KYIV, March 27 - Ukrainian forces are seeking to roll back Russian gains as Moscow shifts its focus to controlling a swath of the country’s south and east, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Ukrainian forces said Sunday they drove Russian troops out of Trostyanets, in the northeast near the Russian border, potentially opening a road to the provincial capital of Sumy, which is encircled by the Russians.

Western officials see signs that Russia is consolidating its position to regain the offensive, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged the West to provide his army with the heavier weapons it needs to fight the better-armed Russian military.

The retaking of Trostyanets comes after Moscow, having faced stiff resistance from the Ukrainians in its initial, multifront offensive, said Friday that it would refocus its campaign on the eastern Donbas region, where Russian forces hold a position of strength.

Russian forces have dug into defensive positions in the north and around the capital, Kyiv, which it has failed to seize. Russia’s firepower is currently concentrated on Mariupol, a strategically important city linking Russian-controlled parts of the Donbas with territory Moscow has captured in the south.

Retaking Trostyanets “demonstrates that the Ukrainians are able to counterattack, which means Russia can’t assume that once they hold ground they have secured it,” said Jack Watling, an expert on land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank. “That limits the amount of resource they can apply to the place they are trying to take at any one time.”

However, Western officials believe that Russia is now reinforcing in the Donbas region with fresh troops from the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary organization, with the goal of encircling Ukrainian forces.

It isn’t clear how well trained these new Russian troops will be and whether they will have access to enough high-grade weaponry to make quick gains against battle-hardened Ukrainian troops there. The new battalion tactical groups come from Russia’s eastern military district, which experts say is the least battle trained and well equipped. However, refocusing the attack on a narrower front could solve some of the logistics problems that have dogged Russian forces and allow their dominant air power to assert itself.

Western officials estimate that as much as a fifth of the Russian force is no longer combat-effective and that morale is low. But they warn that the war is far from won for Ukraine.
“What we are not seeing is turning the tide, what we are seeing is some individual success,” one official said. The creation of new Russian battalion tactical groups indicates that Russian President Vladimir Putin is still going “all in,” the official said.

Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s head of military intelligence, said Sunday that Russia sought to partition the country by merging territories in the east and south under its control into a single statelet.

“This is an attempt to create North and South Korea in Ukraine,” Budanov said.

In territories under its control, Russia is seeking to establish parallel authorities and forcing people to reject the Ukrainian currency, the hryvnia, Budanov said.

Russian and Ukrainian negotiators will hold their next face-to-face meeting in Istanbul, Turkey said on Sunday. The office of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he urged Mr. Putin in a phone call Sunday to accept a cease-fire with Ukraine.

Western officials see little signs that Russia is willing to see a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

“No one thinks there is the chance of a diplomatic solution in the next few days or even few weeks,” said a senior European Union official. Putin is “going to keep on pushing and trying to overhaul” the Ukrainian government.

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said last week that even if a cease-fire is agreed to, the West must further arm Ukraine to strengthen “the quills of the Ukrainian porcupine as to make it in future indigestible to the Russian invaders.”

“This is just the beginning,” he said. “We must support a free and democratic Ukraine in the long term.”

During a visit to Warsaw on Saturday, Biden said the Russian leader’s invasion of Ukraine had ignited a “new battle for freedom” between democracies and autocracies. Biden also called Putin “a butcher” and appeared to call for his ouster. A White House official later walked back Biden’s remark, which was dismissed by the Kremlin. A person familiar with the situation said that Biden’s comments weren’t part of his planned remarks. (wsj/ez)