The writer is the author of “Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine”
After more than 14 months of grueling fighting, Vladimir Putin has failed to achieve any of his war goals. His original goal was to subjugate all of Ukraine. That aspiration lasted for a few days, though it never quite vanished. His current position is that peace can be discussed as soon as Ukraine recognizes that the four oblasts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – illegally annexed last year, like Crimea in 2014 – are a permanent part of Russia .
Putin’s difficulty is that much of this claimed land is beyond the reach of Russian forces. Not long after the invasion, the Russians occupied about 27% of Ukrainian territory. This has now dropped to 18 percent. He hoped, with the recent Russian offensive, to remedy that situation, at least by taking Luhansk and Donetsk, known together as Donbass. But after months of effort, relying on artillery barrages and infantry assaults, they have suffered huge losses (100,000, including 20,000 killed, since December, according to the Pentagon) while making little progress.
Bakhmut has become the symbol of this struggle. After the loss of the adjacent city of Soledar in January, it too was expected to fall. Yet Ukrainian units held on and kept their supply lines open. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenaries who did most of the fighting, has complained bitterly that the defense ministry has denied his men enough ammunition and is now threatening to abandon Bakhmut next week. Elsewhere, Russian commanders are now torn between trying to gain ground or consolidate their current positions in anticipation of the imminent Ukrainian offensive.
Russia has also failed in its systematic campaign to eliminate Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, especially its electricity supplies, using drones and missiles, though deadly attacks on Ukrainian cities continue. The shelling claimed the lives of 23 civilians in Kherson on Wednesday. This strengthened rather than weakened Kiev’s resolve to continue the fight. Frustrated by Ukraine’s resilience, Russia now faces a significant number of its facilities, especially oil depots, hit hard behind the front lines by long-range drones.
A drone attack on the Kremlin this week drove the Russian leadership into such paroxysms of manufactured fury that many commentators speculated that it was a “false flag” attack designed to create a pretext for retaliatory action. Yet Russia has routinely struck down Ukrainian cities without bothering to apologize, and it’s hard to understand why the leadership would want to expose such an embarrassing vulnerability. This was clearly not a US-inspired attempt to assassinate Putin, as Russian propagandists claim. Maybe it was a Ukrainian provocation. The Russian mood will not have been helped by the fact that 18 of the 24 Iranian drones sent to punish Ukraine for this “outrage” have been shot down.
Absorbing the Russian offensive was not easy for Ukraine. Casualties were heavy and it was sometimes questioned whether it would have made more sense to withdraw. The generals in Kiev, however, believe these attrition battles served their purpose, preventing Russia from taking much more territory and inflicting heavy casualties.
Now it’s their turn. Preparatory work has been underway for some time, knocking down command posts, artillery pieces, ammunition depots and troop concentrations. The fresh brigades equipped with modern Western equipment are almost ready to move. But the enemy has prepared elaborate defenses to block the most likely areas of the Ukrainian advance and enjoys air superiority. Concerns about gaps in Ukraine’s air defenses and shortages of ammunition were publicized. Leaked (but now dated) assessments doubted that Kiev could make any real progress. However, the US government insists it is now more optimistic.
If the Ukrainian offensive were to follow the Russian one to failure, then the prospect would be for continued stalemate and another harsh winter of fighting and energy shortages. International calls for a ceasefire, preferably accompanied by a comprehensive peace agreement, will grow louder. The Ukrainians, however, are not playing for a draw. This is their best chance for breakthrough, and their ambition is to reach the approaches to the Crimea.
No matter how much ground is taken, the main goal must be to convince the Russian elite of the futility of this war and the fragility of its occupation. The war started with a decision in the Kremlin and that’s where a decision must be made to end it.
—————————————————-
Source link