After all, the Russian military has surpassed Ukraine’s by about ten to one. Moscow enjoyed a double advantage over Kyiv in the ground forces; and the nuclear force had ten times as many planes and five times as many armored combat vehicles as its neighbors. Apparently angry, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared on television just days earlier, delivering a jumbled historical monologue that clearly shows that he expects no less than a regime change in Kyiv. The Kremlin leader seemed to be betting that Zelensky would leave his capital, just as the US-backed president of Afghanistan had left Kabul just a few months earlier, and that Western outrage would subside, albeit with the temporary pain of new sanctions. One hundred days later, whatever plans Putin had for the victory parade in Kyiv were detained indefinitely. Ukrainian morality has not collapsed. Ukrainian troops, equipped with modern anti-tank weapons supplied by the United States and its allies, ravaged Russian armored columns; Ukrainian missiles sank the missile cruiser Moscow, the pride of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet; and Ukrainian planes remained in the air, despite the odds. In late March, the Russian military began withdrawing its battered troops from the Ukrainian capital, claiming it had shifted its focus to capturing the eastern region of Donbass. Three months after its invasion, Russia no longer seems to be aiming for a brief victorious war in Ukraine – nor does it seem capable of achieving it.
The problem with the forecast
Does this mean that Russia is losing? It is tempting to take a snapshot of the situation on a given day and draw overall conclusions.
The Ukrainians managed to kill Russian generals at an astonishing pace; Moscow was forced to reorganize its military command after the initial unrest; and Russian casualties, as elusive as the official figures are, are shockingly high.
But Russia now controls a crescent of Ukrainian territory that stretches from Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, continues through separatist-held cities of Donetsk and Luhansk and reaches west to Kherson, forming a land bridge connecting the Crimean peninsula (forcibly annexed by Russia in 2014). ) with the Donbass region.
The main direction of Russia’s efforts is now in the Donbass region, where things have settled down in a crushing war of attrition. Recent battles have centered around Severodonetsk, an industrial city where Ukrainian forces hold the last of eastern Luhansk.
Ukrainian troops ceded most of Severodonetsk to the Russians. The fall of the city will be a symbolic loss, but military analysts say it will spare Ukrainian forces there from a prolonged – and possibly loss – siege.
“Kyiv could devote more reserves and resources to the defense of Severodonetsk, and its failure to do so has drawn criticism,” the US-based Institute for War Studies said in a recent analysis.
“Both the decision to avoid allocating more resources to save Severodonetsk and the decision to withdraw from it were strategically sensible as well as painful. “Ukraine must use its more limited resources and focus on rebuilding the critical terrain, not on protecting the terrain, the control of which will not determine the outcome of the war or the conditions for resuming the war.”
Against the backdrop of the offensive against Severodonetsk, Alexander Motuzyanik, a spokesman for Ukraine’s defense ministry, said Russian forces were now “trying to encircle our troops in Donetsk and Luhansk” and regrouping to launch an offensive in the direction of Slavyansk, a strategic city. which can be shaped as the focus of the next key battle.
The battles in eastern Ukraine are being fought in much more open terrain than the more densely packed urban environment around Kyiv. This explains the urgency with which Ukrainians have called for heavier weapons – especially artillery systems that can hit targets over long distances – from the United States and its allies.
President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday that the United States will send more advanced missile systems, including high-mobility artillery missile systems with ammunition that can launch missiles at about 49 miles, a range far greater than anything Ukraine has ever sent.
This is welcome news for Kyiv, but Russia’s offensive in the east is taking place as international media attention to Ukraine shifts somewhat from the headlines. And that may be what Putin is counting on, perhaps given that high energy costs and rising consumer prices – both from the war in Ukraine – tend to focus public opinion (and lead to election results) in USA and elsewhere.
Putin can also count on brief diplomatic attention. This is the same Russian leader who doubled his support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2015 after Damascus suffered a series of defeats. This war, now in its 12th year, continued even as the world’s attention shifted to Ukraine.
In this respect, Zelensky was one of Ukraine’s biggest assets in the information war. He made a series of virtual appearances to parliaments around the world, while reminding other world leaders who may be willing to reassure Putin, urging Ukraine to cede territory that the Ukrainian people, not he, must decide the outcome.
In Zelensky’s appearances with wounded Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, the Ukrainian leader took selfies and designed a warm, humane and restrained leadership style. This contrasts with the Russian leader’s lonely public visit to a military hospital: Putin, in a large white lab coat, met with wounded soldiers and officers who stood numb in front of his commander-in-chief.
But Putin, who has put an end to all domestic political opposition and effectively controls his country’s airwaves, is not facing the same domestic pressure as Zelensky. Nikolai Patrushev, head of Putin’s Security Council, said in recent statements that Russian forces were not “pursuing deadlines” in Ukraine, suggesting that Putin has a much more open schedule for his war in Ukraine. Ukrainians, by contrast, fear that international fatigue may ensue, prompting the international community to pressure its government to make concessions to Putin.
“You have the watches, but we have time.” This proverb, sometimes attributed to a captured Taliban fighter, summarizes America’s dilemma in fighting the war in Afghanistan, a reluctant acknowledgment that insurgency operates on different political horizons and timelines, and that insurgents only need to survive – not win – technologically. the superior American military.
To reconsider this phrase, the deciding factor in Ukraine could be who has the time: a Russian dictator who is likely to hold power until he dies, or a Ukrainian people who are fighting for their national survival.
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