Military briefing: Ukraine battles to hold vital stronghold Chasiv Yar

Russia is intensifying its efforts to seize Chasiv Yar, a crucial stronghold in eastern Ukraine, as exhausted and under-equipped Ukrainian brigades struggle to hold the line while waiting for US military aid.

Up to 25,000 Russian troops have been deployed near the town in recent weeks, according to a spokesperson for Ukraine’s ground forces in the east. In other flashpoints along the frontline, Moscow’s army is also pressing ahead, seeking to capture as much territory as it can before the arrival of western kit. 

“The situation on the frontline has worsened,” Ukraine’s commander-in-chief General Oleksandr Syrsky said on Sunday.

Chasiv Yar is seen as a key prize for Moscow, with senior Ukrainian commanders claiming the Russian general staff has ordered its forces to seize it by May 9 when Russia celebrates the end of the second world war. The Kremlin has previously justified its invasion of Ukraine as an attempt at “denazification”, and symbolically tied the war to the Soviet Union’s fight against Nazi Germany.

But the small town’s importance is strategic rather than symbolic, analysts and Ukrainian servicemen say.

A Ukrainian retreat from Chasiv Yar could jeopardise the entire defence of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, collectively known as the Donbas. Sat on top of a hill, the city provides Ukraine with one of the last natural barriers protecting important supply lines and, 30 kilometres to the north, the regional capital of Kramatorsk.

“Chasiv Yar is a centre of gravity for the defensive line in the region,” said Viktor Kevliuk, a military analyst for the Centre for Defence Strategies, a Kyiv-based security think-tank.

The Russian air force is also homing in on Chasiv Yar, launching more than 30 powerful glide bombs every day, according to a spokesman for the 26th Artillery Brigade deployed in the city. These bombs are Soviet-era “dumb bombs” retrofitted with wings and navigation systems that allow Russia to better target Ukrainian positions. Upon impact, a glide bomb can leave craters up to 20m wide and 6m deep.

Both sides are now battling for control over Bohdanivka and Ivanivske, two villages downhill on the town’s flanks, with Russian troops so far unable to enter the town itself. 

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Chasiv Yar’s defence hangs in large part on a 30m-wide canal running along the eastern edge of the town. The Soviet-era structure, which was used to divert water from the Donets river to supply the region’s water-hungry metallurgical industries, offers a ready-made obstacle against the passage of armoured vehicles. On Tuesday, Russian troops were inching closer to the canal.

A bridge over the canal connects the main part of the town with the small Kanal residential district, which Russian soldiers briefly entered earlier this month and has since been devastated by artillery fire and air strikes.

Two stretches totalling some 1.5km where the open-air canal is covered provide “convenient places for [Russian] assaults”, said Kevliuk from the Centre for Defence Strategies. He added that the enemy forces have been “attacking very hard here these past two weeks, so far without success”.

The woods covering the hillsides on which Chasiv Yar sits have also become the scene of fierce fighting.

“It isn’t practical to use strike drones in the forest; the branches and foliage do not allow us to hit the targets we’re interested in,” said Yuriy Fedorenko, commander of the “Achilles” battalion, a Ukrainian drone unit operating in the area. “But we have other drones that can drop ammunition, like the Baba Yaga heavy bomber.”

Taking or bypassing Chasiv Yar would allow Russia’s artillery, drones and glide bombs to threaten the more vulnerable city of Kostyantynivka. Moscow would also be able to disrupt or entirely cut the supply lines running through the city, which Ukraine has been using to link defensive efforts in the northern and southern parts of the Donbas region.

It took the Russian military nearly a year to advance six kilometres from the ravaged city of Bakhmut to the edge of Chasiv Yar.

But recent advances have been much faster, with Russian units further south pushing forward seven kilometres deep in less than two weeks to capture the village of Ocheretyne.

“The ground that the Russians have been able to cover these past few months was good defensive terrain for Ukraine,” said Rob Lee, a military analyst and senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia programme. “Now Russia could advance faster.”

“On top of that, taking Chasiv Yar would make other areas that much harder to defend,” he said.

Recent Russian gains south of Chasiv Yar have only heightened the town’s significance by raising the prospect of a large-scale Russian pincer movement. If the advancing Russian forces near Ocheretyne were able to make gains along the road leading to Kostyantynivka, “the entire defence line” in the area, which the Russians have not been able to overcome since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, could be surrounded, said Mykola Melnyk, a Ukrainian officer and former brigade commander.

“I’m sure the Ukrainian political and military leadership is aware of this problem and is working to address it,” Melnyk said.

About 700 people from a prewar population of 12,000 still live in the battered town, local authorities said. Deprived of gas, electricity or water for nearly a year, Chasiv Yar has largely been turned into a military stronghold, accessible only by rough, back-country tracks and taken over by stray dogs.

While the devastated Kanal neighbourhood has been emptied of civilians, more than 30 people still live in small houses in the most heavily shelled districts on the eastern edge of the town, according to the local military-civilian administration.

“It’s too dangerous to go there now,” said Evgeny Tkachev, a 55-year-old Chasiv Yar native who still regularly enters the town in a truck loaded with humanitarian aid. Access to the city is now hampered by the near-constant drone threat.

“It’s a lottery,” Tkachev said. “These days the only way to go to the eastern districts is if it’s raining, so that the drones can’t fly.”

One single shop tucked into a street on the western edge of the town still allows the remaining locals and soldiers to buy products and connect to the internet via Starlink.

Analysts as well as Ukrainian forces fully expect Russia to intensify its attacks in the coming days, in an attempt to leverage its advantage before weapons paid for by the first tranche of the long-delayed, $61bn US aid package can reach the frontline.

“The enemy understands that Ukraine does not have enough planes, enough anti-aircraft systems and ammunition, that it does not have as many armoured vehicles as them,” said Fedorenko, the drone commander.

But, he added, Russia also “understands that our partners have made a very important decision and that we will soon receive the weapons that we need. Therefore, for the next month and a half, the enemy is going to push as hard as possible”.