
mobilized 60,000 reservists and
is assembling new battle units to
replace those lost over the past
few weeks, but it will take time to
equip and train them, said
Phillips O’Brien, professor of
strategic studies at St Andrews
University in Scotland.
Russia committed 75 percent of
its combat-ready forces to the
initial invasion, and its best
troops have already been fighting.
They are exhausted, demoralized
and depleted by equipment losses
they have suffered, he said.Russia may be able to win an
advantage in some local areas,
“but the army they have won’t be
large enough to hold the area they
take,” O’Brien said. “The army
they have is too small.”
The new environment “is not a
game-changer,” said Watling. “It
depends on whether the Russians
are tactically up for it, and they’ve
been pretty inept so far.”
The Russians have now had a
chance to adjust to the reality that
the Ukrainians are likely to put up
a fierce fight, and can be expected
to adjust their tactics accordingly,
said Mick Ryan, a recently retired
Australian general who has been
studying the war.
“However, the Ukrainians have
been better and faster at adapting
and are so far winning this
adaptation battle,” he said.Dalton Bennett in Dnipro, Ukraine,
contributed to this report.STANISLAV KOZLIUK/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK
A man views the wreckage of a Russian tank last week outside Kyiv. The Russians have shifted focus to the long-contested Donbas region.