A town of 12 thousand inhabitants a few tens of kilometers west of Bakhmut is theepicenter of the spring campaign in the war in Ukraine. Is called Chasiv Yar and it is around his homes that Russian forces have been pressing for several days to give impetus to their offensive against Kiev’s troops. Neither Russia nor Ukraine have any more energy, resources and confidence in their own forces to build big movements in front in a war where a decisive victory by one side over the other is a remote possibility. But this does not mean that at a tactical level there may be new prospects for obtaining local advantages. And Chasiv Yar, north-east of the Donetsk oblast, is a tempting target for Russia, which by advancing from Avdiivka from the south and from Bakhmut from the north-east can cut the positioned Ukrainian salient in the heart of territory claimed by Moscow as part of its metropolitan territory.
Every strategic point is seen as the pivot on which the Russian forces, like seasoned mountaineers, want to anchor themselves to plan the assault on the next peak. The prospects for advance, after Bakhmut and Avdiivka, are less theatrical and more thought of on local, more manageable fronts. Chasiv Yar appears strategic for several reasons. First of all for show a fighting and advancing Russian army on the occasion of the upcoming celebration of May 9, the day Russia celebrates its victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. In addition to this, occupying Chasiv Yar would lock down hard-pressed targets in 2023 and open up future larger advances on a local scale: “Situated atop a hill, the city provides Ukraine with one of the last natural barriers protecting important lines supply station and, 30 kilometers to the north, the regional capital of Kramatorsk,” he recalled the military analyst Fabrice Deprez in his brief on the Ukrainian conflict for the Financial Times, adding that “Chasiv Yar’s defense rests largely on a 30-meter-wide canal that runs along the city’s eastern border. The Soviet-era structure, used to divert water from the Donets River to supply the region’s water-starved metallurgical industries, offers a ready-made obstacle to the passage of armored vehicles.”
For the Ukrainian troops the fall of this strategic stronghold it would represent significant military damage and, above all, the definitive confirmation of a decline in the operational capacity of Kiev’s troops. Before being jubilated by the command, the former head of the Ukrainian forces Valery Zaluzhny had warned of a stalemate in which even the opportunity for a massive advance by Kiev was becoming rarer. Now, with a smaller number of weapons arriving than in the past, Kiev is subject to the Russian initiative and only the obvious operational and logistical difficulties of the Russian armed forces are holding them back from planning a generalized advance. The front, however, is moving as it hasn’t been since the beginning of autumn. And a long hot season is coming for Kiev continuous wear and tear of defense capabilities, starting from Chasiv Yar, which is destined to worsen if the support of the Euro-Atlantic bloc remains at lower levels than in the past.
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