Russia launched its second-biggest
onslaught on Ukraine. The offensive in the eastern Donbas is currently
destroying public life. Now the question is whether it will be even more
successful than phase one and whether Ukraine will have enough troops and
weapons to defend the offensive.

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Sergey Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister,
said on Tuesday that the operation in the Donbas is “a very important
moment of this entire special operation.”

It is clear from his statement that the
Russian goal is to secure all of Ukraine’s eastern regions of Donetsk and
Luhansk — parts of which Russian-backed separatists have controlled since
2014. A second aim is to crush the remaining resistance in the port city of
Mariupol to consolidate a land bridge linking the Russian region of Rostov with
Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine eight years ago.

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The Russian military has redeployed
its forces in the north and east of Kyiv and in some cases reconstituted after
suffering heavy losses.

Now they are heading to Ukraine from the
northeast. US officials estimate that Russia has mobilised some 78 battalion
tactical groups in eastern Ukraine — probably about 75,000 troops and more are
assembling.

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So far Russia’s strategy is to deploy artillery, rocket systems and missiles followed by armour
advancement. Cities in Luhansk such as Severodonetsk, Popasna and Rubizhne have
been reduced to rubble, with power, gas and water supplies destroyed.

But Russian soldiers’ movement on the
ground has been rather slow. That is because of the heavy losses that it suffered in February and March.

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The Institute for the Study of War (ISW)
says that “Russian forces did not take the operational pause that was
likely necessary to reconstitute and properly integrate damaged units withdrawn
from northeastern Ukraine into operations in eastern Ukraine.”

US officials have assessed that Russia
has lost up to 25% of the combat firepower it had before the invasion.

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Ukraine, despite aid from the European
Union countries and the US, is still outnumbered and outgunned, they will need
agility, determination and reinforcements to nullify Vladimir Putin’s attack on
Ukraine in the second phase.