The War’s Violent Next Stage

For much of the winter, the war in Ukraine settled into a slow-moving but exceedingly violent fight along a jagged 600-mile-long frontline in the southeast. Now, both Ukraine and Russia are poised to go on the offensive.

Russia, wary of the growing Ukrainian arsenal of Western-supplied weapons, is moving first.

Using tens of thousands of new conscripts in the hope of overwhelming Ukraine, its forces are attacking heavily fortified positions across bomb-scarred fields and through scorched forests in the East. They are looking for vulnerabilities, hoping to exploit gaps, and setting the stage for what Ukraine warns could be Moscow’s most ambitious campaign since the start of the war.

Ukraine must now defend against the Russian assault without exhausting the resources it needs to mount an offensive of its own.

Kyiv is training thousands of its own soldiers outside the country and scrambling to amass heavy weapons and ammunition, in advance of an assault meant to “break the bones” of Russia’s army, said Oleksandr Danylyuk, a former director of Ukraine’s national security council.