{"id":205888,"date":"2026-03-30T15:31:28","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T15:31:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/ukraine-battles-a-brutal-russian-offensive-as-iran-war-takes-the-worlds-focus-nbcnews-com\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T15:31:28","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T15:31:28","slug":"ukraine-battles-a-brutal-russian-offensive-as-iran-war-takes-the-worlds-focus-nbcnews-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/ukraine-battles-a-brutal-russian-offensive-as-iran-war-takes-the-worlds-focus-nbcnews-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine battles a brutal Russian offensive as Iran war takes the world's focus – nbcnews.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

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KYIV, Ukraine \u2014 With the world\u2019s attention shifting to the escalating conflict in the Middle East<\/a>, Russia is pushing forward with a spring offensive in Ukraine<\/a> despite months of peace talks<\/a> that no longer appear to be Washington\u2019s priority.
While Moscow seeks to regain momentum and capture more territory four years into its full-scale invasion, Ukrainians caught up in the conflict told NBC News their hopes that President Donald Trump<\/a> will settle their war while waging another in Iran<\/a> are dwindling.
The Iran war is \u201cdefinitely a distraction,\u201d Senior Sgt. Volodymyr Rzhavskyi said. Rzhavskyi, 44, has been serving since 2014, when Russian-backed separatists first began fighting in Ukraine\u2019s east. He has little faith in the peace talks, but remains \u201ca hopeless optimist\u201d that Ukraine \u201ccan win in this war, not just hold on, but win.\u201d
In a phone interview from the Donetsk region, where he is currently stationed, Rzhavskyi said that with Trump preoccupied, Ukraine must continue to defend itself. \u201cThis is not a sprint, it\u2019s a marathon,\u201d Rzhavskyi said. \u201cWe must dissuade the Russians from encroaching on anything Ukrainian for at least another hundred years.\u201d
Oleksandr, a lieutenant who is serving in Ukraine\u2019s south and did not want his last name or age revealed due to the sensitive nature of his service, said he is also ready to fight on. \u201cAs long as they push, we will kill them,\u201d he said in a series of audio notes from the front lines. \u201cWe see that the peace process is deadlocked. Russia is asking for what we can\u2019t give it \u2014 our land,\u201d he added.
Russia\u2019s latest push to alter a largely static front line has come at a steep human cost. In just one week, more than 8,710 Russian troops were killed or seriously wounded in Ukraine as Moscow intensified its \u201coffensive actions,\u201d Ukraine\u2019s commander in chief, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Monday. His Russian counterpart, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, said last week that his troops were on the offensive \u201cacross the entire front line\u201d and had taken 12 Ukrainian settlements in the first two weeks of March. Neither Russia nor Ukraine regularly reports the number of their own war dead, wounded or missing.
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, which has analyzed the battlefield situation in Ukraine since 2022, said in an assessment on Monday<\/a> that the reported Russian casualty rate during the spring offensive was \u201cunsustainable given Russia\u2019s current recruitment rates and would likely degrade Russia\u2019s ability to wage such large assaults in the mid- to long-term.\u201d It remains unlikely this year that Russian forces will seize the so-called \u201cFortress Belt,\u201d the main fortified defensive line in the fiercely contested eastern region of Donetsk, the assessment said, with Moscow likely to make some tactical gains at a significant cost.
The land that Ukraine still holds in Donetsk is at the center of a stalemate in negotiations<\/a> after Kyiv refused to give it up in exchange for peace. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he would seize Donetsk by force and take full control of the Donbas region, composed of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, should the diplomatic track fail.
A core part of Russia\u2019s information campaign is that a Ukrainian defeat is somehow inevitable because Moscow has a continuous battlefield momentum, said Christopher Tuck, an expert in conflict and security at King\u2019s College London. But the events of the last couple of months show that those assumptions are false, Tuck said.
\u201cWhile Ukraine remains under sustained pressure, its battlefield performance demonstrates that its forces continue to be resilient and adaptive, capable of conducting successful local counterattacks and of leveraging new technologies and methods, especially in realms such as drones and artificial intelligence, to offset their numerical inferiority,\u201d he said, referring to Ukraine\u2019s lingering struggle to recruit more troops.
Meanwhile, Russia continues to be wedded to a method of war that relies on attrition, scale and firepower.
\u201cOverall, this has allowed Russia to retain the initiative in some areas, but it absolutely has not established for Putin an irreversible path to victory,\u201d Tuck said. \u201cAt the moment, neither side believes the war has been decided, and so the conflict is likely to continue.\u201d
Even as his own war with Iran rages, Trump has pressured Ukraine to come to an agreement, accusing President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of stalling the peace process in an interview with NBC News earlier this month<\/a>. Zelenskyy told Reuters on Wednesday that Washington had tied security guarantees for Ukraine, critical to the proposed peace deal, to Kyiv ceding the entire Donbas to Russia.
Trump told reporters Tuesday<\/a> that Russia and Ukraine were \u201cgetting close\u201d to a deal, but conceded he has been \u201csaying that for a while\u201d after well over a year of mediation efforts. The Kremlin responded on Wednesday, saying it expects the U.S. to \u201ccontinue its goodwill\u201d as it also denied Thursday that Putin has lost interest in a peace settlement since the Iran war broke out.
Iran\u2019s retaliatory attacks on neighboring Persian Gulf states have disrupted the trilateral talks between the U.S., Ukraine and Russia, some of which took place in the Middle East<\/a> in the weeks before the Iran war. They have yet to resume in the same format.
Military medic Vadym, who did not want to reveal his last name due to his service on the front lines in the Donetsk region, said he and his colleagues witness firsthand the human cost of the raging war, rescuing wounded soldiers daily. They harbor \u201cvery few illusions\u201d that diplomacy can lead to peace on Ukraine\u2019s terms, Vadym, who worked at a Kyiv hospital before he joined the army in 2024, said on the phone Tuesday. \u201cThere is a feeling that we are in a deadlock, and no one wants to give up territories or ambitions,\u201d he said.
The escalation in the Middle East has drained both attention and resources away from Ukraine, Vadym, 31, added. While he thinks Trump has not fully lost his interest in settling the war, the attention of global leaders can only stretch so far. \u201cIt\u2019s like dealing with one patient, where all your resources are focused on that person, versus looking after an entire ward.\u201d
Oleksandr, the lieutenant, hopes that Trump is \u201cjust more focused on a quick victory in Iran right now\u201d and has not fully lost interest in Ukraine. The fates of the two conflicts are linked, he added, as Tehran was indirectly involved by supplying Russia with weapons and expertise.
Retaining the world\u2019s attention on his nation\u2019s fight is exactly what Zelenskyy has tried to do, touring European capitals and the Gulf in recent weeks as he seeks to drum up support.
In an interview with NBC News on Saturday<\/a>, Zelenskyy said it would be a “mistake” if American-made missile interceptors bound for Ukraine were diverted to Gulf countries being attacked by Iran.
Patriot missiles, used to deflect Iran\u2019s retaliatory strikes on its neighbors, are in short supply in Ukraine as it continues to deflect Russia\u2019s near daily attacks.
Asked whether he believed Trump cared about the future of Ukraine, Zelenskyy paused for a moment.
\u201cI hope so,\u201d he said. \u201cYou know the policy of the United States today. They care about the United States more. It\u2019s understandable, by the way. We understand it, and I think that the American team is very open about it.\u201d
Tehran is Russia\u2019s ally, and any damage to its political regime is \u201cgood news\u201d for Ukraine, said Sviatoslav Yurash, a member of Ukraine\u2019s parliament and a serving soldier. Kyiv should concentrate on helping its allies to contain \u201cthe evil multiplied by countries like Iran and Russia.\u201d
Yurash said he is \u201choping against hope\u201d that negotiations will succeed, but the reality is that Russia can\u2019t be trusted when it comes to peace agreements. \u201cI can\u2019t focus on optimism when I understand that Putin continues to talk about his desires and dreams to take all of Ukraine.\u201d
Daryna Mayer is an NBC News producer and reporter based in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Yuliya Talmazan is a reporter for NBC News Digital, based in London.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeKYIV, Ukraine \u2014 With the world\u2019s attention shifting to the escalating conflict in the Middle East, Russia is pushing forward with a spring offensive in Ukraine despite months of peace talks that no longer appear to be Washington\u2019s priority.While Moscow seeks to regain momentum and capture more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":205889,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-205888","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}