KYIV, Ukraine (news agencies) — An emboldened Russia has ramped up military offensives on two fronts in Ukraine, scattering Kyiv’s precious reserve troops and threatening to expand the fighting to a new Ukrainian region as each side seeks an advantage before the fighting season wanes in the autumn.
Moscow aims to maximize its territorial gains before seriously considering a full ceasefire, analysts and military commanders said. Ukraine wants to slow the Russian advance for as long as possible and extract heavy losses.
Kremlin forces are steadily gaining ground in the strategic eastern logistics hub of Pokrovsk, the capture of which would hand them a major battlefield victory and bring them closer to acquiring the entire Donetsk region. The fighting there has also brought combat to the border of the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region for the first time.
In an effort to prevent Moscow from bolstering those positions in the east, Ukrainian forces are trying to pin down some of Russia’s best and most battle-hardened troops hundreds of kilometers away, in the northeast Sumy region.
“The best-case scenario for Ukraine,” said Russian-British military historian Sergey Radchenko, “is that they’re able to stall or stop the Russian advance” in the Ukrainian industrial heartland known as Donbas, which includes the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Then Ukraine could “use that as the basis for a ceasefire agreement.”
“There’s a better chance for Russia to come to some kind of terms with Ukraine” in the fall when the Russians “see the extent of their offensive,” Radchenko added.
While the battles rage, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is waiting to learn whether the Trump administration will support tougher sanctions against Russia and back a European idea to establish a “reassurance force” to deter Moscow.
A setback came with the U.S. decision Tuesday to halt some weapons shipments to Ukraine out of concern over America’s own depleted stockpiles.
In the Sumy region, Ukrainian forces face a constant barrage of aerial glide bombs, drones and relentless assaults by small groups of Russian infantrymen. They endure the attacks to prevent Russian forces from being moved to other battlegrounds in the eastern Donetsk region.
Ukrainian forces intensified their own attacks in Sumy in April and even conducted a small offensive into Russia’s neighboring Kursk region to prevent up to 60,000 battle-hardened Russian forces from being moved to reinforce positions in the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, Ukraine’s top army commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, said last week.
If those troops had been moved, they could have increased the tempo of Russian attacks across the front line and stretched Ukrainian forces thin.
The strategy did not come without criticism. Commanders who were ordered to execute it complained that it resulted in unnecessary loss of life.
Russian forces have penetrated up to 7 kilometers (4 miles) into the northern Sumy region from different directions along the border.
Ukrainian forces are determined to keep them there to avoid freeing up Russian forces to fight in the east. So far they have succeeded, locking up to 10,000 Russian troops in the Glushkovsky district of the Kursk region alone, where Ukraine maintains a small presence after being mostly forced out by Russian and North Korean troops earlier in the year.
The war’s largest battle is being waged in Donetsk as Russia inches toward its stated goal of capturing all of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
