"THE BIG BATTLE IS COMING'

After nearly a year of war, Russia and Ukraine both need a breakthrough – but a major offensive will be loaded with risk, whoever strikes first

-  Jan-Philipp Hein 

In the clear sky over the winter-yellowed marsh on the outskirts of the town of Huliaipole, the bang and crump of artillery picked up pace like the thunderclaps of a distant but approaching storm.

The Russian armed forces declared on 22 January that they had launched a new offensive in Zaporizhzhia region, but the Ukrainian soldiers seemed unperturbed. The frontline here has not moved for 10 months, and the Russians are hunkered in their trenches, which run across the rolling black-soil farmland. They were not going anywhere soon, the soldiers said.

“There is more activity in these past couple of weeks with shelling from artillery and even from tanks, but they don’t send infantry over the line because they’re scared,” said Vitaly, a senior sergeant in the 56th Mariupol motorised infantry brigade, which is holding the line around this town 100km east of Zaporizhzhia city.

However, Vitaly acknowledged that the frozen line was beginning to heat up. The number of incoming shells and rockets on this segment of the southern front more than doubled in January to 4,000 a day.

“The big battle is coming this spring, or even before,” Vitaly said. Whether it arrives here or somewhere else it may prove to be the most intense phase of the war so far.