Massing Russian forces in the easternmost Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk have “begun the battle for Donbas,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said during his nightly address to the nation minutes before midnight on April 18.
“It can now be stated that Russian troops have begun the battle for Donbas, for which they have been preparing for a long time. A very large part of the entire Russian army is now focused on this offensive,” he said.
There are now about 76 Russian battalion tactical groups (BTGs) inside Ukraine, with the vast majority in the east and southeast of Ukraine, U.S. Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby told reporters in Washington on April 18.
That’s the equivalent of up to 76,000 Russian troops and about 12,000 soldiers are still engaged in trying to take over Mariupol, Donetsk region’s second largest and strategically located city on the Azov Sea coast.
The U.S. military defines Russian BTGs as “a modular tactical organization created from a garrisoned Russian Army brigade to deploy combat power to conflict zones.”
“We have seen the Russians continue to flow in enablers, capabilities that will help them fight in the Donbas going forward,” Kirby elaborated. “That’s artillery, rotary aviation/helicopter support [and] command and control enablers. And we do believe that they [Russians] have reinforced the number of battalion tactical groups in the east and the south of Ukraine.”
A situational war map of Ukraine as of midnight in Kyiv on April 19.
Zelensky remained defiant in his near-midnight address to the nation, saying that “no matter how many Russian troops they send there [the Donbas], we will fight.”
His chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said Ukraine’s army could withstand the offensive in “the second phase of the war,” Reuters reported.
Ukrainian forces had routed the invading Russian military around Kyiv and the regions of Chernihiv and Sumy as well as parts of Kharkiv toward the end of March and beginning of April.
The frontline of the Donbas is about 450-500 kilometers.
Earlier on April 18, Valery Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said that Russia is focusing its efforts on breaking through the city of Izyum in Kharkiv region, the gateway to the Donetsk cities of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk.
“The full-scale armed aggression of the Russian Federation against our state continues,” the Defense Ministry said on Facebook at 6 a.m. Kyiv time. “The enemy is trying to continue offensive operations in the Eastern Operational Zone in order to establish full control over the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as to maintain a land corridor with the temporarily occupied Crimea.”
Kremlin despot Vladimir Putin ordered a renewed more intensive invasion of the country on Feb. 24 as part of a war he has waged against the neighboring country since 2014 when Russian troops forcibly seized the Crimean Peninsula and occupied part of the Donbas territories.
