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New Russian Offensive In Ukraine Looms

Russia is increasing the pace of attacks in eastern Ukraine ahead of what Ukrainian officials and analysts believe will be a major new offensive designed to give it a better bargaining position in ongoing ceasefire talks. Despite that, Russia has reportedly seen a decrease in the amount of territory it has captured while Ukraine has made incremental gains.

“The intensity (of Russian attacks) in the Pokrovsk direction began to increase significantly in the second half of March and reached the level of the end of 2024, when the defense south of the city sometimes simply collapsed,” the Ukrainian DeepState open-source mapping group stated on Telegram Tuesday. About a third of more than 200 clashes across the front lines Tuesday took place in and around Pokrovsk, the Ukrainian military stated. The city is a key logistics hub for Ukrainian forces in the region.

New Russian Offensive In Ukraine Looms
Pokrovsk remains the epicenter of fighting in Ukraine. (Google Earth)

The uptick comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia is planning a new push along a wide swath of the 620-mile front lines.

“According to our intelligence, Russia is preparing for new offensives in Sumy, Kharkiv, and Zaporizhzhia regions,” Zelensky said last week. “They are dragging out negotiations and trying to drag the U.S. into endless, meaningless discussions about fake conditions to buy time and then try to seize even more land.”

Russian President Vladimir “Putin wants to negotiate territory from a stronger position,” Zelensky added. “He only thinks about war. So, our job — all of us — is defense in the broadest sense of the word.”

“They are preparing offensive actions on the front that should last from six to nine months, almost all of 2025,” Ukrainian military analyst Oleksii Hetman, who has connections to the military’s general staff, told The Associated Press.

Any new Russian push would likely be aided by the transfer of tens of thousands of troops from Kursk, where Ukraine has only a limited presence in what used to be a 500-square-mile salient. Meanwhile, Ukraine is also moving troops out of that area, according to the official Russian RIA Novosti news outlet.

“The Ukrainian Armed Forces have redeployed four brigades from the Kursk direction to try to hold Pokrovsk and recapture Selidovo and Kurakhovo,” the outlet claimed, citing security forces.

Adding to Ukraine’s concerns, Putin has called up 160,000 men aged 18-30. That is Russia’s highest number of conscripts since 2011, the BBC noted.

“The spring call-up for a year’s military service came several months after Putin said Russia should increase the overall size of its military to almost 2.39 million and its number of active servicemen to 1.5 million,” the outlet explained. “That is a rise of 180,000 over the coming three years.”

Though Vice Adm. Vladimir Tsimlyansky said the new conscripts would not be sent to fight in Ukraine, previous waves of those troops have been deployed on what Russia calls a “Special Military Operation.”

Despite increasing its tempo of attacks, Russia has gained the least amount of ground since last July, when Putin’s troops launched their major offensive in the Donbas region, according to DeepState.

“Russian troops managed to occupy 133 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory in March,” stated DeepState, a Ukrainian analytical project that provides updates daily on the current state of the front lines using open-source data. “Compared to November, monthly losses of territory have fallen by almost six times.”

The slowdown in Russian advances is not the result of a pause ahead of ceasefire negotiations, DeepState posited.

“This does not mean that the enemy has sat on its ass and is waiting for a ‘negotiator,’” DeepState suggested. “The [Russians] have resumed offensive operations in several directions.”

The reduction in Russian territorial gains comes as Ukrainian forces have made incremental advances in Donetsk.

Ukrainian commanders say constant drone attacks have played a key role, reducing the ability of Russian armor to operate, forcing Putin’s troops to advance in many cases on motorcycles and by foot in so-called meat waves.

However, Russian sources, including the Defense Ministry (MoD), said they have imposed heavy casualties on Ukraine.

“The Tsentr Group of Forces took more advantageous lines and positions,” the Russian MoD claimed on Telegram. “Losses were inflicted on manpower and hardware of three mechanized brigades, one assault brigade, one infantry brigade, and one jaeger brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near Grishino, Shevchenko, Krasnoarmeysk, Novosergeyevka, and Dimitrov.”

The continued fighting comes as U.S. President Donald Trump tries to broker a deal between the two sides that would first see a 30-day ceasefire, with the ultimate goal being a peace deal to end this full-on war. The prospects of that seem daunting, which you can read more about later in this piece.

The Latest

Elsewhere on the battlefield, Ukraine is holding on to small sections of Russia’s Belgorod and Kursk regions while Putin’s troops have pushed into Sumy Oblast, which borders both. Here are some of the key takeaways from the latest Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessment.

  • Kharkiv: Russian forces continued offensive operations in the Kharkiv direction on March 31 but did not advance.
  • Luhansk: Russian forces recently advanced in the Kupyansk and Lyman directions but did not gain ground toward Borova.
  • Donetsk: Russian forces continued offensive operations in the Chasiv Yar, Pokrovsk, and Siversk directions but did not make any confirmed advances. They did gain ground toward Kurakhove and Velyka Novosilka. Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces recently marginally advanced in the Toretsk direction.
  • Zaporizhzhia: Russian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on March 31 but did not advance.
  • Kherson: Russian forces continued limited offensive operations in the Dnipro direction on March 31 but did not advance.

Ukraine received the text of the U.S.’s vastly expanded mineral resources deal on March 28 and carried out the first round of consultations with U.S. partners, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on April 1, the Kyiv Independent reported. However, the issue has reignited the spat between Trump and Zelensky.

“Ukraine was ready to sign the previously developed framework agreement. Now we have received a proposal for development and a new text of the agreement,” Sybiha said at a press conference. “I confirm that we have begun consultations with the United States on the text of the agreement. Ukraine is determined to conclude a document that would meet the interests of both countries.”

The new proposal was put forward by the U.S. Treasury Department and “goes well beyond the initial draft, particularly on future US rights and reimbursement for past assistance,” CNN reported. It would “give the U.S. more access to Kyiv’s rare earth minerals, according to two people familiar with the discussions and a copy of the draft proposal obtained by CNN on Thursday.”

The deal would apply to all mineral resources, oil and gas across all of Ukraine, the sources told CNN. It does not, however, include concrete security guarantees in the country’s ongoing war with Russia, one of Ukraine’s main interests.

A key part of the proposal “requires Ukrainian enterprises to contribute to a joint U.S.-Ukraine investment fund that would be overseen by a five-person board consisting of three members from Washington and two from Kyiv – prompting concerns that Ukraine would be ceding sweeping control of key assets to the United States,” according to the network.

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