Ukraine in Focus

By Svitlana Morenets

May 3, 2024

Of the 12,000 who used to live in the city of Chasiv Yar, barely 700 are left. Chilling drone video footage released this week shows why. It has become a bombed-out ghost town, reminiscent of Bakhmut and Avdiivka, two big Ukrainian cities recently lost to Russian troops.

The Russian army has made its way to Chasiv Yar’s outskirts using its most successful and devastating tactic: dropping 1,500kg bombs until there is nowhere to hide and nothing to fight for. So this strategic hilltop city, six miles west of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, is almost deserted.

For more than a year, Chasiv Yar has been without electricity, water, or gas due to constant shelling. Ukrainian volunteers have been delivering food and medicine, but most have now stopped. It is too dangerous to enter. Most survivors are elderly and refuse to leave. Their attachment to their home outweighs their fear of death.

‘They give one reason for this: “This is my home, I grew up here, my parents grew up here, my grandfathers are lying here, and why should a stranger come here?”, explains Serhiy Chaus, head of Ukraine’s internal affairs ministry. ‘You understand them in a human way. But the evacuation continues.’

The Russian troops took nearly a year to advance the four miles from Bakhmut to the outskirts of Chasiv Yar. But their recent progress has been much quicker, with Russian units advancing the same distance southward in less than two. Some 25,000 Russian soldiers are gathering outside Chasiv Yar, attacking the city from both the north and south to cut off the supply roads for Ukrainian forces while continuing to assault the city from the east. Each day, Russia launches around 30 powerful glide bombs and troops use electric vehicles like quad bikes, exploiting the quiet engines to get as close to Ukrainian positions as possible.

Though attempts to take the city, which holds a tactically useful position on high ground, have been taking a heavy toll on Russian troops, sending wave after wave of men into battle is nothing new for Moscow. If successful, troops will try to semi-encircle the city and penetrate it from different directions (as happened in Avdiivka), leaving Kyiv with a choice: to order its forces to retreat or sacrifice under-equipped Ukrainian soldiers for the sake of holding the city for just a little while longer.

According to Kyiv, Russian forces have been ordered to seize the town before 9 May, a sacred day marking the Soviet Union’s victory in the second world war. If American aid does not reach Ukraine on time and the city falls, Russia will walk through the open steppe to the last strongholds under Ukraine’s control in Donetsk: Kostiantynivka, Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. From Chasiv Yar, Russia’s long-range artillery weapons will be able to reach most of Ukraine’s logistical routes in the region. Cities with more than 100,000 people that haven’t been destroyed yet will face the same fate as other towns in the Donbas region.

It has taken Vladimir Putin ten years of war and thousands of dead to come this close to capturing the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. The Russian army is marching – slowly but consistently – to the west.

Portrait of the week in Ukraine

• David Cameron has pledged £3bn in annual military assistance to Ukraine for ‘as long as it takes’. London has no objection to British weapons being used to strike inside Russia, he said.
• Kyiv authorities have urged residents to follow the Easter service online rather than attending church due to security concerns.
• Russia used a missile filled with cluster bombs in an attack at Odesa on Monday, killing six civilians and injuring 30.
• Ukraine attacked oil refineries in Russia’s Ryazan and Voronezh regions with drones. Strikes on Russian refineries have caused diesel prices to rise by almost 10% in the country in the past week.
• Five underground schools will be built in the Zaporizhzhia region to ensure education continues despite regular Russian attacks. Officials aim to build ten more in the future.
• Some countries have provided Ukraine weapons with no US-style restrictions on strikes inside Russia, according to Latvia’s foreign affairs minister. She did not say which countries.
• Ukrainian troops regained control of Nestryha Island in Kherson.
• Journalists are to be given limited access to the Ukrainian parliament for the first time since February 2022. Normal scrutiny had been suspended.
• Donald Trump has called for an end to US aid to Ukraine ‘unless Europe starts equalising’. Washington has given more than £53bn to Ukraine and Europe £76bn.
• Ukraine’s defence ministry is seeking to restrict new satellite imaging of Ukrainian territory, as this has been helping Russian forces.
• Polish protestors have unblocked all checkpoints on the border with Ukraine after four months of protests over grain exports.
• Emmanuel Macron will reportedly ask Xi Jinping to use his influence with Moscow to end the war in Ukraine.
• Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, has become the first British royal to visit Ukraine since the Russian invasion. She visited Kyiv on behalf of the Foreign Office.
• The Latvian army has started digging anti-tank ditches on the border with Russia and Belarus.

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Wider reading on the war

China has crossed Biden’s red line on Ukraine – Wall Street Journal

With fresh US funding, Ukraine must not repeat 2023’s mistakes – Hill

Putin’s fuel problem: how Ukraine is sapping Russia’s diesel and gasoline – Politico

Russian GPS jamming threatens air disaster, warn Baltic ministers – Financial Times

Ukraine defeat would cost the West trillions of dollars, warns James Heappey – Telegraph

In pictures

Donetsk: Lidia Stepanivna, 98, walked for six miles under Russian shelling to leave the occupied village of Ocheretyne. Her house was destroyed. She said she survived the second world war and now ‘I am going through this war’. (Credit: Ukraine’s National Police)

Quote of the week

‘The question about Nato, as the Secretary-General correctly said, is a matter of majority. And the majority is a political issue. To be taken into the alliance politically, we need a victory.’

– Volodymyr Zelensky after Jens Stoltenberg said there was no chance the alliance’s 32 members would reach a political agreement on admitting Ukraine by July’s Washington summit.

The war in numbers

Ukrainian draft-dodgers who have died crossing the mountainous western border:

30

The border force says it stops 120 crossings per day.

Taxes paid to Russia by large European banks last year:

€800 million.

Some four times the amount paid pre-war.

Guided aerial bombs dropped Russia on Ukraine last month:

More than 3,200.

Russia also used 300 Shahed drones and 300 missiles.

A note from the author: Thank you for your interest in this newsletter. I hope it helps you to understand my country – and the war – better from a Ukrainian perspective. If you enjoy the Ukraine in Focus newsletter, please forward it to someone you know: you can sign up here. My writing for The Spectator can be found here. All feedback is welcome: svitlana@spectator.co.uk