Ukraine, Russia Gear Up for War's Biggest Battles

[dalton99a]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-russia-send-reinforcements-for-pitched-battles-in-conflicts-next-phase-11649588496

Ukraine, Russia Gear Up for War’s Biggest Battles
Officials expect large-scale tank and artillery battles; it ‘will remind you of the Second World War,’ Ukraine’s foreign minister says
By Yaroslav Trofimov
Updated Apr. 10, 2022 12:07 pm ET

Russia’s main objective now is to seize the parts of the eastern Donbas region not yet controlled by Moscow. Unlike the first phase of the six-week-old conflict, that shift is forcing Ukraine into fighting conventional battles involving tanks, artillery and aircraft on flat, often barren terrain that allows Russia to leverage its superiority in military equipment.

Fresh Russian tank and artillery units, as well as forces withdrawn from areas around Kyiv, began arriving in recent days to staging grounds for the offensive north of the Ukrainian city of Izyum, according to footage shown on Russian military television. Ukraine, too, started moving toward Donbas combat units from areas of northern Ukraine that it recovered after Russian troops retreated.

Skirmishes along the contact line in Donbas and nearby regions continue daily, with Russian forces trying to push south of Izyum. The timing of a major campaign, Western and Ukrainian officials said, is up to Moscow, which may press the offensive imminently with available forces, or wait a few weeks to reconstitute units that suffered losses in northern Ukraine.

In an unusually frank admission, Aleksandr Sladkov, Russian state television’s military commentator, wrote in a social-media post that Mariupol is being leveled to present an example to the rest of Ukraine.

“Let them see in Kyiv and Lviv, Cherkasy and Poltava, Ternopil and Chernivtsi — if the city doesn’t surrender, it gets annihilated,” he wrote. “The cities of central and western Ukraine will also be destroyed if they decide to resist Russian troops.”


Satellite imagery showed a large military convoy moving south on Friday through Velykyi Burluk, a northeastern Ukrainian town near the Russian border. Photo: Maxar Technologies/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

[2naSalit]

1. Perhaps...

The Russian experiment needs to end.

This needs to stop. I suspect that the nuclear arms in the aggressor's arsenal may not be all it claims it is.