Good morning. On Monday, Russian troops began to advance into Sievierodonetsk, the largest city in Donbas still held in Ukrainian hands. The city is important to the control of Luhansk, one of two provinces in Donbas. If it falls, that success – achieved at the cost of the city’s ruination and 1,500 civilian lives – will be viewed as grim vindication for Vladimir Putin’s decision to consolidate Russian forces in the region and bombard targets with artillery fire.
There’s something else about the battle for Sievierodonetsk, though: while Russian tanks are moving into the centre of the city, they were not able to encircle it first. Cutting a city off from its supply lines to soften it up is brutally effective, as the siege of Mariupol indicated. So why hasn’t that happened here?
