The situation on Ukraine’s eastern front has worsened, Kyiv warns

The situation on Ukraine’s eastern front has worsened, the country’s top commander has warned as Putin reportedly gears up for a large-scale spring or summer assault. Ukraine’s military chief, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Ukraine’s battlefield situation in the industrial east had ‘significantly worsened in recent days’ in an update on Telegram. He said warming weather has allowed Russian forces to launch a fresh push along several stretches of the 620-mile-long front line and added that Russian troops will likely use the drier conditions to launch tank attacks.

Ukrainian and Western officials said they believe that Putin is preparing a large-scale spring or summer assault in the hopes of taking control of more Ukrainian territory in Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporzhzhia, the Financial Times reports. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has issued a similar warning in his evening address on Sunday, adding that ‘these days – and especially on the Donetsk front – it’s getting harder.’ This comes as US aid for the war-torn country remains stalled in the US Congress, with analysts warning that delays would see Kyiv struggle to fight off Russian offensives.

Gen Syrskyi said on Sunday that Russian forces aimed to capture the town of Chasiv Yar by May 9, setting the stage for an important battle for control of high ground in the east where Russia is focusing its assaults. The fall of the town west of the shattered city of Bakhmut by the date Moscow marks the Soviet victory in World War Two would indicate growing Russian battlefield momentum as Kyiv faces a slowdown in Western military aid. The Ukrainian military chief, who warned this weekend that the situation in the east had deteriorated, said Russia was focusing its efforts west of occupied Bakhmut to try to capture Chasiv Yar before moving towards the city of Kramatorsk.

Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region lies three to six miles from Bakhmut, the devastated city captured by Russian forces in May last year after months of bloody fighting. Kyiv’s brigades were holding back the assaults near Chasiv Yar for now and had been reinforced with ammunition, drones and electronic warfare devices, he said in a statement on the Telegram messenger. ‘The threat remains relevant, taking into account the fact that the higher Russian military leadership has set its troops the task of capturing Chasiv Yar by May 9,’ he said, without elaborating. Footage on social media allegedly shows ‘glide bombs’ and heavy artillery hitting Ukrainian positions in Chasiv Yar.

Gen Syrskyi also said that Russian forces had been ‘actively attacking’ Ukrainian positions near the cities of Lyman, Bakhmut and Pokrovsk. The war has escalated in recent weeks with Russia staging three massive air strikes on Ukrainian power plants and substations, raising fears over the resilience of an energy system that was hobbled in the war’s first winter. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told Ukrainians in his nightly address on Sunday: ‘The situation at the front during such a hot war is always difficult. But these days – and especially on the Donetsk front – it’s getting harder.’ The Ukrainian leader has warned the Kremlin may be preparing to launch a big offensive in late spring or summer.

It is unclear where that attack would come, but Russia has focused its attacking efforts in the Donetsk region. Ukraine has this year tried to find a pressure point to strike back against the Kremlin, using domestically-produced long-range drones to bomb oil facilities deep inside Russia. Ukraine now faces manpower challenges and artillery shell shortages. Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a think-tank in Philadelphia, said on X that Chasiv Yar would likely prove an important battle. ‘Chasiv Yar is located on defensible high ground. If Russia takes the [town], they could potentially increase the rate of advance deeper into Donetsk [region] as part of an expected summer offensive,’ he said.

‘Russian forces will still have to cross the canal to take the [town], but they have now reached the canal southeast of the [town]. Immediate increased deliveries of ammunition could prove critical.’ More civilians have died across Ukraine as the US aid package remains stalled in Congress. One man was killed on Sunday after a Russian drone hit the truck he was driving in the Sumy region, the local prosecutor’s office said. Elsewhere, a 67-year-old woman was killed after shelling hit an apartment block in the Donetsk region, said Governor Vadym Filashkin. Officials in the Kharkiv region also said they had retrieved the bodies of a 61-year-old woman and a 68-year-old man killed by a Russian strike the previous day.

Ten Russian Shahed-type drones were shot down over the Kharkiv region overnight, the Ukrainian Air Force said on Sunday. Meanwhile, shelling in the Russian-occupied Kherson region killed two civilians on Sunday, said Moscow-installed leader Vladimir Saldo. Ukrainian drones were also reported in Russia’s Krasnodar and Belgorod regions and over the Black Sea, the Russian defense ministry said. The news came as the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank, warned that delays in Western military assistance would increasingly hamper Ukraine’s ability to push back Russian advances. With the war in Ukraine entering its third year and a vital US aid package for Kyiv stuck in Congress, Russia has used its edge in firepower and personnel to step up attacks across eastern Ukraine.

It has increasingly used satellite-guided gliding bombs – dropped from planes from a safe distance – to pummel Ukrainian forces beset by a shortage of troops and ammunition. In its report, the ISW said that Russian forces were prioritizing grinding, tactical gains with operational-level efforts focusing on the cities of Lyman, Chasiv Yar, and Pokrovsk. ‘The Russian military command likely assesses that Ukrainian forces will be unable to defend against current and future Russian offensive operations due to delays in or the permanent end of US military assistance,’ the think tank said. This has been underlined by Yuriy Fedorenko, commander of the ‘Achilles’ drone battalion, who told the Financial Times that Ukrainian troops are outgunned but had no choice but to fight.

Gen Syrskyi said he had ordered for more air defense and electronic warfare systems to be delivered to ‘the most problematic areas of the defense’ in Chasiv Yar, as experts predict the city could become an ‘important battleground’, according to the Financial Times. But the limited air defenses are not Ukraine’s only problem in the area, as Ukraine also needs enough, properly-trained troops to fight. Gen Syrskyi said on Telegram: ‘The second serious problem is to improve the quality of training military personnel, primarily infantry units, so that they can make maximum use of all the capabilities of military equipment and western weapons.’

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