Ukraine has spent much of the seventh week of the war asking for more weapons donations, as it prepares for a renewed Russian offensive in the east of the country.
Russian forces took control of the city of Izium on April 6, and bisected Ukrainian defences in the port city of Mariupol, reaching the Sea of Azov on April 10. Between these two locations, Russia was building up its forces in a crab’s claw around the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, in what Ukraine expects will be an attempt to join its northern and southern fronts in a pincer movement to isolate Ukrainian elite units in the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces in eastern Ukraine.
