Rainy climate in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas vicinity could prefer that military in its combat in opposition to invading Russian forces, which are preparing a more potent offensive within the sector, a senior Pentagon official said Thursday.

For couple of days, rain has battered Donbas and is expected to continue even more for  coming days alongside warming temperatures.

“The fact that the ground is softer will make it harder for them to do anything off of paved highways,” said the official, who spoke under condition of anonymity.

The weather already played an important role in Ukraine’s north at the beginning of the invasion, when the fact that the ground was not sufficiently frozen forced Russian tanks to circulate in long convoys on paved roads, making them vulnerable to the Ukrainian forces’ Javelin anti-tank systems.

The Donbas region, which is geographically situated on a large plane, is more favorable to armed vehicles.

“The weather will certainly be a factor in war,” the official added.

At the moment, Russian forces are still preparing for their new offensive in the east, but the official said, “It’s very difficult for us to tell you with certainty… when D Day is for this.”

“How far they’ll go, what that means, whether that’s the end of it, we just don’t know that much detail right now,” the official said.

“What we’re seeing today is what we would call shaping operations,” the official said, adding that the United States believes Russia wants “to achieve some physical tangible objectives in the Donbas within the next couple of weeks.”

French President Emmanuel Macron lately envisioned that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin would cognizance his assaults at the Donbas to obtain a victory related to May 9, the anniversary of the seize of Nazi Germany in 1945.