Ukraine defies odds against Russia
But many challenges lie ahead as winter’s chill begins to bite
KYIV, Ukraine — In forests, in fields and in fierce urban combat, the Ukrainian military has defied the odds, and all expectations, and forced Russia into multiple retreats over nine brutal, bloody months of war.
And yet despite its success, and even with tens of thousands of soldiers killed on each side, Ukraine by one measure is only halfway done: Its army has now reclaimed about 55% of the territory Russia occupied after invading in February.
Ukraine is on the offensive along most of the 600-mile front line. Russia is in a defensive crouch in the south and northeast while still attacking toward one eastern city, Bakhmut.
Ukraine’s success has brought the war to a pivotal juncture. Because it is on the offensive, it can determine whether to push its advantage farther into Russian-occupied territory, or settle in for the winter, as military analysts say Russia would like to do.
Should it press on, Ukraine faces significant hurdles: While it has pushed more Russian fighters into a tighter space, this means the battles ahead will be against more densely defended territory, on challenging terrain.
Ukraine is now fighting in boats in the reedy marshes and deltaic islands of the lower Dnieper River; it is pushing against multiple trench lines on snowy plains in the Zaporizhzhia region in the south; and is engaging in a bloody fight along the so-called Svatove-Kreminna line, in the forests in northeastern Ukraine.
After the Russian withdrawal this month from Kherson, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine visited the city, the only provincial capital captured by Russian forces. Raising the Ukrainian flag over a government building, he echoed a famous speech by Winston Churchill after the British victory at the Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942.
Churchill had declared “the end of the beginning” to the conflict, which would drag on for three more years. Zelenskyy tried to flip the narrative.
“This is the beginning of the end of the war,” he said.
Still, about one-fifth of Ukrainian territory remains occupied by Russia.
“Russian ground units have suffered from low morale, poor execution of combined arms, subpar training, deficient logistics, corruption, and even drunkenness,” wrote Seth Jones, the director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.
The Russians continue to send newly mobilized soldiers to Ukraine to make up for steep losses. The tens of thousands of Russian soldiers withdrawn from the Kherson region west of the river are freed up for redeployment, to reinforce defensive lines in the northeast, mount new attacks in the Donetsk region and fortify Moscow’s hold on the land bridge from Russia to Crimea.
While military analysts frequently note that the winter weather — the first snowstorm blew over the trenches this weekend — will likely slow the pace of Ukrainian offensives, it will also certainly take a toll on poorly equipped Russian soldiers. And yet the war began last February, and both armies have extensive experience fighting in wintertime on the Eurasian steppe.
While Russian soldiers are on the defensive on battlefields in the south and east, Moscow has opened what amounts to a separate war: missile and drone strikes aimed at destroying Ukraine’s infrastructure, degrading the quality of life for millions of civilians in an effort to demoralize them.
Last week, Russia launched its largest bombardment of the war aimed at power plants, substations, natural gas facilities and waterworks — a sustained campaign of devastation rarely attempted before.
Col. Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian air force, said Monday that the military has “autonomous power sources,” so that problems with the national grid have no direct impact on soldiers at the front. And he said the attacks provide motivation for soldiers who have families enduring the hardships, strengthening their resolve to fight.
But the strikes are a drain on Ukraine’s air defense system, Ihnat acknowledged. He said Ukraine shoots, on average, two missiles at each Russian rocket in hopes of increasing its chances of success, and now it needs more ammunition and air defense systems to keep up. Additionally, he said, Russia is using relatively cheap drones to exhaust Ukrainian air defenses.
Ihnat said this weekend that the missile bombardments are meant to force Kyiv to the negotiating table.
The Kremlin has acknowledged as much. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, told reporters last week that the infrastructure strikes are “the consequences” of Ukraine’s unwillingness to “enter into negotiation.”