• A Ukrainian soldier near Trokhizbenka, in the Luhansk region, on Feb. 2. After his forces were mauled in cities and towns in northern Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin is shifting the focus of his invasion to the flatlands of Donbas in the east. | TYLER HICKS / THE NEW YORK TIMES
    A Ukrainian soldier near Trokhizbenka, in the Luhansk region, on Feb. 2. After his forces were mauled in cities and towns in northern Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin is shifting the focus of his invasion to the flatlands of Donbas in the east. | TYLER HICKS / THE NEW YORK TIMES
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KYIV – There are fields instead of city streets, farmsteads instead of apartment buildings. Open highways stretch to the horizon.

The battles in the north that Ukraine won over the past seven weeks raged in towns and densely populated suburbs around the capital, Kyiv, but the war is about to take a hard turn to the southeast and into a vast expanse of wide-open flatland, fundamentally changing the nature of the combat, the weapons at play and the strategies that might bring victory.

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