Russia and Ukraine’s battle for Donbas could decide the war — and it could go either way

Russia’s new offensive in the Donbas region could prove to be extremely significant and decisive in the war, analysts warn, and could determine how the country’s territorial boundaries look in weeks and years to come.

“The Russian war machine in the east could prove to be a very painful threat for Ukraine quickly,” Maximilian Hess, fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told CNBC Tuesday.

“It’s quite clear that Russia’s war aims remain quite extensive,” Hess added, saying that how the battle for Donbas proceeds “will determine how much of Ukraine east of the Dnipro (a river that bisects Ukraine) that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin carves away.”

“I think it’s pretty clear annexation is Putin’s long term goal, how much annexation is the question,” Hess added.

Russian officials have stated that their main objectives in this new phase of the war is the “complete liberation” of the two breakaway, Russian-backed “People’s Republics” of Luhansk and Donetsk. But most analysts believe that the wider Donbas region, an industrialized area rich in coal reserves, will be annexed by Russia.