For Ukraine, so much unexpected success and still so much to do

kyiv, Ukraine – In forests, fields and fierce urban fighting, the Ukrainian military defied odds and all expectations, forcing Russia into multiple withdrawals over the span of nine years. brutal and bloody months of war

Yet despite its success, and even with tens of thousands of soldiers dead on both sides, Ukraine is, in a sense, only halfway there:

his army has now claimed about 55% of the territory Russia occupied after the February invasion.

Ukraine is on the offensive along most of the 965 km front line.

Russia is crouched defensively to the south and northeast as it continues to attack towards an eastern city, Bakhmut.

Ukraine’s success brought the war to a turning point.

Because it’s on the offensive, it can shape the next phase of the fight, determining whether to push its advantage beyond Russian-occupied territory or settle down for the winter, as military analysts say Russia would like to do.

If it moves forward, Ukraine faces significant hurdles:

while it has squeezed more Russian fighters into a smaller space, that means future battles will be against more territory. heavily defendedon challenging terrain.

Ukraine is now fighting by boat in the reedy marshes and islands of the lower Dnieper delta; it is pushing against multiple trenches on the snowy plains in the Zaporizhzhia region in the south; and is engaged in bloody back-and-forth fighting along the so-called Svatove-Kreminna line, in the pine forests of northeastern Ukraine.

After the Russian withdrawal from Kherson this month, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky made a spectacular visit to the city, the only provincial capital conquered by Russian forces.

By raising the Ukrainian flag over a government building, he echoed a famous speech by Winston Churchill following the British victory at the Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942.

Churchill had declared “the end of the beginning” to the conflict, which was to continue for another three years. Zelensky tried to change the narrative.

“This is the beginning of the end of the war“, She said.

However, about a fifth of Ukraine’s territory is still occupied by Russia.

A reformed front

The winter war, after Ukraine liberated the city of Kherson and surrounding areas earlier this month, is now starting with a radically changed front line and a demoralized and degraded Russian army.

“Russian ground units suffered low morale, poor combined arms execution, poor training, poor logistics, bribery and even drunkenness,” wrote Seth G. Jones, director of the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

Ukraine’s advances mean more Russian supply lines in southern Ukraine are now within range of Ukrainian weapons and rockets, and Kiev says it will continue to fire at them.

But the new geometry also benefits the Russians, whose withdrawal from Kherson this month was their third major withdrawal of the war, but which has moved its forces to more defensible positions on the east bank of the Dnieper River.

The Russians continue to send newly mobilized troops into Ukraine to compensate for heavy losses.

The tens of thousands of Russian soldiers withdrawn from the Kherson region west of the river are being released to redeploy, strengthen defensive lines in the northeast, mount new attacks in the Donetsk region, and strengthen Moscow’s grip on the land bridge between Russia and Crimea which is so important to the Kremlin.

While military analysts often point out that the winter weather (the first blizzard to hit the trenches this weekend) will likely slow the pace of the Ukrainian offensives, no doubt hitting poorly equipped Russian soldiers as well.

Yet the war began in the winter of last February, and both armies have a extensive experience fighting in the winter in the Eurasian steppe.

A separate war, over infrastructure

While Russian soldiers are on the defensive on the battlefields in the south and east, Moscow has opened what amounts to a separate war:

attacks with missiles and drones it intended to destroy Ukraine’s infrastructure, degrading the quality of life of millions of civilians in an attempt to demoralize them. .

Last week, Russia launched its own major bombardor warfare against power plants, substations, natural gas plants, and water systems, a sustained campaign of devastation that had rarely been attempted before.

Colonel Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesman for Ukraine’s air force, said on Monday the military has “autonomous power sources” so problems with the national grid do not directly affect soldiers on the front lines.

And he said the attacks provide motivation to soldiers who have families enduring hardships, strengthening their resolve to fight.

But the strikes are a burden on Ukraine’s air defense system, Ihnat acknowledged.

He said Ukraine fires, on average, two missiles at every Russian rocket in hopes of boosting its chances of success, and now need more ammo and air defense systems to keep up.

Furthermore, he said, Russia is using relatively cheap drones to deplete Ukraine’s air defenses.

Ihnat said this weekend that the rocket attacks aim to force Kiev to the negotiating table.

“It is clear that they want to impose certain conditions, they want us to negotiate,” he said.

The Kremlin has recognized this. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, told reporters last week that the infrastructure attacks they are “the consequences” of Ukraine’s reluctance to “enter into negotiations”.

Ukraine strikes deep in the south

Despite Russian threats, officials in Kiev say they are in no mood to negotiate, instead hoping to use the momentum of the fall offensives to keep Russian forces on the defensive.

The Ukrainian military said last week that Russian soldiers were already retreating 10 to 20 kilometers from the east bank of the Dnieper River near Kherson to get out of range of Ukrainian shells.

As it stands, Ukraine’s long-range precision missiles can now reach deeper into Russian-controlled territory, with nearly everything north of Crimea within range.

Reflecting their changing fortunes, the Russians are now digging trenches in northern Crimea, the peninsula they annexed in 2014.

The Russians are also adding new layers of defense outside the southern city of Melitopol, which was occupied by Russia in the early days of the war.

It is located at the crossroads of main roads in the south, so it is perhaps the city strategically more important under Russian control.

Military analysts have speculated that Ukraine may try to divide Russian forces east and south by crossing Melitopol.

Bloodshed in Donbas

The rolling plains, coal mines and agricultural towns of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region remain contested terrain and an area where Russia seeks to turn the tide on its failings.

According to General Oleksiy Hromov, a member of the Ukrainian general staff, the eastern front remains the most challenging in the country.

Between November 12 and 17, he said, the Ukrainian army reported more than 500 military clashes in the region.

The Donbas has been divided into two battles: one is a line of trenches through pine forests along a critical supply route known as the Svatove-Kreminna line, for the area’s two largest cities.

The other is a battle for Bakhmut, a city in a bowl-shaped river valley, with each side holding heights.

The city and nearby villages have been transformed into an artillery firing range.

Bakhmut has limited strategic value, but the fighting is fierce for a variety of reasons.

For Russia, capturing it could open the way to other major cities in Donbass.

On top of that, Bakhmut is seen as a trophy by Russia’s private military contractor Wagner, which has sought to seize him as a way to offset losses elsewhere and boost the political fortunes of the company’s founder Yevgeny Prigozhin in Russia.

Ukraine, for its part, has been reluctant to give up any cities without a fight: look at its months-long battle for Sievierodonetsk, a city close to Bakhmut and eventually captured by the Russians, and Mykolaiv in the south, still held by Ukraine.

Peace talks are unlikely

“On the front lines,” General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week, “the Ukrainians have had success after success and the Russians have failed every time.”

But Milley also pointed out that the Russians still control a sizable part of Ukraine and suggested that Kiev, despite its successes, signals greater openness to negotiations.

“It’s not a small piece of land,” Milley said of the land that remains to be cleared.

“And it won’t happen in the next couple of weeks unless the Russian military completely collapses, which is unlikely.”

But the idea of ​​exchanging land for peace remains a failure in Kiev.

The Zelensky government does not believe that any negotiated settlement is durable.

Speaking by video at the Halifax International Security Forum on Saturday, Zelensky said many people are asking how to end the war.

“But I ask you to ask a more precise question: how to re-establish a true and just peace,” he said.

A truce now, he said, will not spell the end of the war. It would simply give Moscow time to recover before attacking again.

“Immoral compromises,” he said, “will only lead to more blood.”

c.2022 The New York Times Company