War Day 59, April 19, Ukraine

Russia on Tuesday declared the start of a new phase of its assault on Ukraine aimed at capturing all of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in the east, as the Defense Ministry announced a sharp escalation of missile and artillery strikes overnight.

Sergey V. Lavrov, the foreign minister, told an Indian broadcaster that “this an important moment of this entire special operation” that aims to “fully liberate the Donetsk and Luhansk republics,” referring to plans to take territory beyond the parts of the two regions held by Russia-backed separatists since 2014.
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On Monday, Ukrainian officials said Russia had launched an attack along a nearly 300-mile frontline.

The Russian Defense Ministry said its missile and artillery forces had struck multiple Ukrainian military objectives overnight, targeting facilities in the Dumbass and also in the southern Mykolaiv region, a key stronghold on the way to the Black Sea port of Odesa.
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Oleksiy Arestovych, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, said the battle for the Dumbass is “the last big offensive of this war” and that “Russia won’t succeed” because Moscow lacks enough army reserves.
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Over the past 24 hours Russia has added two additional battalion tactical groups into the Dumbass region of Ukraine, a senior U.S. defense official said in a briefing to reporters, bringing the total number to 78. The official said that Russia still has about 75 percent of the soldiers and weapons from the pre-invasion force it assembled outside of Ukraine.