Russian troops advance over the richest region of Ukraine and Putin wants to claim victory before May 9

While we are concerned about war crimes in Irpin and Bucha or how to expel Russia from the UN Human Rights Council, Putin's troops use the time to regroup and begin the attack on the Donbas. In a raid of tanks and heavy artillery, with much shorter supply lines, the concentration of troops coming from Belarus and several thousand Syrian mercenaries and conscripts “cannon fodder”, Russia will try to keep the energy-rich Ukrainian east and make a triumphant parade on Moscow's Red Square next May 9.

The Donbas region was considered “the heart” of the Soviet Union. There are propaganda posters from 1922 showing the importance for Moscow that plain around the Donets River. It was the most developed at the time. It had been the Eastern region that first entered the Industrial Revolution. In 1721, huge reserves of coal were discovered there. After three centuries of exploitation there are still some 60,000 tons left underground. And with coal came heavy industry. In 1869, the Welsh industrialist John Hughes built the first steel plant in the town of Yuzovka. Since then, metalworking factories, railways, tractors, trucks, weapons, household appliances, etc. have been installed. Half of this production is exported and 22% of this production was purchased by Russia until the invasion of 2014.

It also has an important reserve of shale gas (shale gas), which are part of the wider Dnieper-Donets basin, the two rivers that cross eastern Ukraine. With independence, in 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union, successive governments in Kyiv endeavored to cut off their dependence on Moscow. In 2012, an important agreement was signed with Royal Dutch Shell to develop the strategic Yuzivska deposit. The outbreak of war in the region in 2014 forced the Dutch-British to withdraw. But gas is there and can be the source from which to extract what Germany, Austria and the rest of Central Europe so badly need.

It is in these riches that the gaze of Vladimir Putin lies. Control of the Donbas and the ports of the Azov and Black Seas could give it economic power that Russia does not have today. A strategic position with the largest energy reserves in the region. It is there that he is concentrating his troops and cannons to launch an old-school offensive: a lot of infantry, cross-advancement of tanks, mass launching of missiles and mortars, as well as aviation bombardments from Russian territory (so as not to expose themselves to the danger of Ukrainian “kamikaze” rocket launchers) and the navy from the boats stationed on the Black Sea.

In recent hours, Russian forces continued to redeploy on the Izyum-Slovyansk axis, two key cities from where they can continue to move eastwards until joining that area with the separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk. From there they could also corner Kharkiv, the second Ukrainian city. In the south, they still failed to enter Mariupol despite having destroyed it by 80 per cent and causing so many atrocities in the suburbs that forced them to carry transportable crematoria to burn the bodies and erase the traces. Other units completed their withdrawal from the Sumy region and according to reports sent by satellites, these forces are regrouping in the nearby Russian city of Belgorod.

“It is very likely that the next major battles of this war will be seen in Izyum, which is going to be the platform to capture Slovyansk. But there they will need reinforcements coming from troops that left western Kyiv or coming from Russian territory, but it is likely that these units will not regain combat effectiveness for some time,” the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) explained in its latest report.

From Slovyansk, it is very likely that they will try to further isolate the Ukrainian troops that have so far prevented the advance from the East and go through two other important points, the industrial cities of Rubyzhne and Horlivka, in this way they would be able to consolidate the corridor that runs from the Black Sea to the enclaves. separatists. “They are going south, towards Kamyanka, because it is the road that leads to the city of Sloviansk,” Max Strelnyk, of the Izyum government, added in a talk with CNN. “We have radio interceptions of their conversations; their task is to capture the Donetsk region from the north.”

Local authorities in Eastern Ukraine warned residents yesterday that the deadline for evacuating the area was getting shorter. Luhansk Regional Governor Serhiy Haidai said in a video posted on his Facebook page: “The next few days may be the last chance to leave. The enemy is trying to cut off all possible avenues to get out. Don't delay: get out now! ”. Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar assured that the Russians “are accumulating more troops near the border. They are preparing for a new invasion throughout the Donbas.”

“We are expecting the worst,” the mayor of Sloviansk, Vadim Lyakh, overwhelmingly launched in a telephone interview on Thursday. He said the city was storing medical supplies and food in bomb shelters and hospitals. “We already saw what happened in the nearby cities of Mariupol and Izyum. We have to learn from them. Luckily, we had more time to prepare.” In the last week, some 1,500 people left the city a day. Special train and bus convoys were dispatched and left for the Polish border.

In 2014, Sloviansk was already one of the main hotbeds of the war and was briefly in the hands of pro-Russian separatists before Ukrainian forces pushed them back in July of that year. Its importance lies mainly in the fact that it is surrounded on three sides by cities controlled by Russia - Izium to the north, Luhansk to the east and Donetsk to the south. But the Kremlin troops have already failed in their attempts to seize several other cities. And the ISW warns: “If Russian forces are unable to seize Slovyansk, Russian frontal assaults on the Donbas are unlikely to independently break Ukrainian defenses, and the Russian campaign to capture the entire Luhansk and Donetsk provinces will likely fail.”

Putin has a plan. He wants to celebrate the capture of Donbas and end the war with a big parade on Red Square on May 9, when Victory Day over Nazi forces is celebrated in 1945. But in view of the very poor performance of his troops in Ukraine, it is quite unlikely that he will have a more or less viable result to declare himself the winner for that day. Everything indicates that he will have to wait a longer time and there is still a possibility that the great victory parade will take place in Kvyv presided over by Volodymyr Zelensky and accompanied by the heads of state from all over Europe and America.

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