The Russian Federation’s (RF) backup plan for its war in Ukraine, a massive offensive aimed at capturing Luhansk and Donetsk regions, is making little progress and showing signs of bogging down against tough Ukrainian opposition, multiple 29 April official and news reports said.
A morning situation report from Ukraine’s Army General Staff (AGS) said RF units across the 500+ kilometer Donbas sector front tried to advance only at a few, isolated sites in local attacks in the past 24 hours. At practically all other locations, the statement said, RF troops had halted.
News reports and social media posts by Ukraine Armed Forces units in the sector generally confirmed the AGS claim of scattered and unsuccessful RF attacks at locations long-held by deeply dug-in Ukraine Armed Forces (UAF) defenders, and most RF units holding static positions and limiting their activity to artillery exchanges with the UAF.
Serhiy Haidai, head of the Luhansk regional defense command, in a statement, said RF units launched a limited attempt to break into the town Rubizhne, to the north-west of the key RF objective Severodonetsk, but were repelled with losses.
Earlier in the week, Haidai told reporters RF units were launching three or four full-dress ground attacks against Rubizhne. On Thursday, he said, RF commanders launched a single, failed ground attack, withdrew their troops, and aside from intermittent shelling took no other action for the rest of the day.
Tough-fighting UAF units in the Donbas’ east-most sector, near the towns Avdiievka and Popasna, have for the most part held the same positions since the start of the war. RF units shelled both those places but made no attempt to advance on them, Haidai said.
Further north, a resident of the town Lyman told the KP battles was taking place north of the Severny Donets river between RF forces trying to advance south towards the town of Kramatorsk, and UAF units blocking their advance. The terrain in the area is constricted and heavily wooded, and UAF forces were concentrating their defenses in and around villages near roads and bridges RF units must use, the resident said.
Ukrainian news agencies on the evening of 28 April reported the commander of the entire RF army, General Valery Gerasimov, had traveled from Moscow to Izium, in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, to oversee the RF offensive towards Kramatorsk and Severodoentsk.
The reports linked Gerasimov’s arrival with a Kremlin desire to launch and complete a devastating offensive in the Donbas region, in order to force Ukraine’s surrender by 9 May, a major military holiday in Russia.
According to RF official statements, Gerasimov and his staff authored the RF’s 24 Feb. invasion plan for Ukraine, which intended Kyiv’s capture and Ukrainian regime change in less than a week, using massive armored columns and airborne infantry assaults. The scheme failed and in late March RF high command announced “all objectives were completed” in the Kyiv sector and redeployed most of its forces for a new offensive in the Donbas region. RF state media currently is reporting the capture of Donbas was the Kremlin’s plan all along.
A 29 April British Defense Ministry situation estimate of the current situation in Donbas said, in part “Fighting has been particularly heavy around Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, with an attempted advance south from Izium towards Slovyansk…(but due to strong Ukrainian resistance) Russian territorial gains have been limited and achieved at significant cost.”
A Pentagon spokesman late 28 Apr. Kyiv time said Russian forces are making “slow and uneven” and “incremental” progress in the Donbas region because of Ukrainian resistance and ongoing logistics problems. RF advances of several kilometers in a single day are unlikely in the coming days, he said, because of strong UAF defenses and an RF command decision not to push troops beyond their supply lines.
