Ukraine seems to have tripped up Russia
After its initial blitz, Moscow appears bogged down in a war of attrition with few successes
When Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, it had hoped to overtake the country in a blitz lasting only days or a few weeks. Many western analysts thought so too.
As the conflict marked its third month Tuesday, however, Moscow appears to be bogged down in what increasingly looks like a war of attrition, with no end in sight and few successes on the battlefield.
There was no quick victory for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s powerful forces, no rout that would allow the Kremlin to control most of Ukraine and establish a puppet government.
Instead, Russian troops got hampered on the outskirts of Kyiv and other big cities amid stiff Ukrainian defences. Convoys of Russian armour seemed stalled on long stretches of highway. Troops ran out of supplies and gasoline, becoming easy targets.
A little over a month into the invasion, Russia effectively acknowledged the failure of its blitz and pulled troops back from areas near Kyiv, declaring a shift of focus to the eastern industrial region of the Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014.
To be sure, Russia has seized significant chunks of territory around the Crimean Peninsula that Moscow annexed eight years ago. It also has managed to cut Ukraine off completely from the Sea of Azov, finally securing full control over the key port of Mariupol after a siege that prevented some of its troops from fighting elsewhere while they battled diehard Ukrainian forces.
But the offensive in the east seems to have bogged down as well, as western arms flow into Ukraine to bolster its outgunned army.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russian forces have methodically targeted western weapons shipments, ammunition and fuel depots, and critical infrastructure in hopes of weakening Kyiv’s military and economy.
But in trying to gain ground, Russian forces have also relentlessly shelled cities and laid siege to some of them. In the latest example of the war’s toll, 200 bodies were found in a collapsed building in Mariupol, Ukrainian authorities said Tuesday.
The Kremlin appears to still harbour a more ambitious goal of cutting off Ukraine from the Black Sea coast all the way to the Romanian border, a move that would also give Moscow a land corridor to Moldova’s separatist region of Transnistria, where Russian troops are stationed.
But Russia seems to know that this objective is not currently achievable with the limited forces it has.
“I think they’re just increasingly realizing that they can’t necessarily do all of it, certainly not at one go,” said Justin Crump, a former British tank commander who heads Sibylline, a strategic advisory firm.
Moscow’s losses have forced it to rely increasingly on hastily patched-together units in the Donbas that could only make small gains, he said.
“It’s a constant downshifting of gear toward smaller objectives that Russia can actually achieve,” Crump said. “And I think on the biggest scale, they’ve actually downsized their strategy better to match their ability on the ground.”
Two top officials appeared to acknowledge Tuesday the advance has been slower than expected. Secretary of Russia’s Security Council Nikolai Patrushev said it “is not chasing deadlines,” and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said the pace was deliberate to allow civilians to flee, even though forces have repeatedly hit civilian targets.
Meanwhile, the Russian parliament gave preliminary approval Tuesday to a bill that would allow the government to appoint new management of foreign companies that pulled out of Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.
According to the state news agency Tass, the new law would transfer control over companies that left Russia not for economic reasons but because of anti-Russian sentiment in Europe and the U.S. Tass said foreign owners would still be able to resume operations in Russia or sell their shares.