It was, literally, a war forewarned.
The anticipated new major offensive by Russia on the Donbàs region, in eastern Ukraine , began Monday with attacks along a front that stretches for about 480 kilometers from the southern tip to the northern tip, towards the city of Kharkiv.
This Tuesday, there was an intensification of artillery fire. Moscow says that he has managed to hit more than 1,000 objectives.
This attack is the result of a new strategy announced by the government of Vladimir Putin at the end of March, a month after the start of the invasion of Ukraine.
Then, Moscow declared the end of the first phase of its offensive and announced that it would concentrate its efforts on the “complete liberation” of the Donbas region, giving to understand that he was putting an end to his efforts to conquer kyiv.
After a few weeks of withdrawal and reorganization of the Russian forces, this Monday the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, announced that Moscow had already started the new phase.
“We can now confirm that the Russian troops have started the battle for Donbas, which they have been preparing for a long time. A large part of the Russian army is now dedicated to this offensive“, the president said in a televised message.
By way of events, the Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed the start of this new offensive when it reported on Monday that it had attacked hundreds of military targets in the south and east of Ukraine, near cities such as Zaporizhia, Kramatorsk, Krivoy Rog, Odessa and Mykolaiv.
This Tuesday, the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, officially referred to the beginning of this new stage of the war.
“The operation in eastern Ukraine is aimed, as announced from the beginning, at completely release the Donetsk and Luhansk republics. And this operation will continue”, said Lavrov.
“Another stage of this operation begins, and I am sure that it will be a very important moment of this entire special operation”, he added.
BBC Mundo tells you what is known about this offensive.
How big is the Russian offensive?
For weeks, Moscow has been concentrating troops in the Donbas region, after giving up its offensive in western Ukraine.
US officials claim that Russia has 120 battalions in eastern Ukraine, adding 11 in the last days. These groups are normally composed of between 120 Y 900 soldiers plus military equipment.
According to Ukrainian estimates, in total there are more than 76,000 Russian troops in the Donbás.
Russian security policy expert Aglaya Snetkov notes that there are believed to be others 22 battalions around the devastated port city of Mariupol in southern Ukraine.
If that key city falls, it would allow those forces to move north and join the fight in Donbas, which could be important but not necessarily decisive.
Can Moscow ever use nuclear weapons?
In a In an interview with Indian television, Lavrov was asked if Russia was considering the use of nuclear weapons.
“Only conventional weapons”, he replied.
Func Ukrainian ionaries have recently warned the West about Moscow’s possible use of tactical nuclear weapons.
At the start of the war, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered deterrent forces [que incluyen armas nucleares] put themselves on high alert, and some Russian government officials have hinted that the country would be willing to use them under certain circumstances.
A race against time
Analysis by Frank Gardner, BBC security correspondent
Some of Ukraine’s best forces are fighting in the east, but they are badly outnumbered.
Russia has up to 11 of the so-called tactical battalions in Ukraine. These have up to 1, effective each and are focusing on the east. They have a huge artillery and air attack capacity.
Ukraine has said that, to to have any chance of defense in this big assault, it needs “heavy equipment, weapons, Starstreak missiles, anti-tank missiles and air defense units”.
Moscow is well aware of this and has started attacking the supply routes where these resources come from: from Poland, Slovakia and other NATO countries.
Resupply the beleaguered Ukrainian armed forces in time for them to defend themselves of this assault is really a race against time.
This could end either way, and even if they beat Russia in the next battles, the danger would still not be eliminated. I’m afraid this war has more time left.
What has happened on the ground?
Jonathan Beale, BBC correspondent, reports that the Russian offensive has gained great intensity this Tuesday.
“These Russian artillery attacks have been quite incessant. Clearly, these operations are designed to weaken not only Ukraine’s defenses, but also to weaken the population there . Because, whatever Russia says, it is not only attacking military targets, it is also attacking civilians. We saw it at the Kramatorsk train station earlier this month,” he noted.
Reporting from Dnipro, Beale notes that Moscow forces use these attacks to test Ukrainian defenses in search of a weak point.
“Remember, the Ukrainians are entrenched around this area. They have been fighting pro-Russian separatists for the last eight years. They have dug trenches and have well-defended positions,” he explains.
In this first push, Russian forces have made at least one significant achievement by taking over with control of the town of Kreminna, a city of about 8, inhabitants in the Luhansk region.
Local officials have said that Ukrainian forces withdrew from the area to regroup after Moscow gained control of that town on Monday and where this Tuesday there were reports of street fighting.
Numerous rocket attacks have also been reported on the city of Kramatorsk.
The pro-Russian separatist groups suffered, for their part, a significant loss with the death of Mikhail Kishchik, commander of one of his battalions in eastern Ukraine.
Known as Misha, the Chechen , Kishchik died during the beginning of the assault of the Russian forces against the Ukrainian army.
The Prime Minister of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR, for its acronym in English) Sergei Kozlov wrote on social media: “Sad news from the front. An LNR patriot, Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Kishchik, has died”.
Kozlov added that Kishchik and his comrades were surrounded by Ukrainian forces near Kreminna and claimed that he had “fought until the end”.
Why does the Donbas region matter?
Donbas is a former coal and steel-producing region in Ukraine. This area also includes the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, which stretch from the outskirts of Mariupol in the south to the northern border.
“The key is that they have been identified by the Kremlin as the Russophone parts of Ukraine that are more Russian than Ukrainian,” explains Sam Cranny-Evans of the Royal Untited Services Institute .
But different experts indicate that this does not imply that the regions are pro-Russian.
Putin has repeatedly made the baseless accusation that Ukraine has carried out genocide in the east.
When the war began, almost two-thirds of the eastern regions were in the hands of Ukraine. The rest was run by Russian proxies, who created small states backed by Moscow during a war that began eight years ago.
Just before the start of the invasion, Putin recognized the two eastern regions as independent of Ukraine.
If Russia conquered both regions, the next step would be to annex them as Putin already did with the Crimean peninsula in 700 after a controversial referendum.
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