The battles in Ukraine are being waged meter by meter. The city of Chassiv Iar, in Donetsk province, is currently the hottest spot on the battle front. Moscow’s troops have arrived in the eastern part of the population, while in Kyiv authorities this week sent desperate messages to their western partners. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his ministers continue to ask Western partners for more air defenses. The bill that provides for the expected US military aid began to be voted on Saturday in the House of Representatives in Washington. Without the latter, Ukraine could lose the war at the end of this year, warned the head of the CIA, William Burns. The Ukrainian army lacks the weapons to contain the front, Zelenski pointed out.
According to Moscow’s interpretation of the current situation, Ukrainian troops are now on the verge of collapse, because the counteroffensive of the summer did not work. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Khoigú has said that his enemy is currently simply trying to prevent its positions from collapsing.
Russian and Ukrainian troops have been engaged in active battles near Chassiv Iar since January 2024, eight months after Russian troops took the city of Bakhmut. But they intensified in February, after Ukrainian forces withdrew from Avdiivka, about 80 kilometers to the south, unable to withstand the Russian advance after another hellish battle. Even then, Kyiv was complaining about the troops’ low ammunition due to delays in foreign aid.
Russia has increased the pressure on a battle front of more than a thousand kilometers, and at the same time in recent months it has accelerated the attacks against the energy structure of Ukraine. This has further complicated the life of the civilian population in eastern Ukraine and cities such as Kharkiv (the country’s second largest) are being badly affected.
Chassiv Iar, which the Russians call Chassov Iar, is 12 kilometers west of Bakhmut. The same can be said about its strategic importance as was explained about this city last year. Its capture could open the way for further advances towards more important urban centers: firstly, Kostiantínivka (with a little less than 70,000 inhabitants before the conflict), only 15 kilometers away; then Drujkivka (53,000), and then Sloviansk and Kramatorsk (which exceeded 100,000 inhabitants). The last of which became in October 2014 the administrative center of the part of the province under Ukrainian control, since with the start of the Donbass war the capital, Donetsk, had remained on the pro-Russian side .
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War has described these cities as “the backbone” of Ukrainian defense in the east. Colonel Andrei Pintchuk, who was a member of the government of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and later chaired the pro-Russian association of Donbass volunteers, tells Ukraina.ru that taking Chassiv Iar is “a prerequisite because the Russian army takes complete control of the Donbass”.
Txàssiv Iar is the highest settlement in this area (with a difference of more than a hundred meters), which could give the troops controlling it an advantage over the enemy. Due to this characteristic of the relief, it has served as a regrouping point for the Ukrainian troops, who have an advanced base for their artillery there.
Russian observers do not expect the outcome of this battle to be seen soon. “The fight for Chassov Iar has begun. It will be long. The fighting will be more or less the same as for Bakhmut”, Sergei Markov, ex-deputy and ex-Kremlin advisor, wrote on his blog. It took Moscow eleven months to get Bakhmut, which in Russia is called Artyomovsk.
The situation in this area began to be really difficult at the beginning of this month of April, according to the head of the military administration of Txàssiv Iar, Serhí Tàu, quoted by RBK, who explained that of the more than 12,000 inhabitants from before the conflict, there are just over 700 left, mostly elderly people. “We are feeling how the enemy’s offensive and the bombings are intensifying every day,” he said.
Short of personnel and replacement recruits, short of ammunition and waiting for American help, Ukraine fears that the Russians will end up breaking the front. Zelenskiy said on Thursday that Ukraine lacks the weapons to contain them. “If there is no help, it will be extremely difficult for us, we will lose our people, we will lose our warriors […]. The question is not only the territories, but the people”, emphasized the Ukrainian president.
Kyiv expects Western aid, especially US military aid. This Saturday, the House of Representatives in Washington began voting on the bill that can unblock an aid package for the Ukrainian front of more than 60 billion dollars.
Without these funds “there is a very real risk that the Ukrainians could be defeated by the end of 2024, or at least put [Russian President] Putin in a position where he can largely dictate the terms of a political settlement,” warned this week the director of the CIA, William Burns, in a speech at the George W. Bush presidential center and broadcast by Politico.
Moscow, for its part, demands that the supply of weapons and aid to the Ukrainian army be stopped. He also insists that this will not be able to prevent him from achieving his goals in Ukraine and that the only thing that will be achieved is to prolong the conflict.
The fall of Chassiv Iar and the advance towards the other Ukrainian strongholds would be too serious a step back for Kyiv’s aspirations. In March, Zelensky warned that without US help, Ukrainian troops would begin to withdraw “in small steps”. Kyiv needs to maintain a stable front to try to carry out a new counter-offensive this year, otherwise it would be Russia that could launch the offensive, he pointed out.
The commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, General Oleksandr Sirski, said on the 13th that the situation for his troops had deteriorated on the eastern front after Russia stepped up its offensive, especially in the areas of Liman, Pokrovski and Bakhmut, “thanks to a warm and dry climate, which has made most of the open areas of the terrain accessible”.
This week, Russian troops entered a neighborhood of Xàssiv Iar. The Center for Defense Strategies in Kyiv explains that Russia has used the same tactics it used to get Avdiivka: dropping 20 to 30 guided aerial bombs a day to destroy Ukrainian defenses. According to the Russian newspaper Rossiskaia Gazeta, its use is causing devastating effects.
Aleksandr Kots, a Komsomolskaia Pravda war correspondent who often travels with the Russian military, points out to Telegram that “to enter [the city], it is first necessary to level the flanks and surround the city to provide several entry points at once. Thus the enemy defense forces will be forced to constantly move in different directions under our constant fire”.
For his part, Ukrainian analyst and historian Mikhaïl Jirokhov told BBC Ukraine that, in addition to holding off the enemy on the outskirts of Chassiv Yar, Kyiv troops are building two lines of fortifications west of the city.
The advance of the Russian forces is slow, but it seems certain. They would try to put pressure on the Ukrainian women in the east, north and south, with the intention that they would withdraw towards the west. The Institute of War has written to X that “Russian troops are likely to make advances in Chassiv Yar more quickly [than in Avdiivka and Bakhmut] due to Ukraine’s current shortfalls in artillery and air defense.”
Russian Major General Serguei Lipovoi opined on the RenTV channel that the Ukrainian forces have become strong in Chassiv Iar to buy time. “They are interested in slowing down the advance of our assault groups in the hope that the long-awaited help promised by NATO will finally arrive.”
