KIEV, Ukraine — With the world’s attention focused on the escalating conflict in the Middle East, Russia is launching a spring offensive in Ukraine despite months of peace talks that no longer appear to be a priority for Washington.
As Moscow tries to regain momentum and capture more territory four years after its full-scale invasion, Ukrainians caught up in the conflict told NBC News their hopes are fading that President Donald Trump will resolve their war while sparking another war in Iran.
The Iran war “is definitely a distraction,” said Senior Sgt. Volodymyr Rzavsky said. Rzhevsky, 44, has been serving since 2014, when Russia-backed separatists first began fighting in Ukraine’s east. He has little confidence in peace talks, but remains “desperately optimistic” that Ukraine “can win this war, not just stop, but win.”
In a phone interview from the Donetsk region, where he is currently stationed, Rzhevsky said that because of Trump’s preoccupation, Ukraine must continue to defend itself. “It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon,” Rzewski said. “We must prevent the Russians from encroaching on anything Ukrainian for at least the next hundred years.”
Oleksandr, a lieutenant serving in the south of Ukraine who did not want to reveal his last name or age because of the sensitive nature of his service, said he too is ready to fight. “As long as they push, we will kill them,” he said in a series of audio notes from the front lines. “What we see is that the peace process is at an impasse. Russia is demanding what we cannot give it – our land,” he said.
Russia’s latest effort to transform a largely static front line has come at a heavy human cost. Colonel General Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s commander in chief, said on Monday that in just one week, more than 8,710 Russian soldiers were killed or seriously wounded in Ukraine as Moscow stepped up its “aggressive actions.” His Russian counterpart, General Valery Gerasimov, said last week that his troops were on the offensive “along the entire border line” and had taken 12 Ukrainian settlements in the first two weeks of March. Neither Russia nor Ukraine regularly reports the number of killed, injured or missing in their wars.
Forcustomers
The Washington-based Institute for War Studies, which has analyzed the battlefield situation in Ukraine through 2022, said in an assessment monday The reported Russian casualty rates during the Spring Offensive were “unsustainable given Russia’s current recruitment rates and will likely reduce Russia’s ability to conduct such large attacks in the mid to long term.” This year it is unlikely that Russian forces will capture the so-called “Fortress Belt,” the main fortified defensive line in the hard-fought east of Donetsk, the assessment said, adding that Moscow is likely to gain few strategic advantages at significant cost.
The land Ukraine still holds in Donetsk is at the center of a standoff in talks after Kiev refused to give it up in exchange for peace. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that if the diplomatic track fails, he will seize Donetsk by force and take full control of the Donbass region, made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Christopher Tuck, an expert on conflict and security at King’s College London, said a core part of Russia’s information campaign is that Ukraine’s defeat is somehow inevitable because of Moscow’s constant battlefield dynamics. But events of the past few months show these assumptions are false, Tuck said.
“While Ukraine remains under constant pressure, its battlefield performance shows that its forces remain flexible and adaptive, capable of conducting successful local counter-attacks and able to take advantage of new technologies and methods to overcome their numerical inferiority, particularly in areas such as drones and artificial intelligence,” he said, referring to Ukraine’s long-running struggle to recruit more troops.
Russia, meanwhile, is wedded to a method of warfare that relies on conflict, scale and firepower.
“Overall, it has allowed Russia to maintain the initiative in some areas, but it has not established an irreversible path to victory for Putin,” Tuck said. “At present, neither side believes that the war has been settled, and therefore the conflict is likely to continue.”
Even as his own war with Iran rages, Trump has put pressure on Ukraine to come to a deal, accusing President Volodymyr Zelensky of stalling the peace process in an interview with NBC News earlier this month. Zelensky told Reuters on Wednesday that Washington had given Kiev security guarantees for Ukraine that are crucial to a proposed peace deal handing over all of Donbass to Russia.
trump told reporters on Tuesday That Russia and Ukraine were getting closer to an agreement, but he acknowledged that after more than a year of mediation efforts, he has been saying this for some time. The Kremlin responded on Wednesday by saying it hoped the US would “continue its goodwill” as it also denied on Thursday that Putin has lost interest in a peace deal since the Iran war began.
Iran’s retaliatory attacks on neighboring Persian Gulf states have disrupted trilateral talks between the US, Ukraine and Russia, some of which took place in the Middle East in the weeks before the Iran war. They still have to start again in the same format.
Vadim, a military doctor who did not want to reveal his last name because of his service on the front lines in the Donetsk region, said he and his colleagues see firsthand the human cost of the horrific war, rescuing wounded soldiers every day. Vadim, who worked in a hospital in Kiev before joining the army in 2024, said by phone Tuesday he has “very few illusions” that diplomacy can bring peace on Ukraine’s terms. “It feels like we’re at an impasse and no one wants to give up territory or ambitions,” he said.
Vadim, 31, said the escalation in the Middle East has diverted both attention and resources from Ukraine. While he believes Trump has not completely lost his interest in settling the war, the attention of global leaders can only go so far. “It’s like dealing with one patient, where all your resources are focused on that person, versus caring for the entire ward.”
Oleksandr, the lieutenant, hopes Trump is “more focused on a quick win in Iran right now” and has not completely lost interest in Ukraine. The fates of both conflicts are intertwined, he said, as Tehran was indirectly involved in supplying arms and expertise to Russia.
Keeping the world’s attention on his country’s fight is exactly what Zelensky tried to do when he went on a tour of European capitals last week to drum up support for Ukraine.
Zelensky told the BBC that he had a “very bad feeling” about the impact of the US operation in Iran on the war in Ukraine, fearing a shortage of Patriot missiles, which are being used to deter Iran’s retaliatory attacks on its neighbours. Ukraine is in short supply of missiles as it faces almost daily attacks from Russia.
But Tehran is an ally of Russia, and any damage to its political regime is “good news” for Ukraine, said Sviatoslav Yurash, a member of Ukraine’s parliament and a serving soldier. Kiev should focus on helping its allies stop “the evil perpetrated by countries like Iran and Russia.”
Yurash said he is “hoping against hope” that the talks will be successful, but the reality is that Russia cannot be trusted when it comes to a peace agreement. “I can’t focus on optimism when I understand that Putin continues to talk about his desires and dreams to take over all of Ukraine.”
