Russia has reopened a main front in its war with Ukraine, a move that will put pressure on Kyiv’s forces, who are already ill-equipped and armed, awaiting Western weapons.
The Russian military unleashed a ferocious artillery barrage and airstrikes early Friday as rank-and-file troops carried out the largest incursion into northeastern Ukraine, which has a long border with Russia, in two years.
Heavy fighting erupted over the weekend at locations along a 45-mile strip of the border in the Kharkiv region.
Moscow claimed to have taken five villages, while Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, said the fighting had spread around seven villages.
In a sign of the severity of the challenge, Ukraine is deploying reserve forces to repel the Russian attack and a senior commander has been appointed to lead this effort.
The timing of the attack may not be worse for Kyiv; that’s probably why Russia must act.
Russian troops are already slowly gaining ground in the eastern Donbass region, one of the main areas of the war, and have last reached the hilltop of the city of Chasiv Yar.
If this Ukrainian stronghold were to fall, the invading troops would have the merit of more easily attacking the rest of the Donbass, thus endangering key cities such as Kramatorsk.
By intensifying its attacks in the direction of Kharkiv, Russia could force Ukrainian commanders to divert their resources from the east to the northeast, weakening their defensive line in the already Donbas.
To make the situation even more critical, delays in delivering more weapons and ammunition through Western allies to the front lines have exposed Ukrainian forces.
It took six months for the U. S. — through Kyiv’s largest military donor — to approve a $61 billion aid package.
Even though it was all approved by Congress in April and the materials are starting to arrive.
But in this era of uncertainty, Ukraine’s British and European partners were unable to close the U. S. deficit because their respective militaries did not have sufficient reserves, while efforts to increase production of new munitions took too long.
This despite the urgency of a crisis that threatens the security of all of Europe, not just Ukraine.
Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, announced last month that he was putting the British defense industry on a war footing, more than two years after Russia introduced its full-scale invasion.
In addition, Lord Cameron, the foreign secretary, told Sky News more than a week ago that Britain would appoint an envoy to oversee the acceleration and expansion of weapons production, but that appointment has yet to be made.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, put his entire economy on a war footing from day one. Russian production lines are delivering new materials in defiance of Western sanctions, while states such as Iran and North Korea have sold massive amounts of ammunition to Moscow. .
The Russian military has also benefited from Soviet-era stockpiles of weapons, which may not be particularly reliable or accurate, but are used more for war than anything at all.
The imbalance, coupled with Russia’s ability to send far more men into the fight than Ukraine, once back provides the invading forces with a merit they are exploiting.
Even if Putin had declared his intention, Kharkiv remains a transparent target.
The regional capital will be a key target of the president’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
His forces seized large swathes of the Kharkiv region, but never controlled the city.
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A Ukrainian counteroffensive in the late summer of 2022 pushed the Russians back, but – thanks to their shared border – they never went away.
Instead, Russia has begun launching intermittent artillery and drone attacks on nearby Ukrainian villages and towns, as well as longer-range missile strikes on the regional capital.
The assault escalated weeks before culminating in an attack on the floor on Friday.