Ukraine heading for more brutal phase of war as Russia regroups

Bloomberg

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is entering a new phase, promising a more deadly time ahead for the country’s civilians and its remarkably determined army, according to Western military officials.
Early signs are that Russian commanders are abandoning the approach that marked the first days of the conflict, in which they relied on lightning strikes into cities they assumed would be half-heartedly defended, the officials said.
After multiple failures —highlighted by images Monday morning of a column of Russian heavily armored Tigr vehicles destroyed after trying to punch into Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city —officials from the US and allied nations expect more indiscriminate tactics as Russian forces seek to suppress resistance.
The new phase is likely to play out over several days, according to a report by the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War. After pausing to regroup and draw new assets into place around the capital, the ISW expects Russian forces to relaunch their attack on the capital, Kyiv.
In a sign that shift may already have begun, Russian forces encircling Kharkiv, a city of 1.8 million, on Monday conducted rocket attacks on a residential district, with reports of dozens killed or injured. Russia says it is only targeting military infrastructure.
The governor of the northern Sumy region, Dmytro Zhyvytskiy, published photographs on his Telegram channel Monday night of what he said was a Ukrainian army base reduced to rubble the previous day by Russian artillery. In a rare admission of heavy losses, he said graves were being prepared for 70 soldiers.
On Tuesday morning, Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko told Ukrainian media his city had faced days of heavy bombardment from artillery and aircraft, with infrastructure destroyed and electricity off. “These are the liberators who have come to free Russian-speaking people,” he said, adding that they were, rather, “Russian Nazis”.
A dash cam video clip from a car fleeing the city purported to show a TOS-1A thermobaric rocket launcher at the side of the road. The weapon has 24 chambers to fire volleys of so-called vacuum bombs that spray a fine mist of fuel, which on detonating create fireballs that suck the oxygen from the area hit. A Western official said on Monday that TOS-1A units had been identified, but not yet used.
“Masks off,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff Mykhailo Podolyak said in a Twitter post on Tuesday. “Russia is actively shelling city centers, inflicting direct missile and artillery strikes at residential and government areas. Russia’s goal is clear – mass panic, civilian casualties, destruction of infrastructure. Ukraine is fighting with dignity.”