The front lines have changed dramatically since the launch ofspecial military operationby Vladimir Putin on February 24, 2022. Until the early days of April, the war defined a full-scale invasion of Ukraine with three fronts in the north, south and east. But since then, Russian forces have left the city of Kyiv in the north and concentrated in the eastern Donbass region, partly controlled by separatists since 2014, where the main fighting is currently concentrated. South, the battle front is paralyzed.
In the east of the country, Russian forces continue to press on the outskirts of Kharkiv – Ukraine’s second largest city with a population of 1.5 million – and Sumy, but stop their attempt to encircle, which was out of reach for them. Also on the horizon, this time in southern Donbass, is the port of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov. The Russians have besieged it since the first of March and they are now inside the city. On March 24, they even captured the town hall, according to Chechen fighters sent by Ramzan Kadyrov, a key Kremlin asset, against Ukrainian fighters from the ultra-nationalist Azov Battalion now holed up in several neighborhoods of the city.
A possible goal of the Southern Front is the control of the shores of the Sea of Azov, which will subsequently become a Russian “lake”, but not only. Controlling the shores of the Black Sea to the west, or even moving north are other potential targets, even if the front line has settled there as well, even as Ukrainian counterattacks have now ceased.
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The main reversal in recent days was the end of the Battle of Kyiv – at least temporarily. In the face of Ukrainian counterattacks, the Russians withdrew in the early days of April when they were only 30 km from the center of the capital. The conquest of the cradle of Kievan Rus’ in the 9th century – the first great Slavic state Ukraine and Russia dispute over its historical origins – and even the seat of the city with a population of 2.8 million was beyond the reach of the Russians: a circular area of 100 to 150 km had to be kept in circumference to surround it. Even if they were not formally defeated – since they withdrew from the region – it looks like a defeat for the Kremlin since February 24, in terms of the scale of the deployment, the Northern Front seemed the most strategic.
