The 47th day of war: the big battle over Donbas "slips"

UKRAINE - In Brief 11 Apr 2022 by Dmytro Boyarchuk

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We are living in anticipation of the decisive battle over Donbas. The Russians totally withdrew from the North and the North-East. Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy are returning to peaceful life, if this phrase is applicable in nowadays. At the same time Russians are accumulating forces in Donbas and in the South. A concentration of Ukrainian forces is also growing in those directions. There is a lot of talk about a big battle over Donbas. But in reality, we do not see anything really "big" except for the desperate repetitive attacks of Russians on well-prepared Ukrainian positions, with very modest progress near Izum (South-East from Kharkiv). Still, despite some advancement near Izum, military experts and journalists report that Russian forces already look exhausted, even in the directions with the highest concentrations of their forces. The Russians keep throwing fresh battalions onto Ukrainian positions but with no result except for heavy casualties. As of this writing the number of Russian soldiers killed in action is already approaching 20,000, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Ukrainian officials claim that Russia is having serious problems with its latent mobilization since word of mouth about heavy losses has already spread to the farthest corners of Russia despite powerful propaganda on TV. Most likely that is the main reason why Russians were unable to gather enough forces in Donbass to break the Ukrainian defense by now. As a result, Russian forces have to throw everything fresh they manage to collect immediately into the fight to make the offensive look like it's ongoing. And here we have a big question. We are already almost in mid April...