Russia’s Thrust in Eastern Ukraine Combines Firepower and New Caution

When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February, its strategy featured a rapid advance of tanks and helicopter assaults deep into the country — two strategies that ultimately failed and cost Moscow an untold number of casualties.

Now, with a narrower goal focused primarily on Ukraine’s east, the new military campaign that Russia said on Tuesday that it had begun will be much more methodical, according to Ukrainian and U.S. officials.

Instead of lightning attacks from the Russian front lines, Moscow’s forces — arrayed in a semicircle that stretches west to east from the city of Izium to Sieverodonetsk — have increased their artillery barrages and sent small detachments of troops to probe Ukrainian lines. Many of the Ukrainian troops that are in this region, known as the Donbas, are entrenched in earthworks that have been there for the better part of a decade. Read more

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