It was more about when, more than if, the remaining Ukrainian units in the eastern city of Severodonetsk would be withdrawn.
Over the past few weeks, Russian forces have simply destroyed all the defensive positions the Ukrainians have taken, pushing them to a few square islands in and around the city’s chemical plant Nitrogen.
Ukrainian forces in Severodonetsk held out much longer than many observers predicted, forcing the Russians and their allies to devote resources to the city that could have been used to pressure the offensive elsewhere.
But the Ukrainian army has clearly made the decision that there was nothing more to defend, and that hundreds of civilian refugees at the plant were in more danger every day that passed.
According to the Institute for War, an American think tank that is closely following the campaign, “The loss of Severodonetsk is a loss for Ukraine in the sense that any land captured by Russian forces is a loss, but the battle of Severodonetsk will not be a loss. a decisive Russian victory “.
Now the battle moves across the Siverskiy Donets River to Lysychansk, the last city of Luhansk controlled by Ukrainian forces. And there are already indications that the Russians will use the same ruthless bombing tactics in the area to shoot down Ukrainian forces, deploying fighter jets, multiple rocket launch systems and even short-range ballistic missiles like the Tochka-U.
Serhiy Hayday, head of the Luhansk regional military administration, said on Friday: “There is a lot of military equipment. According to our information, at least six Tochka-Us left in the direction of Lysychansk from Starobilsk. One is enough power – six is a total disaster “.
The loss of Severodonetsk, and potentially Lysychansk in the coming days, may have been valued in Ukrainian calculations, given the overwhelming firepower of Russian forces and the apparent improvement in Russian logistics since the abandonment of the campaign against Kyiv. But every defended town and city offers an opportunity to degrade the enemy.
There are still large areas of the neighboring Donetsk region under Ukrainian control. The regional military administration says that about 45% of Donetsk is in the hands of Ukrainian forces, including the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
There are not many obvious defensive positions west of Lysychansk, in an open field area. Ukrainian commanders will have to decide whether the whole pocket, bravely defended for weeks, is best left for a more consolidated defense of Slovakia, Kramatorsk and Kostiantynivka, the Donetsk industrial belt.
The question is whether the losses inflicted on Russian forces in recent weeks will harm their ability and desire to swallow more territory, especially when Ukraine deploys more accurate Western weapons such as HIMARS rocket systems.
It is also unclear whether the punishment suffered by Ukrainian units in the Donbas region over the past two months has left them with sufficient resources to launch counterattacks against Russian flanks (as they have attempted against Russian forces advancing from the Kharkiv region to the north). )
The Kremlin has not deviated from its ultimate goal of taking all of Donetsk and Luhansk. Now he has almost all of the latter. Completing the “special military operation” will still take weeks, and most likely months, if necessary. It has become a classic war of attrition.