On April 19, after Russia announced it would focus its military efforts on southeastern Ukraine, intensive air strikes and artillery bombardment rained down across the broad arc of the contact line running from Izyum to Mykolayiv.
But the sound and fury have proved a passing spring storm: in the low-level fighting that ensued Russia has slowly ground forward, despite expectations that a more concentrated use of force could tip the conflict in Moscow’s favour after its failed assault on Kyiv.
Much about the war is still hard to read: the combat status of the “Joint Forces Operation” — the Ukrainian army group that concentrates the battle-hardened force deployed in the eastern region of Donbas since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 — is a critical unknown, for example.