Military briefing: the make-or-break fight for the Donbas

The encirclement and destruction of a large part of [Ukraine’s] regular forces could represent a victory condition for Russia in two ways,” said Samuel Cranny-Evans, a military sciences analyst at the Royal United Services Institute in London. It could lead to a “collapse of will” that would make a prolonged siege of Kyiv unnecessary, he said. It might also allow Moscow to “claim it had achieved its goal of demilitarising Ukraine and enable [the] annexation of [the] Donetsk and Luhansk” breakaway republics.