Insight
Russia mounts second phase of invasion as Zelenskyy says battle for Donbas has 'begun'
ITV News Correspondent Peter Smith reports as President Zelenskyy says the battle for Donbas has 'begun'.
Heavy artillery is now bombarding Ukraine’s entire eastern defence line.
For 300 miles across Donbas, a new wave of Russian firepower has been unleashed. Ukraine’s President says the second phase of Russia’s invasion has begun, but we can already see distinct differences from the original invasion on 24 February. Back then, Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale military assault on various fronts. It backfired spectacularly. The massive columns of Russian armour looked impressive but were rendered useless when stranded in mud, out of fuel, or humiliatingly towed away by Ukrainian tractors. As defence analysts say, amateurs talk tactics while professionals organise logistics. Russia appeared to have ignored the professional part of planning. Now, there is a change from this Russian attack that has learned lessons from those first failures.
They are moving in smaller, more mobile units, backed by more air support. The artillery bombardment is designed to soften up Ukraine’s defences, battering them round the clock and aiming to tire them out before Russian reinforcements eventually go in. ITV News also understands Putin has rolled out his old BM-21 heavily artillery to do the job. This weaponry had been mothballed in Russia because the military didn’t believe it would be needed again.
Now these BM-21s can tell us something about the preliminary stages of this renewed assault, and that Russia is not rushing in naively this time. While the focus of Putin’s ‘big push’ will be in the east of Ukraine, we have seen cities across the country targeted in the last 24 hours. Even Lviv - considered Ukraine’s ‘safe haven’ for refugees - has been attacked, with seven people killed. In Kyiv, hospitals are keeping half of the beds empty in anticipation of mass casualties.
Putin wants people to fear Russia’s reach. These kinds of attacks on cities are designed to remind Ukrainians that they can’t feel safe anywhere. Of course, Ukrainians knew this renewed assault was coming. The open secret here is that Putin wants some kind of prize to deliver to his people by May 9 - Russia’s commemoration of Victory Day from the Second World War. The pressure is on Russia’s soldiers to deliver their leader’s objectives within the next two weeks. In the build-up, Ukrainians have been desperately pleading with the West for the right weapons to push Putin’s troops back once again. Whether it was enough will now be tested with no second chances because what Russia calls “liberation” is, for the Ukrainian people, a fight for their country’s very existence.