The battle for Donbas: ‘the real test of this war’

The Russian army has two main options,” says Samuel Cranny-Evans, a military analyst at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank in London. “They might try and take the whole area in one concerted push — but that’s very ambitious. “Alternatively, they could take bite-size chunks out of the Ukrainian front line by encircling pockets of troops in strategic areas, cutting them off with electronic warfare and using artillery to stop reinforcements, and then squeezing them in small cauldrons,” Cranny-Evans adds.