Bracing for battle

A 7-year-old Ukrainian boy held a wooden toy rifle while standing next to destroyed Russian military vehicles on April 17 in Chernihiv, Ukraine. That same day, the Russian army began pouring troops into a new offensive along a front that covered more than 300 miles in eastern Ukraine. The new troops reportedly included mercenaries from Syria and Libya. Both sides said the war had entered a new phase, as Russia attempted to take control of Donbas—Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland. Military experts told the Associated Press that Russia was attacking Ukrainian troops from the north, south, and east, and trying to encircle them. “They have driven almost everyone and everything that is capable of fighting us against Ukraine,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said of the renewed Russian offensive in a video address to the nation. He added that Russian forces were targeting civilians, and he called the Russian army “the most barbaric and inhuman army in the world.”