Ben Judah
(Picture: Handout)War is about waiting. HIMARs wait to fire. Conscripts wait to advance. Generals wait for the order. This near year long war is wrapped in this uneasy waiting as offensives are readied. Russia’s mobilised battalions have reinforced its fronts. Ukrainian depots and patrols, starkly different from a year ago, are now a parade of Western weaponry. The map of Ukraine, stable — almost — since Vladimir Putin’s forces abandoned Kherson and the west bank of the Dnipro in November, is about to be shaken.
Ukrainian commanders and officers in the field have, over the last week, felt the Russian pressure increasing. Manoeuvres in Belarus, to the north west of Kyiv, are on the up. Shelling is increasing, across Sumy in the north east. What remains of Bakhmut, in Donbas, is likely to fall. This pattern is part of something bigger. Ukrainian officials have hard intelligence Russia is readying a major offensive over the next few weeks. Prompting Oleksiy Danilov, the head of the National Security and Defence Council to warn the enemy is “gathering everything” for “maximum escalation,” possibly on many fronts.
