For weeks, Ukraine's Kherson region, occupied by Russia, lives through anticipation of what is hanging by a string — a large Ukrainian counter-offensive.

The Battle of Donbas in Ukraine's east is not over yet, but Kyiv is already setting conditions to retake the city of Kherson, the only regional capital Russia has managed to seize in its all-out war since February. Ukraine's military has spent weeks deploying advanced Western weaponry against Russian munitions and fuel depots, bridges and air defense radars, in a bid to possibly win better chances in the upcoming battle. But Russia, in its turn, despite the threatening situation, is not ready to simply give up on its biggest gain in the war. In tense anticipation, it is rapidly reinforcing its groupings on the Dnipro River and preparing to counter the hard Ukrainian drive south.

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The battle of Ukraine's south is likely to open a new, third phase of the war. It's been nearly a month since Russia stopped all major offensive operations in the Donbas after it had finally captured the twin city of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk following nearly three months of fighting. Russia declared this "an operational pause" to regroup and continue the fight. According to analysts with the Institute for the Study of War, even a month after, the Russian military is still too depleted to wage any serious operations in the Donbas, except for against just two mid-sized regional cities of Bakhmut and Siversk.

Indeed, even though Russia continued to make efforts, it managed to make just very limited tactical gains, such as the capture of the defunct Vuhlehirska power plant by the Wagner Group mercenaries on July 26, also after nearly two months of fighting in the area. The war's focus is gradually switching from the east to the south, the Kherson region. Due to local terrain, the Ukrainian command sees opportunities.

Kherson, the regional capital of some 300,000, stands on the Dnipro River's west bank. Ukraine lost the city in the shock and awe of the earliest days of war, with little resistance. In that steppe riverside, there are very few ways to cross the Dnipro back and forth. Kherson has just two bridges, an automobile one and a railroad one, both called Antonisky. And there is another crossing via the Khakhovska power plant some 60 kilometers northeast.

And this is it – the nearest bridge across the Dnipro is in Zaporizhia over 170 kilometers farther, which is under firm Ukrainian control. In other words, Russia had just three roads to run supplies for its armed forces near Kherson across the river, which is at least 600 meters wide in those parts. Ukraine, meanwhile, is very open regarding its plans for Kherson. If those Russian supply lines are destroyed, Ukraine's military would get a chance to advance, isolate the Russians in Kherson, block the city — and keep it under siege until the garrison, cut off supplies and munitions, finally surrenders.

Standing back against the great river, Russians would find it impossible to send supplies and reinforcements to Kherson. And any pontoon crossings would be very vulnerable to Ukrainian fire and very easy to notice. Kherson, isolated and problematic in terms of supplies, is Russia's weakest and very dangerous spot in Ukraine. And what was just speculation among defense experts and Ukrainian media is now becoming the reality.

Over the last month, since it acquired the US-provided HIMARS rocket systems, Ukraine has been running a full-fledged campaign to derail Russian logistics and supplies in the south and the east. According to Ukraine's Defense Ministry, over 50 Russian munitions and fuel supplies have been destroyed. And the strike campaign continues. In Kherson and regional cities, every night is the night when social media see the influx of videos of gigantic explosions at Russian dumps close to railroad stations. Overnight into July 27, the Antonivsky automobile bridge, following a series of HIMARS strikes, was rendered unusable and closed to all traffic. Russia has already lost the main supply route to Kerhson. According to Russia's occupation administration, the railroad bridge standing not far away from its automobile twin has also been damaged.

As for the Kakhovka power plant dum, the last intact bridge across the Dnipro, it cannot be destroyed due to the deadly damage to the area if the levee breaks. But the Ukrainian military has repeatedly delivered strikes upon Russian military targets close to it, demonstrating its ability to keep the crossing under firm fire control.

The tension is growing fast – on both sides of the war. For Ukraine, retaking Kheron would be a groundbreaking blow upon Russian morale, the biggest success since the victory with the Battle of Kyiv in late March. But Russia is also not losing time, seeing this very potential danger. Amid its protracted general offensive in Donbas, which continues since mid-April, it just can't afford such a strong political and military setback.

It's preparing to repel a Ukrainian offensive and then counter-attack. It has already established an in-depth defense in the region, with concrete pillboxes protecting machine gun nests. Air defenses are still very strong. It's already installing pontoon crossings in the region, knowing that Ukraine will render all bridges unusable. According to Ukrainian intelligence, over the last week, Russia has seriously amplified its grouping on the Dnipro west bank, deploying most of its elite airborne units to uphold Kherson.

The stakes are now extremely high.

Illia Ponomarenko is a defense and security reporter with The Kyiv Independent in Ukraine.

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KYIV, UKRAINE — Few people outside the industrial region of Donbas in Ukraine's east ever heard of Sievierodonetsk, a city of nearly 100,000.

It used to be a large chemical production center, with its industrial zone of factories and chimneys claiming nearly half of the city's territory. Now, it's a giant desolated battlefield in the very spotlight of the world. For weeks, Russia and Ukrainian militaries are waging cut-throat, brutal fighting in the city, throwing more and more troops in the grinder, with houses and districts changing hands all the time. Both sides are extremely exhausted and have sustained devastating losses. But none is ready to back down. As Russia keeps launching never-ending frontal attacks, it is also committing nearly all of its available resources to surround a large Ukrainian military grouping in the area and destroy it. Amid the dramatic battle, Ukraine so far manages to keep its nearly 10,000-strong garrison reinforced and combat-capable.

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Yet, the situation is still close to critical. And the outcome of the Battle of Sievierodonetsk will likely define the Russian campaign in Donbas, and, largely, the whole Russian war in Ukraine. The Battle of Donbas in Ukraine's east continues for more than 40 days. Russian attempts to encircle and destroy the whole of Ukraine's military grouping in the region (which is in fact most of Ukraine's armed forces) have not been successful. So with time, it has switched to much more narrow goals of creating several smaller death traps for the Ukrainian military instead of just one giant. In many ways, this happened due to Russia's lack of manpower for such a large operation, as well as fierce Ukrainian resistance.

The twin city of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, a large industrial metropolitan area, is now the last patch of Ukraine's Luhansk Region still not seized by Russia. So in the last weeks, according to Ukrainian estimates, Russia has committed nearly 50% of its military power in Ukraine to surround the grouping and cut it off supplies.

That would be a major debacle for Ukraine's military and a huge blow to national morale. In late May, Russia seemed to be just a step away from severing the T1302 highway (commonly known as "the road of life") and closing the 40-kilometer-wide pocket. There have been doom and gloom in media in Ukraine and beyond, with loud calls to the Ukrainian military to withdraw troops from Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk to save them from inevitable disaster.

But against expectations, the Ukrainian command decided to keep reinforcing the garrison and continue the fight. As a result, the Ukrainian military managed to not only stop Russia's dangerous advances to encircle the area but also in early June launch a series of successful counter-strikes in Sievierodonetsk that repulsed Russia back to the city's eastern part and took southern suburbs back under Ukrainian control.

In fact, the city that was almost generally considered lost suddenly saw the situation reversed. Some in Ukrainian media were so impressed that they were quick to nickname the June counter-strike "the miracle of Sievierodonetsk." As of now, fierce fighting in the city continues. According to local Ukrainian authorities, Sievierodonetsk has nearly 90% of its residential buildings destroyed or heavily damaged, and just between 10,000 and 15,000 civilians still hide in the city's shelters.

In the words of Luhansk region governor Serhiy Gaidai, "the silence comes only when cannons get reloaded." According to local accounts, Ukrainian forces are in control of nearly 40-50% of the city, and they have made the city's giant industrial zone, including what's left of the famous Azot chemical factory, its fortified base. In dense urban terrain and amid ruins, the Ukrainian military partly neutralizes Russia's supremacy in heavy artillery and air cover, exhausting Russian infantry in close combat.

Sievierodonetsk is standing, and Ukraine is also fortifying the defenses Lysychansk just to the west, a city on a higher ground that is belted by the Siverskiy Donets River hilly banks, which gives a big advantage to defenders. But still – Russia, according to intelligence, is concentrating fresh reserves to try and complete the area's encirclement. It has to fight just nearly 20 kilometers of its way to make the northern and southern strikes meet up and close the death trap. The Ukrainian military is in a dangerous and risky position, and the stakes are very high. If the trap is closed, a significant part of Ukraine's best forces will likely be completely exhausted and destroyed.

The future defense of the region's key fortresses – Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, Bakhmut, Avdiivka – would be gravely compromised. That would be a blow even more painful and impactful than the recent drama of Mariupol and the Azovstal garrison that had to fight on alone with no chances to break free.

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Kyiv, Ukraine — So it's been the first 100 days of what we in Ukraine sometimes ironically call "Putin's three-day war."

Against expectations and general doom and gloom, Ukraine is still around as a sovereign country and is still fighting fiercely, although it has lost a lot. Now, after three months of fighting, Russia has occupied nearly 20% of the territory of Ukraine, a country the size of France.

The war's outcome is still out of sight – but, based on what we have seen with our very eyes on the battlefields of Ukraine, we can already make three main conclusions about Russia and what its war is about:

Russia is not an absolute power resisting which is hopeless

Back in winter, the Kremlin has concentrated nearly well close to 190,000 troops (including nearly 125 battalion tactical groups) against Ukraine, nearly two-thirds of its armed forces. Russia indeed enjoys the numerical or quantitive advantage in terms of manpower, air force, artillery, missiles, and naval power.

But on the ground, in combat, what we Ukrainian have seen is a mass of old and sometimes rather degraded and unmodernized Soviet hardware and equipment. In many cases, poor Russian maintenance and support was a genuine surprise. We thought the Ukrainian military has corruption problems, but the Russian military's condition in the invasion's early days was shocking. Wrong were those who presented the Russian military as an armada of space marines. Wrong were also those who predicted Kyiv to fall within 72 hours.

In reality, as early as April 1, Russia's blitzkrieg had been defeated near Kyiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, and the Russian military had to leave nearly 40% of the territories it had occupied after February 24 and concentrate its main effort on just one direction, which is Donbas in Ukraine's east.

It has failed to eliminate the Ukrainian air force, or derail the popular will to resist, and has bogged down in extremely hard and protracted hostilities instead of an easy and quick victory over weak Ukraine. According to the Pentagon, Russia has already lost nearly 1,000 tanks. And that's before the real massive Western military aid, like heavy artillery and rocket systems, started flowing to Ukraine. Russia is a force that can and should be fought.

Russia's military thought is weak 

Many expected a much more sophisticated and modern approach, but no. Russia's basic tactics now, simply saying, is: let artillery absolutely devastate everything on your way, be it enemy lines or a populated city. Then let the ground force advance through charred ruins, at any price. Repeat.

The Russian war has already left a whole range of Ukrainian cities, especially in the east, like Mariupol or Volnovakha, basically razed to the ground, with a civilian death toll not seen since World War II.

All those talks of "network-centric warfare" and "high-precision weaponry" ended up being nothing but talks. The Russian military in Donbas is fighting the way the Soviet doctrine dictated in the 1960s and the 1970s – find a weak spot in enemy defenses and crush the whole of your firepower on it.

Russia's drastic numerical superiority has thus granted it a lot of dangerous gains in Ukraine, at the cost of severe casualties on both sides and great destruction. This is Russia's fighting style, as simple as that.

And that's a lot of progress since Russia's 60-kilometers-long military columns slowly and painfully dashing through traffic jams on Ukrainian roads in an attempt to finally reach Kyiv and organized a frontal attack. Ukrainian mobile defense and hit-and-run tactics in the woods, where those convoys of fuel trucks and armored vehicles are most vulnerable, have been painful to Russian supplies and logistics.

This war cannot be stopped via territorial concessions

Back in 2014, Russia attacked the Crimean Peninsula and incited an 8-year-long war in Donbas — when Ukraine was "neutral" and "not aligned with NATO," but Russia lost its power over Ukraine as a result of a popular uprising. It had in fact occupied three major regional capital cities. Now, as a result of an even bigger invasion, Russia is overtly talking about the full annexation of the whole of Donbas, as well as the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions in Ukraine's south as "integral Russian territory."

And it's not talking about absorbing Kyiv, or Kharkiv, or Odesa, just because it failed to seize those cities. Russian appetite for territorial conquests is skyrocketing, as was Adolf Hitler's in the 1930s. So no, any new Ukrainian territorial concessions will only encourage the Kremlin into trying to take even more in a new war. There just can't be a concession "for the sake of peace and saving lives" big enough to make it leave Ukraine alone.

And when the world's biggest nuclear power talks about "NATO threat" and "a preemptive strike against Ukrainian military buildup," it makes sense only to Russian useful idiots in the West. Russia just wants its former colony back under its rule. And then move on to whoever is next.

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The Russian-Ukrainian war crisis, one of the worst in Europe's recent history, continues raging high. Now, it expands into a new domain – maritime navigation, and, therefore, Ukraine's economy.

As one of the most recent developments, Russia closed vast expanses of the Black and the Azov Sea for civilian maritime traffic, under the pretext of naval exercises, for the period between February 13 and 19.

The decision announced in the heat of Russia's large military maneuvers in Belarus effectively isolated most of the Ukrainian-controlled southern coastline, including key ports such as Odesa, Mykolaiv, Berdyansk, and Mariupol. According to Ukrainian estimates, this consistently entails trade losses worth millions of dollars, which triggers accusations of economic warfare waged by Russia and even a sea blockade that might be imposed amid the crisis.

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Ukrainian media brought the order to the light on February 9, following announcements regarding Russian naval exercises that are expected to involve over 140 warships and 10,000 personnel. The short-term closure of certain aquatic areas, under international maritime law, due to military maneuvers is not a rare thing in the Black Sea region, particularly due to Russia's naval activities.

But this time around, according to Ukrainian experts, it is different now. "There are no passages available for commercial vessels," says Black Sea navigation expert Andriy Klymenko.

"This is something that has not happened over the last 8 years." The restricted region in the Black and the Azov seas expands up to the very border of Ukraine's 12-mile territorial waters zone, according to Russian coordinates. The initial announcement affected nearly 800 kilometers of Ukraine's southern coastline.

As a result, the entrance to the Sea of Azov via the Russian-controlled Kerch Strait was completely closed for the whole duration of drills. "As for the Black Sea basin, navigation is only possible if a vessel drifts off recommended seaways to bypass the gunnery zones," as the Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority commented later.

"Therefore, this entails imitations in terms of the vessels' draft." Meanwhile, all 13 Ukrainian seaports located on the southern coastline, according to official figures, have processed a total of 153 million tons of cargo in 2021 alone. This corresponds to nearly 60% of Ukrainian exports and 50% of imports, according to the Kyiv School of Economy.

Upon that, the Ukrainian economy is still very dependent on international trade. According to estimates by Oleg Nivievskiy of the Kyiv School of Economy, if Russia blocks all Ukrainian ports for a month, Ukraine might be losing between $25 million and $170 million a day.

After a month of the blockade, Ukraine could end up losing up to $5.1 billion, or up to 3.3% of its 2020 GDP. After three months, losses might constitute up to 9.9% of its GDP, according to Nivievskiy. The forecasts, along with Russia's military activity near Ukraine's borders, raised fears of economic strangling as one of the Kremlin's most effective tools of rendering pressure upon Kyiv.

Oleg Solodukhov, the founder of The Charterers shipping audition company, gave an even more doom-laden forecast.

"Just the very existence of the geopolitical and military risks deteriorates the effectiveness of maritime transportation of Ukrainian exporters and importers by between $2 and $3 per ton," Solodukhov says."With the blockade being possible, the raise will get increased by at least between $5 and $7 per ton. At very rough estimates, it is reasonable to believe, judging from the Ukrainian ports' cargo load, that even now Ukraine is paying $3 million a day."

In other words, as the expert said, even the media clamor against the backdrop of Russia's naval activities in the seas costs Ukraine's maritime logistics nearly $100 million a month.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian navy on February 10 confirmed the potential impediment of international navigation and accused Moscow of the "excessive use of international law" for the sake of its political interests. The US Embassy in Kyiv later in the day also decried the Russian action:

"Russia's economic warfare against Ukraine continues," the US mission said. "Under the pretext of military exercises, Russia restricts Ukraine's maritime sovereignty, limits freedom of navigation in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov and impedes maritime traffic essential to Ukraine's economy."

But on Feb. 11, Ukraine's State Border Guard Service confirmed the fact that Russia had suddenly revoked the no-go zone in the Azov Sea watering east Ukraine, particularly Donbas, offering no official explanations. Two ports in the region, Mariupol and Berdyansk, in 2021 transferred a total of 8.6 million tons of cargo, including items vital for the region's steelworks industry.

Upon that, according to the Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority, the Azov navigation ended up being fully open. But there have been no changes voiced regarding the Black Sea zone.

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The battle was raging high for many weeks in the half-dead city trapped under heaps of ashy snow.

Radioactive fallout was nesting in frozen ruins on both sides of the front line cutting the city through.

Amid a lull in exhausting house-to-house fighting, Ukrainian surveillance spotted new hostile machine gun foxholes in a 9-story administrative building in Captain Lazarev street. And the enemy also established a new strongpoint at a crossroad just down the street.

The decision has been made.

Cold and tired, Ukrainian National Guard troops backed by KORD special police are to go on the offensive. The mission is to smash the enemy back – and hopefully, regain another several dozen of meters from the enemy.

Fortunately, this doomsday scene was just an exercise script for Ukraine's action drills held last weekend. Amid the escalating Russian war threat, the country is bracing for a potential full-scale invasion aimed at seizing most of the country, including the capital city of Kyiv.

Ukrainian leadership still publicly claims the probability of a Russian attack as low, despite increasingly alarming messages from the West. Nonetheless, the country's National Guard and other power agencies are holding regular training, including in terms of sustaining a brutal war in the Ukrainian streets.

Last weekend, the training scene was exotic and unforgiving: Pripyat, the legendary ghost city of Chernobyl. Once a thriving settlement of 50,000, it was fully abandoned shortly following the ill-fated 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, which is located just 3 kilometers to the east.

Ever since then, the city is the heart of the infamous 30-kilometer alienation zone, its empty buildings decaying and getting absorbed by nature. Now decades after the catastrophic event, it is still partly contaminated and not recommended for a long-term stay.

But for the Ukrainian military, those murky dead streets are an ideal ground depicting the grueling urban warfare.

Meanwhile, the simulated battle embraces for yet another offensive in Captain Lazarev Street.

Drones have seen enemy troops (not named directly, but obviously pointed out to as Russian military or Russian-led irregulars) partly isolated in their close quarters, and their supplies and reinforcements are scarce.

So now this might be a good moment to try and step in again.

But first things first: Ukrainian emergency service squads help evacuate the last surviving civilians from recently retaken buildings now behind the line. Hungry and exhausted, they crawl out of their basements they lurked in for days and weeks.

They are not in good hands.

The last breaths of silence suddenly end with sharp whistles rolling in the street: Ukrainian marksmen are taking down the enemy firing points revealed by drones in the building. A salvo of mortar rounds follows, striking the roadside strongpoint.

The Ukrainian onslaught begins.

The first strike is successful, and the enemy retreats from the strong point.

But, according to the exercise script, hostiles are getting back to their fortified positions in a 5-story building down the street.

Ukrainian forces develop the attack: a National Guard armored personnel carrier slowly rolls down the embattled street, spraying fire upon the ruins. An infantry squad follows behind the vehicle.

Slowly and steadily, Ukrainian forces suppress the last few resisting hostiles in nearby buildings to make it to the core entrenchment.

Another fierce, concentrated head-on push supported by armor – and Ukrainian KORD operators battle their way inside the building. Soon, fierce machine gun bursts die down and black smoke absorbs the damaged house.

It's all over for the enemy garrison.

Ukrainian troops regained just another small city block, but the tactical success comes at a price: a soldier is badly injured.

This simulated battle of Pripyat, according to the military, still gives a pretty mild picture of bloodletting urban warfare that is to be happening if Russia decides on a full-fledged military action and the occupation of Ukraine.

However, as Ukraine's defense minister Oleksii Reznikov asserted following the drills, Kyiv does not consider the famous Chernobyl Zone as a potential Russian target.

Against many speculations in media, the area is known for its dense forests and extensive swamps that effectively make a ground-borne armored blitz a very complicated action.

Illia Ponomarenko is a defense and security reporter with The Kyiv Independent in Ukraine.

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In the twilight of war, uncertainty is your sworn enemy. As a war reporter in Kyiv, I see it crystal clear now. From here, a grand war in the heart of Europe seems so unlikely and so close at the same time – and this drives you insane.

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Over 100,000 Russian troops have surrounded Ukraine, causing the worst security crisis in the region since the active phase of the war in 2014. The Kremlin is issuing increasingly aggressive demands towards NATO and the United States regarding Ukraine's future.

Within just weeks, many Western nations have been embroiled in frantic attempts to stop the Kremlin. As diplomacy hasn't brought any tangible results, shipments of advanced weapons are now being sent to Kyiv – as probably the last-ditch attempt to – if not to avoid war – at least give Ukraine a better chance to withstand it.

It seems that, whether we like it or not, we are in the middle of the transition to war.

Ukrainian media has grown increasingly nervous. Sometimes, Ukrainian TV reminds me of the tense anticipation of grand asteroid impacts seen in so many disaster movies. The media is bombarded by Western intelligence reports on Russian plans to occupy much of Ukraine in early 2022, and maps showing war plans and featuring scary arrows of Russian attacks are all around.

President Volodymyr Zelensky makes public addresses calling on everyone to stay calm and strong and not to buy the war scare instigated by the Kremlin.

Earlier this week, Ukraine's chief of presidential staff Andriy Yermak held an off-the-record meeting with the country's top journalists. Yermak, known to be a grey cardinal behind Zelensky, was cautiously optimistic. But the tense atmosphere and the reporters' dismal expressions were saying it all, making the office look more like a war room.

Ukrainian social media is at a boiling point. People are ranting about what Russia is going to do to this country, arguing what should be included in everyone's wartime survival kits, and discussing where to find the nearest air-raid shelter and why it is used as a local grocery warehouse.

The slightest piece of news spirals into the wildest interpretations. In an interview with CNN,  Zelensky said that under one of many hypothetical scenarios, Russia could seize the city of Kharkiv to "protect the Russian-speaking population." Within an hour, headlines in Ukraine's media shout "Zelensky says Russians will occupy Kharkiv."

What normally comes next is people texting me, "Do you think we're going to have a war? But please be honest with me now."

The air of war scare and doomsday spreads quickly, sometimes triggering destructive effects on the ground. Rumors continue saying that Canadian and American diplomatic missions are about to be evacuated, while airlines like Lufthansa reschedule their redeye flights to Kyiv to avoid leaving their crew for a night here in Ukraine.

Once you come up out of the media sphere, however, you find yourself in a different world.

The streets of Kyiv are busy and noisy as usual. People rush in and out, minding their own business, crowded on the subway twice a day. The snowy city enjoys fine winter weather.

It is late January now, but Kyiv still can't over with our New Year's Day time craze.

In Kontraktova Square, one of the historic centers of this ancient city, there is still a joyful Christmas fair. Attractions, candies, lights, sweets, loud music. Every night I get back home from the office nearby after writing stories on the war threat, I see my fellow Kyivans enjoying hot mulled wine, dancing in the snow, and ice-skating.

They are happy not to know how heavy is the Sword of Damocles hanging over our head right now.

The voice of reason tells me that Russia is not capable – politically, economically, militarily – of completing a World War II-scale blitzkrieg to subdue Ukraine. The price behind that is so gargantuan that it makes such an option absolutely unrealistic.

And that all of its posturing is nothing but a grand intimidation campaign.

So I usually text back to my friends: "Everything's going to be alright, they are just trying to extort concessions from the West."

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But what if I am wrong?

What if human cruelty, greed, and thirst for power defy the voice of reason and turn that Christmas fair in Kyiv into a heap of charred ruins tomorrow?

Like I've said, uncertainty in the twilight zone drives you insane.

Illia Ponomarenko is a defense and security reporter with The Kyiv Independent in Ukraine.

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