Russia has focused on grinding down Ukraine’s military in the eastern Donbas region in the hope of forcing Kyiv into surrendering part of the country’s territory to end the war. Moscow's hopes for a quick victory were dashed by stiff Ukrainian resistance.
U.S. and British officials also have noted that Moscow has increasingly focused on fighting the Ukrainian forces in the east while digging in around Kyiv and other big cities and pummeling them with rockets and artillery.
But the Russian attempts to swiftly capture the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, the country’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, and other big cities in the northeast have been thwarted by well-organized Ukrainian defenses and logistical challenges that stalled the Russian offensive. “Russia has shifted tactics ... to redistribute its forces and prepare for the next active stage of the war,” Sunhurovskyi said.
An analysis published Saturday by the Institute for the Study of War in Washington said the degree to which the Russians can push an accelerated move to cut off Donbas will depend in part on how soon their forces can gain full control of Mariupol and how badly damaged they emerge from that fight. It also noted that a halt in the Russian offensive on Kyiv could reflect “the incapacity of Russian forces rather than any shift in Russian objectives or efforts at this time.
On the Black Sea coast, the Russians quickly took the port of Kherson and advanced to the outskirts of the key shipbuilding center of Mykolaiv where their offensive stalled.
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