Russian forces gaining ground
Russian forces now control more than half of the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the Donetsk region military administration, said Thursday. Ukrainian forces retreated from the key eastern city of Severodonetsk on Friday after weeks of bloody battle.
Russian forces last week also captured ground around Lysychansk, the last city in the eastern Luhansk region still controlled by Ukraine. Ukrainian military commanders are now grappling with the reality that they may have to withdraw from the area to defend territory further west.
In the meantime, Russian oil revenues have only been going up as oil prices have skyrocketed, even amid the harsh sanctions imposed by the West. US officials said on Monday that the US and its allies are going to try capping the price of oil so Russia does not profit from it anymore, but how and when that cap will take effect remains to be seen.
Internally, there is a sense among some in the Biden administration that Zelensky will need to start moderating expectations for what Ukrainian forces can realistically achieve. Zelensky said late last month that he would "consider it a victory for our state, as of today, to advance to the February 24 line without unnecessary losses."
He reiterated that goal last week.
"We don't have any other choice left but to move forward – move to liberate all of our territories," he said in a Telegram post. "We need to kick the invaders out of the Ukrainian regions. Though the width of the frontlines is as long as over 2,5000 km, we feel that we hold the strategic initiative."
And on Monday, he put a timeline on it: He wants the war over, and for Ukraine to win, by the end of 2022, he told G7 leaders.
Russia is suffering acute combat losses as well, losing as much as a third of its ground force in four months of war, US intelligence officials estimate. Officials have also said publicly that Russia will struggle to make any serious gains further west, using the Donbas region as a staging ground, without a full mobilization of its reserve forces.
But Russia believes it can maintain the fight, wearing down Ukrainian and western resolve as the global economic effects of the war become more severe, officials have told CNN.
The hunt for Soviet-era weaponry
As CNN has previously reported, Russia is looking in particular to exploit the gap between how much Soviet-style ammunition Ukraine and its allies have in their stockpiles, and how long it will take the west to provide Ukraine with modern, NATO-standard weapons and munitions that require time-consuming training.
A senior defense official acknowledged to CNN that the Soviet-era stocks are "dwindling," but haven't yet reached "rock bottom." The official said that some eastern European countries still have more they could provide – but only if they continue to be backfilled by allies with more modern equipment.
The US and its allies, meanwhile, have been scrounging the world for the kind of Soviet-era ammunition that fits the equipment Ukraine already has, including 152 mm artillery ammunition. NATO-standard weapons fire larger, 155mm rounds. But another US defense official told CNN that effort is effectively reaching its end, with almost everything available that countries are willing to provide having already gone in.
Given the prodigious rate at which the Ukrainians have gone through their older ammunition in the bruising artillery fight in the Donbas, the official said, "Soviet-era weapons are being wiped off the earth."
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/06/28/politics/white-house-ukraine-projection/index.html