As hopes fade for the swift implementation of a U.S.-backed truce between Kyiv and Moscow, Russian forces have continued to register gains on the battlefield.
“The Russians are making slow but steady gains across the front, both in Kursk and in Donbas,” Robert Peters, a defense policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, told The Epoch Times.
“This is due largely to the fact that they have the advantage in both manpower and munitions.
“Ukraine is struggling from a manpower perspective, and in terms of their defensive munitions capability. They are basically fighting an ongoing rearguard action.”
On April 3, Russia’s defense ministry claimed that its forces had captured another two villages in the eastern and southeastern regions of Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia.
“Battlegroup Dnepr units liberated the settlement of [Lobkove] in the [Zaporizhzhia] region through decisive operations.”
Kyiv has yet to acknowledge the territorial losses, and The Epoch Times could not independently verify the claims.
For the past several months, Russia has continued to make incremental gains, especially in the eastern Donbas region (containing Donetsk and Luhansk) at the expense of hard-pressed Ukrainian forces.
On April 1, Moscow claimed that its forces in Donetsk had captured the village of Rozlyv to the south of Pokrovsk, a strategically vital Ukrainian logistics hub.
“Along the entire line of engagement, the strategic initiative is fully with the Russian Armed Forces,” he said.
Putin further asserted that “99 percent” of Luhansk was now under Russian control, along with “over 70 percent” of the Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions.
“Our forces ... are advancing, liberating one territory after another—one location after another,” he said.
British defense analyst Tim Ripley said that “incremental pushes” by Russia are currently “going on everywhere.”
But while Russian forces are capturing villages “here and there,” they “have yet to achieve a decisive breakthrough” in Donbas, Ripley, author of “Little Green Men: The Inside Story of Russia’s New Military Power,” said.
“In February and early March, they made major advances towards Pokrovsk,” he told The Epoch Times. “They got quite close to it, but they still haven’t taken it.
“Ukraine sent reserves in and stabilized the situation, so the frontline has solidified to a certain extent.
“The Russians need time to build up again to where they’ve got the Ukrainians in a critical situation where they either have to retreat or be surrounded.”
In 2022, Russia invaded and effectively annexed Donetsk, Luhansk, and the southeastern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Since then, Moscow has regarded all four regions as Russian Federation territory.
Cease-Fire in Limbo
Meanwhile, Moscow and Kyiv accuse each other of breaching a moratorium on strikes against energy infrastructure, which both sides agreed to last month during separate talks with U.S. officials.“The attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure are targeted and are purely provocative and demonstrative,” she told reporters.
And while Moscow insists that it has complied with the terms of the limited truce, Kyiv says Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities remain ongoing.
This week, Kyiv claimed that an energy substation in the northeastern Sumy region had been targeted by Russian drones and that Russian artillery fire had damaged a power line in the central Dnipropetrovsk region.“This systematic and constant nature of Russian strikes clearly indicates that Moscow despises the diplomatic efforts of partners,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on April 2.
“What’s needed is new and tangible pressure on Russia to put this war on a path toward ending.”
Both sides say they are providing the United States with lists of alleged cease-fire breaches, none of which The Epoch Times could independently verify.
“The Ukrainians would welcome a slowdown in operations so that they can catch their breath and, ideally, create some defensive positions,” Peters said.
“But it doesn’t seem like the Russians are adhering to the moratorium.
“Whenever you negotiate with the Russians, you have to understand that any agreement they make is finite. At some point, they will violate it.”
Asked about Moscow’s claims that Kyiv was regularly breaching the terms of the limited truce, Peters said: “I haven’t seen anything to back that up.”
Ripley said the confused state of affairs appeared to reflect a “problem with U.S. negotiating strategy.”
“While [U.S. officials] are talking with the Russians, the Russians and Ukrainians—those who are actually fighting—aren’t in the same room and haven’t agreed to the same thing,” Ripley, who is also the editor of Defense Eye, an online news service devoted to security issues, said.
“So until they actually get them in the same room, or at least in adjacent rooms, we’re going to have this disconnect.”
Losing Kursk
With the fate of the U.S.-backed cease-fire in limbo, Ukraine also appears to have lost its last remaining foothold inside Russian territory.In summer 2024, Kyiv launched a surprise cross-border offensive into Russia’s western Kursk region, which shares a border with northeastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian forces initially captured several hundred square miles of territory but have since been forced to retreat from the region in the face of Russian counterattacks.
“Fierce battles are ongoing in Guyevo. ... and in the area of Basovka,” the source said in reference to two border communities in Kursk.
“We know what the enemy is counting on,” he said.
According to Ripley, Russian forces have “obviously had a major success in Kursk,” where, he said, they have “inflicted pretty heavy losses on the Ukrainians.”
“The Ukrainians are down to a sliver of terrain near the border,” he said, while Russian forces have “pushed over the border into Ukraine’s Sumy region.”
The loss of Kursk, Ripley said, will adversely affect Kyiv’s negotiating position in any future cease-fire talks.
“Kursk was the best card the Ukrainians had,” he said.
“They had managed to capture Russian territory that could eventually be swapped for a big chunk of their own. But now they’ve lost it.”
Peters agreed that the territorial loss would certainly hurt Kyiv’s negotiating position.
“They’ve been pushed back steadily for a while now,” he said. “I don’t see any opportunity in the foreseeable future for them to retake their lost positions.”
