“It’s a very attritional fight,” said Justin Bronk, senior researcher for Airpower and Technology at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), describing the tone of the war after three months of fighting in the Donbass. “It’s a fight between two armies, both of which have suffered massive losses and are very close to exhaustion.” Putin’s next move is expected to be a drive on Donetsk, which if captured would fulfill the Kremlin’s primary goal: to overwhelm the entire Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, which has been home to Russian-backed separatist factions since 2014. But when and how this will happen is unclear. As Russia continues heavy airstrikes on several fronts in Ukraine, the US-based think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said on Sunday that Russian ground troops are in the midst of an operational pause for “rest, reconstitution and reconstitution. “ That could give Ukraine’s military time to prepare to defend the parts of Donetsk it still holds. mainly the industrial zone extending south from the city of Sloviansk. And the threat of Ukrainian counterattacks elsewhere in the country, including the key southern city of Kherson, remains. The next phase of full-scale combat, when it breaks out, may not be the last. But it could determine the future of Ukraine’s heartland — and analysts say it will go a long way toward determining the outcome of the war.

Lessons from Luhansk

The last three months of grueling, annihilating warfare in the Donbass have hardly resembled the opening act of Russia’s invasion, which saw scattered weapons incursions from the north, east and west and culminated in a decisive failure to capture Kiev and other key Ukrainian cities. Instead, the Kremlin’s refocused effort has tightened the boundaries of the war, zeroing out a key path into Luhansk and into Donetsk through which most of Russia’s resources have been directed. “The second phase of this war has seen Russia go back to basics,” Max Bergman, director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told CNN. This led to slow but steady progress for Russia, which won several weekly battles for strategic cities and exposed limitations in Ukraine’s arsenal. “They’ve used their mass, their artillery and (they’ve) pounded the Ukrainian forces while operating on a slow grind,” Bergman said. Its advantages in weapons and firepower are beginning to show. “All of (Russia’s) electronic warfare, air defense and armored formations can be concentrated in very small areas,” allowing them to “create local superiority” over Ukraine’s more stretched, defensive positions, Bronk said. “The first round was a knockout for Ukraine. In the second round, the Russians won on points,” Bergman said in his assessment of the opening phases of the war. However, three months of war has taken its toll on both armies, and the capture of Luhansk brings two exhausted soldiers to a turning point. “Russian forces will likely continue to be limited to small-scale offensive actions as they rebuild forces and set the stage for a more significant offensive in the coming weeks or months,” ISW said Thursday. Fighting continued near the Donetsk-Luhansk border. Ukraine’s military on Friday listed more than 40 towns and villages in the Donbass under attack in the past 24 hours, acknowledging the “partial success” of a Russian attempt to advance on a front near the city of Bakhmut. However, the ISW assessed that an operational pause for Russian ground troops is underway and the pace of Russian territorial gains has slowed over the past week following the capture of Luhansk. The benefits of some form of calm for both armies are obvious. Russia’s depleted forces are in need of a makeover, while Ukraine’s military is racing to receive, deliver and familiarize itself with Western equipment. “The Russian troops that fought through Severodonetsk and Lysychansk very likely need a significant period to rest and resettle before resuming large-scale offensive operations,” according to ISW. “It looks like we’re at a standstill, but it’s a very unstable balance, and we don’t know which way it’s going to break,” Bergman said. “Behind the scenes, there will be a frantic effort on both sides to prepare for future attacks.” Whichever side uses this period more effectively could gain the upper hand when all-out fighting resumes.

The next flashpoints of the war

Russia’s expected next move will be to continue its path through Luhansk, moving into Ukrainian-controlled areas of Donetsk and attempting to destroy and encircle Ukrainian troops in that region as well. Doing so would hand over the symbolically important region of Donbass to Moscow — and complete the main goal set by Putin when he launched his invasion in February, when he falsely claimed that these regions are spiritually and culturally Russian and that Russian speakers are being persecuted there . But if the timing and tactics used in Luhansk are repeated in its neighboring region, another bitter and bloody battle will be needed. “There are two names that will unfortunately become very familiar” as the key battles in the next phase of fighting — the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, in northern Donetsk. “I suspect it will be the next Severodonestk and Mariupol,” said Samir Puri, a senior fellow in urban security and hybrid warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), who worked as a ceasefire monitor in the Donbass between 2014 and 2015. These cities have been preparing to become flashpoints in the war for months. they now sit surrounded to the east and south by Russian-controlled territory, and capturing them would be a major breakthrough for the Kremlin. “Probably, they will [attack Sloviansk]. Probably, that’s why the upcoming strikes have become more frequent,” the head of the city’s military-civil administration, Vadim Lyach, said on Wednesday, adding that Ukrainian forces are currently holding Moscow’s troops on the Shiversky Donets River. “I think that once the enemy is able to carry out offensive operations, they will start destroying the infrastructure and the city itself,” Liach said. The scene of the fighting in the area is likely to resemble Russia’s pursuit of cities such as Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, the fall of which marked the end of Ukraine’s defense of Luhansk. Ukraine’s defense is again stubbornly expected. “They want to make this as hard and as long as possible for the Russians,” Bergman said. “That’s how they carried on this war; they fought the Russians for every inch of ground, and when it’s a tactical mistake to keep fighting, they retreat, but not abruptly.” “You fall back, but as you fall back, you fight.” But as with Luhansk, Russia will hope to seize the front foot and crush the Ukrainian resistance, which will struggle to launch effective attacks. “(Ukraine) will have the ability to slowly bleed the Russians through Donetsk,” but may lack the “availability of infantry and armored formations that are equipped and fresh enough to go forward,” Puri said. “They have to go through a military transformation to get to that offensive capability.” Meanwhile, there will be flare-ups in other areas that could disrupt Russia’s main goals in Donbass. In recent weeks Ukraine has retaken Snake Island and had some success with counter-attacks near Kherson in southern Ukraine, which are now increasing and putting Russia on the defensive. On Monday night, the Ukrainian military struck what it said was a Russian ammunition depot in the town of Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region, in one of the biggest attacks on Russian-held territory since the start of the war. A Russian official said the Ukraine strike was carried out with a HIMARS long-range artillery system supplied by the United States, but claimed the strike hit a fertilizer warehouse and homes. Ukraine has begun targeting Russian command posts and ammunition dumps far behind the front lines in both Kherson and Donbas, using recent Western weapons that have a much longer range than previous artillery systems. Serhii Khlan, adviser to the head of Kherson’s civilian military command, said on Tuesday: “We have already launched attacks on almost the entire front line” — and the Russians were now strengthening their checkpoints “because the rebel movement is intensifying in Kherson He added that Russia was “preparing for street fighting” in the city. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Ria-Melitopol news agency reported last week that large amounts of Russian military equipment have been seen moving through Melitopol, including convoys of tanks and armored vehicles, towards Kherson and Zaporizhia. Last week, Russian-appointed authorities in the Kherson region arrested the city’s elected Ukrainian mayor, Ihor Kolykhaiev, hours before announcing plans for a referendum on joining Russia. “The focus for the Russians is still on this small area (in the Donbas), while for the Ukrainians it seems to be pushing forward and making a breakthrough in Kherson,” Bronk said. Doing so “would really create a very serious problem for Russia.” Kherson was captured and occupied by Russia in the first days of the invasion. If the Ukrainians managed to get it back, it would disrupt Russian supply lines, cut off its land bridge to Crimea and represent a major morale boost.

Grabbing the firepower

Russia’s war in Ukraine is pushing toward the six-month mark, and the course of its next phase will depend largely on the firepower and weapons each side can use. The head of the military command of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Hayday, said this week that Ukraine was causing significant losses to Russia…