The Iran war has deflected global attention from Russia’s all-out attack on its neighbour Ukraine as Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II enters its fifth year and an emboldened Kremlin undertakes a spring offensive.
The past week showed that neither side is easing up. Russia on Tuesday fired almost 1,000 drones and 34 missiles at Ukraine in one of the war’s biggest bombardments. The following day Ukraine launched almost 400 drones in the largest reported overnight attack on Russian regions and Crimea.
Ukraine’s fate is still Europe’s top foreign policy issue, fuelled by fears that Moscow has wider ambitions. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has wound down talks with Russian and Ukrainian delegations as the Iran war grips its attention. The administration has warned it could turn its back on the conflict if peace efforts come to nothing.
Russian takes in billions after US eases oil sanctions
Only weeks ago, the Russian economy was starting to feel the pinch of sanctions. But Russia is now raking in billions of dollars from a temporary US waiver on oil sanctions against Moscow.
The measure taken earlier this month aims to free up Russian oil cargo stranded at sea and ease supply shortages caused by the Middle East conflict.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the US move was “not the right decision” because it will further enable Russia’s military campaign.
American Patriot air-defense missiles have been moved from Europe toward the Middle East as Washington redirects resources to its war on Iran. Zelenskyy warned that Kyiv will “definitely” face shortages of Patriot systems because of the war against Iran.
The US produces 60 to 65 missiles per month, or about 700 to 800 missiles per year, Zelenskyy said. “And on the first day in the Middle East war, 803 missiles were used,” he said.
Aiming to secure some geopolitical leverage, Ukraine offered its battle-tested technology to help Gulf states fend off Iranian drones.
In return, Ukraine wants more of the high-end air-defense missiles that Gulf countries possess and which Kyiv needs to stop Russia’s missiles. Zelenskyy also made Ukrainian drone interceptors available to the US.
Ukraine desperately needs money, too. A promised 90-billion-euro ($104-billion) loan from the European Union to fund Ukraine’s armed forces and its war-shattered economy for the next two years is being held up by Hungary.
Fighting on the front line escalates as weather improves
After a winter of relative calm on the front line, Russia is gearing up for the summer fighting season as fields dry out.
Russian forces are in an early phase of a spring offensive, assaulting Ukraine’s eastern so-called Fortress Belt of cities, said Elina Beketova of the Center for European Policy Analysis, a Washington-based think tank.
“Over the past weeks, the Russians have intensified pressure on the battlefield and in the air,” she told The Associated Press. In Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, Ukraine’s industrial heartland long coveted by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the situation is “critical,” she said, though Ukrainian troops say they are holding firm.
“Russia is trying, on the tactical level, some new approaches” with mechanized infantry and armor in its offensive, according to Robert Murrett, a retired vice admiral in the US Navy who is deputy director of Syracuse University’s Institute for Security Policy and Law.
Fierce fighting is taking place along the roughly 1,250-kilometre (750-mile) front line snaking along eastern and southern parts of Ukraine, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, said this week.
Moscow’s forces have made only incremental gains across rural areas. Russia occupies about 20% of Ukraine. That includes the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized in 2014.
Russian war bloggers expect a new Moscow effort to create more footholds in the southern Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions. That would pave the way for a possible push toward those regions’ capital cities, which are key industrial hubs.
The Russian tactic is to surround and then choke cities while bombing them to rubble.
