Putin’s Ukraine gamble pivots to a very different battlefield

A man walks past a storage place for burned armed vehicles and cars, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, April 11. (Image: AP)

The battles in the north that Ukraine won over the past seven weeks raged in towns and densely populated suburbs around the capital, Kyiv, but the war is about to take a hard turn to the southeast and into a vast expanse of wide-open flatland, fundamentally changing the nature of the combat, the weapons at play and the strategies that might bring victory.

Military analysts, Ukrainian commanders, soldiers and even President Vladimir Putin of Russia acknowledge that a wider war that began with a failed attempt to capture the capital will now be waged in the eastern Donbas region.

With few natural barriers, the armies can try to flank and surround each other, firing fierce barrages of artillery from a distance to soften enemy positions.

Donbas is an area the size of New Hampshire, with a front line stretching hundreds of miles; Russia borders it in an arc to the north and east, and most residents speak Russian.

Before Russia invaded in February, Ukraine had been fighting Russia-backed separatists there since 2014, when Moscow fomented an uprising and sent in forces to support it. That war had settled into a stalemate.

Now, what may be the decisive phase of Putin’s latest war is returning to that same region.

The plains would seem to favor Russia’s raw advantage in weaponry. But as a defending force, Ukraine has an advantage in striking from entrenched positions at Russian troops as they advance over open ground and into artillery range.

In this new phase, the Ukrainians will need a new arsenal of weapons — particularly long-range artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems. They will also require more armored vehicles to protect their forces and to tow artillery pieces to the front lines.

Western countries are responding to this need. On Wednesday, President Joe Biden announced an $800 million military aid package to Ukraine that for the first time included more powerful weaponry.

The weapons from the West have caught Russia’s attention. Moscow sent a formal diplomatic note of protest to warn the U.S. of “unpredictable consequences” of shipping such arms, U.S. officials said Friday.

Perhaps the biggest difference from the northern phase of the war, fought among towns, woods and hills, will be the terrain. Military analysts are forecasting an all-out, bloody battle on the steppe.

“There’s nowhere to hide,” said Maksim Finogin, a veteran of Ukraine’s conflict in Donbas.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Andrew E. Kramer, Eric Schmitt, Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Michael Schwirtz

c.2022 The New York Times Company