Since the fall of Avdiivka last February, shortly before the second anniversary of the Russian invasion, Moscow’s troops have concentrated their fire on the direction of Chasiv Yar, a small town in the Donetsk region that had just 13,000 inhabitants before the war and is now semi-destroyed.

In recent weeks, Russian forces have made progress in the region, village by village, with cases in which the same location changes hands several times in the same day, along with campaigns of airstrikes and glider attacks that saturate the Ukrainian military deficit.

On Thursday, the Kiev Army command reaffirmed that the situation on the front line in eastern Ukraine was worsening, but that the defenders were able to hold their ground in the face of a concerted effort by the advancing Russian troops.

"The enemy is actively attacking along the entire front line and has achieved certain tactical advances in several directions," said Nazar Voloshyn, spokesman for the Ukrainian strategic command in the east of the country, adding that the situation was "changing dynamically".

According to military analysts, the conquest of Chasiv Yar seems inevitable and will allow Moscow's troops to take an important logistical center of the Ukrainian forces and open the way against other objectives in the region, such as Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, in the Donbass region, with serious consequences for Kiev's strategic position.

Chasiv Yar has also been pointed out as a symbolic "gift" to be displayed by the Kremlin in the Victory Day parade in Moscow on May 9, which marks the Nazi surrender in World War II.

In the last days of April, the commander of the Ukrainian Defense Forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, had already admitted a deterioration on the front, particularly in the sectors of Kramatorsk and Kupyansk, describing violent fighting and "tactical successes" by Russia, despite the fact that Ukrainian forces were able, in some cases, to maintain positions.

News also reports the transfer of Russian battalions in the south of the country to the Donetsk region, in an attempt to concentrate fire on the arrival of the warm months and before Kiev's forces are reinforced with weapons and ammunition, after the approval, last month, of a large package of military and financial aid from the United States, valued at more than 57 billion euros.

Shortly after the "green light" in the House of Representatives for the new aid package to Kiev, which took more than six months to reach due to the blockade of the radical Republican wing, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) warned, on April 21, that the arrival of the new US aid will take weeks to produce effects in stabilizing the combat fronts and that until then Kiev's forces should continue to suffer additional setbacks, especially if Russia uses this window of opportunity to intensify, as everything indicates, its offensive.

The ISW analysis is also consistent with the warning from the head of Ukraine's military intelligence services, Kyrylo Budanov, who predicted at the same time that the situation on the front should worsen in mid-May and early June.

In an interview with The Economist, his deputy, Vadym Skibitsky, was more specific, indicating that Russian forces should carry out an attack in the Kharkiv and Sumy regions, having already concentrated about 35,000 troops near the border for this effort, which aims to mobilize a total of 50,000 to 70,000 men, but, despite this, estimated that the respective provincial capitals would hardly be taken.

On Friday, this warning was reaffirmed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: "We are now facing a new stage of the war. The occupier is preparing to expand offensive actions. Together -- Ukrainians, our warriors, our state, our partners -- we must do everything to frustrate Russia's offensive plans".

While continuing its slow ground progress, at the cost of high casualties on both sides to conquer an estimated 360 square kilometers this year, Russia has strengthened its bombing of logistical routes, energy infrastructure, including the country's largest power plant on the outskirts of Kiev, and Ukraine's defense industrial base, which have been dangerously exposed in recent weeks due to the shortage of weapons and ammunition available to Kiev's forces.

Zelensky said on Thursday that Russia launched more than 300 missiles of various types, nearly 300 Shahed 'drones' and over 3,200 guided aerial bombs against Ukraine in April alone, which have punished critical infrastructure, locations near the combat fronts and, in particular Kharkiv, the second largest Ukrainian city, located in the northeast of the country, and Odessa, in the southwest, where the main port of access to the Black Sea is located.

Conversely, Ukraine has continued its effort to carry out in-depth attacks in Russia or in the occupied Ukrainian regions and in annexed Crimea, with increasingly sophisticated weapons, targeting targets that support the Russian economy and the war effort, such as oil refineries, adding more than a dozen recent attacks on this type of facility.

According to the US publication Politico, these attacks have already led to fuel prices rising to their highest levels since the beginning of the year in Russia, which is also facing problems in its own domestic supply, adding to the difficulties raised by Western sanctions.

But, in the short term, Ukraine needs to survive Russian superiority, trying to strengthen its defense lines along about a thousand kilometers of combat front, while dealing with the management of saving men and weapons, and demanding more urgent support from its allies, starting with at least seven additional Patriot missile systems to protect its cities and vital infrastructure.

After failing to meet the expected support and deadlines, Kiev's main allies have announced, in recent weeks, the reinforcement of their assistance programs or the acceleration of the promised aid, but doubts persist, such as the date of the arrival in Ukraine's skies of the F-16 fighters, or whether Germany will be able to give up its long-range Taurus missiles, which Berlin has so far refused to transfer.

On the other hand, the delay of the new US package has exposed the fragility of Ukraine's defense dependence on variables such as the internal politics of its partners, as well as the paradox that, without weapons, as has happened in recent months, the Ukrainian military is paralyzed on the combat fronts, and, on the other hand, they also need to renew their staff so that there is someone to use them.

Ukraine has passed a controversial mobilization law, which lowers the minimum recruitment age to 25 and tightens control over the tens of thousands of men who are outside the country, at a time when its forces were on the verge of collapse, setting off all the red alerts internally and with NATO partners.

Among the members of the Atlantic Alliance, a proposal by the organization's secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, is being discussed to create a fund of one hundred billion euros to ensure Ukraine's sustainability and predictability of its military supplies, but also a long-term strategy that can lead to Kiev's success, when no analysis predicts that Kiev's forces will be in a position to launch a large-scale offensive so quickly to reconquer territory, like the one that led to few results last summer and that they are now paying dearly for.

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