A more recent map, the Ukrainian cyrillic script shouldn't pose much of a problem.
As I have written before the Lysychansk hub with a normal population around 350.000 seems to get increasingly isolated by the Ukrainian forces. Liberating such a densly populated area would greatly reduce the amount of citiziens living in what is to a good degree a reign of terror and crime.
Difficult to know from my perspective, but to me it seems that securing the borders does have a higher priority for the Ukrainians then taking the fight at once to Luhansk and Donetsk. At least most of the casualities come from border areas and some military progess too. There seem to be good reasons for such a focus:
1) The 'Grad' strike which created many military casualties underlines how important it is to stop at least heavy weapons like tanks and additional artillery supply coming from Russia. At least they are harder to smuggle then Manpads and ATGM once the border area gets secured.
2) Russian 'volunteers' will also have a bit harder time to get in and might fear that they won't get home that easily. Even if the 'frontline' seems to be rather porpous the risk to get killed or captured will be increased. Ideally this means that a good deal try to leave foreign land and go home as quickly as possible.
3) The civilians have more time to leave the cities and bring themselves in safety which means a lower risk of civilian casualities by combat and seperatist atrocities.
There has been certainly made considerable progess and for now the three largest broder crossings seem to be under Ukrainian control. Still it would surprise me if there still wouldn't be a constant influx of Russian war material into Ukraine, be it over the flat open countryside or the Seversky Donets.
Lots of fog of war of course and many unkowns. We will see.
Originally Posted by Firn
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