Russia occupied a large part of eastern Ukraine

POKROVSK, Ukraine – Russia’s nearly three -month -old invasion of neighboring Ukraine has been marked by wrong planning, poor intelligence, barbarism and wanton destruction.

But obscure in the daily struggle is the geographical facts that Russia has made progress on the ground.

The Russian Defense Ministry said on Tuesday that its forces in eastern Ukraine had advanced as far as the border between Donetsk and Luhansk, the two Russian -speaking provinces where Moscow -backed separatists are fighting in army of Ukraine while eight years.

The ministry’s claim, if confirmed, reinforces the prospect that Russia will soon get the total control of the region, known as the Donbas, compared with a third before the invasion on February 24.

That is far from the president’s seemingly lofty ambition. Vladimir Putin of Russia when it launched the invasion:

quick and easy to seize vast swathes of Ukraineincluding the capital, kyiv, to overthrow a hostile government and replace it with unwavering loyalty that would ensure Ukraine’s submission.

However, the seizure of Donbas, combined with the early success of the Russian invasion in seizing parts of southern Ukraine adjacent to the Crimean peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, gives the Kremlin a tremendous influence in any future negotiations to end the rivalry.

And the Russians enjoy the added advantage of naval domain in the Black Sea, the only sea route for Ukrainian trade, where they crippled an embargo that could eventually take away Ukraine’s economy and already contribute to a lack of grain in the world.

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Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington on Tuesday, Avril Haines, director of national intelligence, warned about a “protracted rivalry” with Ukraine as Russia seeks broad -based territorial victories across the region. of the Donbas, including the creation of a land bridge across Ukraine on the Black Sea coast.

But Haines warned that it would be difficult for Putin to make those victories without mobilization or recruitment on a large scale, as if he were reluctant to order now.

Because Putin’s territorial ambitions conflict with his military’s limited capabilities, Haines said the war could enter a “more unpredictable and potentially scalable trajectory” in the coming months, increasing the likelihood that he will issue Putin. direct threat use nuclear weapons.

Over the past few weeks, Ukrainian and Russian troops have been engaged in grueling attrition, often fighting fiercely in small areas, as a village fell into the hands of the Russians one day, but only recovered by the Ukrainians after How many days.

Ukrainians are increasingly relying on a infusion of western humanitarian and military aid, in the majority of the United States, where the House voted Tuesday night to approve the nearly $ 40 billion emergency package.

“The Russians didn’t win and the Ukrainians didn’t win, and here we’re pretty stuck,” Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, director of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, who testified with Haines.

However, Russia has almost achieved one of its main goals: seizure a land bridge connects the territory of Russia with the Crimean peninsula.

When Putin ordered the invasion, some of his army’s most skilled fighters poured in from Crimea and southern Russia, quickly occupying a portion of Ukrainian territory along the Sea of ​​Azov.

The last bastion of Ukrainian resistance in this area, at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupolwas reduced to several hundred starving soldiers who were now mostly confined in bunkers.

But the efforts of Russian forces to expand and strengthen the ground bridge have been complicated by Ukrainian forces deployed on an east-west front that is rippling across the vast wheat fields and sometimes includes towns and cities.

Although Russia’s artillery and rockets have caused chaos in residential areas, flattened homes and intimidated locals, the Russian military has not exerted sufficient force to significantly move the line or threaten the main Zaporizhzhia’s industrial center, the largest city near the front line.

Colonel Oleg Goncharuk, commander of the 128th Separate Mountain Assault Brigade, said last month:

“They will try to hinder the advance of our forces and they will try to stabilize their positions”, with the forces organized along the southeastern front.

“But we don’t know their commands or what their ambitions are.”

It was in the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk where the fighting took place more fierce.

At the main hospital in Kramatorsk, a city in Donetsk, ambulances arrive day and night, carrying wounded soldiers from the front, describing how they could not move in the almost constant shelling.

About 80% of patients were injured by explosives such as mines and artillery shells, Capt. Eduard Antonovskyy, deputy commander of the hospital’s medical unit. As a result, he said, very few patients have serious injuries.

Either you’re far from an explosion to survive or not, he says.

“We have moderate injuries or deaths,” Antonovskyy said.

Russian forces now control the area 80% of the Donbasaccording to Ukrainian officials, and focused their efforts on a part of Ukraine’s controlled territory where Kramatorsk is in the center.

Throughout the city, the roars of distant battle could be heard all the time, and thick smoke hung like mist in the morning.

Almost daily, Russian forces launch rockets and air strikes on the city itself, but the most intense violence is reserved for areas under Russian artillery range.

Approximately 62 miles northeast of Kramatorsk is Severodonetsk, where Russian artillery, stationed about 8 kilometers outside the city, rarely returns home, making it difficult for the estimated 15,000 remaining residents to venture into surface.

Oleg Grigorov, the police chief in the Luhansk region, compared the violence to the Battle of Stalingrad during World War II, when Soviet forces turned against the Nazis, but only after suffering huge losses.

“It never ends. It never ends,” Grigorov said.

“The whole neighborhood was destroyed. Some days, weeks, they were bombing. Is that so extermination just our infrastructure and the civilian population. ”

Grigorov said about 200 of his officers remained in the city, left without electricity and water. Their main task was to deliver food to those who took refuge in their cellars and bury the dead.

Russia’s blockade of Ukraine in the Black Sea has not diminished the Kremlin’s desire to seize control of Odessa, Ukraine’s most important port, which has been the target of several airstrikes.

Eventually, Russian forces fired seven missiles, which hit a shopping mall and a warehouse of consumer goods, killing at least one person and wounding several others, Ukrainian officials said.

The attack came just hours after the President of the European Council, Charles Michaelvisited Odessa, where he was forced to take refuge in a bomb shelter because of another attack.

Michel, who met with the Prime Minister Shmyhal’s denial from Ukraine, criticized Russia for choking on Ukrainian grain exports that feed people around the world.

“Saw noose full of grain, wheat and corn willing to export, ”Michel said in a statement.

“This food requirement has been stranded because of the Russian war and the blockage of Black Sea ports, with dramatic consequences for weak countries.”

The President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky he urged the international community to force Russia to lift the blockade.

“For the first time in decades nothing routine movements of the merchant fleet, there is no regular port in Odessa, ”he said in an evening speech.

“This probably hasn’t happened in Odessa since World War II.”

Ukraine’s economy is expected to contract 30% this year, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development said on Tuesday, worsening its forecast from two months ago, when it predicted a 20% recession. .

The war “put Ukraine’s economy under enormous strain, with severe destruction to infrastructure and production capacities,” the bank said in an economic update.

He estimated that in between 30% and 50% of Ukrainian businesses have closed, 10% of the population has fled the country and another 15% are internally displaced.

The bank also expects Russia’s economy to contract by 10% this year and stagnate next year, with a bleak outlook unless a peace agreement leads to a relaxation of sanctions on the West.

Reported by Michael Schwirtz from Pokrovsk, Ukraine, Marc Santora from Krakow, Poland, and Michael Levenson from New York. The reporting was contributed by Julian E. Barnes and Emily Cochrane in Washington, and Eshe Nelson and Cora Engelbrecht in London.

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