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Below 91���� Senior Fellow Can Kasapoğlu offers a military situation report about the war in Ukraine.

Executive Summary

• Russian forces continue to advance on Ocheretyne and Chasiv Yar, where Ukraine seeks to stabilize its defensive lines before enemy forces can threaten the T-0504 Highway.
• Evidence emerged this week that Moscow has likely employed chemical warfare agents in Ukraine.
• The Kremlin’s electronic warfare (EW) activities threaten Ukraine, as well as the Baltic and Nordic countries.

1. Battlefield Assessment: Russia Advances on Ocheretyne and Chasiv Yar

The Russian military’s main objective remains the capture of the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts. Current battlefield developments suggest that Russian forces may soon push to seize important cities, such as Kharkiv and Sumy, as a prelude to a larger offensive that will likely begin this summer.

Over the past week, Ukrainian positions near Ocheretyne and Chasiv Yar continued to deteriorate. Evidence suggests that on these towns while simultaneously conducting positional fighting in the direction of Siversk. With its sizable troop concentrations, Russia holds the advantage in force-on-force and force-to-terrain ratios against Ukrainian defenses. The Kremlin’s recent territorial gains, and its skill in conducting artillery salvos, could collapse Ukraine’s defensive lines along several fronts.

Reports suggest that Ukrainian ground forces on Siversk this week and retained control of Ocheretyne and Chasiv Yar. Yet Russia may use a double-pincer maneuver with  to isolate Ukrainian forces near Chasiv Yar and gradually achieve an operational victory there. In addition, Russian control of Ocheretyne would catalyze its military’s advances, opening access to a road leading north to Kostyantynivka, an industrial city in Donetsk Oblast. Open-source intelligence, highlighting obtained from the battlefield, shows that Russian forces are currently pushing north and west in the region, likely intent on capturing this northbound road that connects to the T-0504 Highway. Because it is the last remaining thoroughfare out of Bakhmut, the T-0504 has been nicknamed the “.”

While Russia gained momentum from its ground offensive, Ukrainian strikes continued to pound critical Russian assets. The Ukrainian military is putting its Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to good use. suggests that on May 1, the Ukrainian Armed Forces conducted a successful on a near Kuban in Luhansk Oblast, where at least one ATACMS unit equipped with a cluster warhead scored a direct hit on a group of more than 100 Russian soldiers.

In another , Ukrainian missile forces targeted a Russian Iskander ballistic missile launch site. Available geospatial data and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) confirmed that this strike inflicted significant damage on the Russian facility. Although battle damage assessment data has not confirmed whether Ukraine completely destroyed the site, Kyiv’s ATACMS salvos marked an important operational success for its long-range strike deterrent.

In the meantime, Russia continued to bolster its arsenal at an alarming pace. Vadym Skibitsky, the deputy head of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine (GUR), reported that Russia produced approximately in 2023. Moreover, North Korea has transferred more than to the Russian military, as well as tactical ballistic missiles. Ukrainian officials have also estimated that, each month, Russia produces and receives an additional from its joint efforts with Iran. Finally, the Kremlin’s access to nitrocellulose and ammonium nitrate, critical components used in the manufacture of explosives, are stable this year compared to . Russia’s production efforts promise that its war on Ukraine will remain a highly attritional conflict fought at a high operational tempo.

2. Russia Accused of Using Chemical Weapons in Ukraine

Last week, United States officials  the Kremlin of employing chemical weapons and military-grade riot control agents in Ukraine. The US State Department believes that Russia has used chloropicrin, which was widely employed during World War I before it was banned for military purposes and restricted to agricultural use. Reportedly, Moscow has employed the chemical agent on , including in December 2023, when Russian drone warfare assets released caustic and flammable gas on Ukrainian fortifications.

Russian combat formations also reportedly have used quadcopter drones to  that disperse chlorobenzalmalononitrile, or CS gas. The K-51 bomb was the Soviet Army’s principal riot control grenade and is still in Russia’s arsenal.  is more powerful than the police-grade variants of the weapon and can be lethal. Russia’s chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defense units have also been deployed in Ukraine with heavy flamethrower TOS-1A Buratino 220mm-class rockets, and have extended their missions to offensive chemical warfare roles.

The Kremlin’s uses of chemical weapons constitute undeniable war crimes and reflect Moscow’s complete defiance of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), an international framework to which Russia is a party.

3. Russia’s Electronic Warfare Capabilities Haunt Ukraine and the Baltics

that Russian combat formations are increasingly using Global Positioning System (GPS) signal suppression tactics to curb Western GPS-based precision munitions and affect critical military equipment. Previous 91���� studies have examined how Russia’s electromagnetic warfare (EW) efforts have decreased the effectiveness of Ukraine’s 155mm Excalibur precision-guided artillery shell, a munition that once hit targets with 70 percent efficiency but declined to only 6 percent after Russian EW efforts targeted it.

Ukraine is not the only testing ground for Russia’s offensive EW program. On April 25 and 26, two Finnish civilian aircraft were reportedly exposed to Russian jamming, prompting Finnair to to Tartu, Estonia, until the end of May. In Norway, Russian EW efforts also . Russia’s EW activity is now an open threat to the Baltic and Nordic regions of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.