Notching slim gains, Ukrainians aim to break Russia’s line
What happened
With their spring counteroffensive fully underway, Ukrainian forces reclaimed small slivers of land this week, even as Kyiv said its troops were battling under Russian “air and artillery superiority.” Ukrainian authorities said they had retaken about 35 square miles of territory, mostly little villages in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions. Russian military bloggers corroborated a Ukrainian advance as far south as Makarivka in Donetsk—just 55 miles from the southern tip of the “land bridge” that connects the Russian-occupied east of the country to the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula. Cutting off those supply lanes is the major goal of the counteroffensive. Also this week, a Ukrainian missile strike in southern Donetsk reportedly took out Maj. Gen. Sergei Goryachev—the 10th Russian general killed in the war, and one the pro-Kremlin Russian war reporter Yury Kotyonok called one of the army’s “brightest and most effective military leaders.”
Yet Ukraine’s attempts to find a place to puncture the heavily fortified 600-mile front have been costing it crucial manpower and equipment. In recent days, Russian mines and artillery fire have taken out 16 of the 109 Bradley fighting vehicles donated by the U.S., as well as four German-made Leopard tanks. The Biden administration is fast-tracking a $325 million tranche of aid to Ukraine, including 15 more Bradleys and more than 22 million small-arms rounds.
Meanwhile, Russia has moved tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, which shares a 700-mile border with Ukraine and which Russia has been using as a staging area throughout the war. Belarusan President Alexander Lukashenko said the short-range nukes were “three times more powerful” than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The weapons remain under Russian control.
What the editorials said
Ukraine is making halting progress, said the Minneapolis Star Tribune, but Russia continues to launch “continuous, indiscriminate rocket strikes.” The floods unleashed by the bombing of the Kakhovka dam last week have made a wide region unlivable, and this week Russia shelled Kryvyi Rih, the hometown of President Volodymyr Zelensky, killing at least 11 people. Against that onslaught, the progress of the Ukrainian counteroffensive will have to be measured in “months, not weeks.”
A Ukrainian advance that recaptures much of its land “would vindicate Western military and financial support,” said The Wall Street Journal. One that falters, though, would give fodder to isolationists in Congress who don’t want to approve any more than the $37 billion in aid the U.S. has already committed to Ukraine. The Biden administration’s reluctance to greenlight weaponry such as ATACMS long-range guided missiles is hobbling Ukraine at the worst moment. Backing Ukraine to the utmost “is in America’s national interest.”
What the columnists said
Ukraine faces a dug-in Russian military, said Leonid Bershidsky in Bloomberg, and with no air support, as the first F-16s won’t arrive till the fall. The Russians have spent months constructing “several lines of defense,” including concrete trenches and “dragon’s teeth” tank traps. And their “electronic warfare remains potent,” enabling them to achieve real-time interception and decryption of Ukrainian communications. The “rapid, sweeping success” Ukraine saw last year, when it retook Kharkiv, is not likely this time around.
Still, the Kremlin is “essentially fighting two wars now,” said Ryan Pickrell in Business Insider—one against Ukraine and the other a battle to rein in Yevgeny Prigozhin. The founder of the mercenary Wagner Group has repeatedly released compromising details of Russian military failures and publicly clashed with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Shoigu now says that all paramilitaries will have to sign ministry contracts by July 1, but “Wagner is resisting.” This rift between Shoigu and Prigozhin is a Russian weakness the Ukrainians could well exploit.
Attacking, which Ukraine is now doing, is harder than defending, said Max Boot in The Washington Post. And “a combined-arms offensive,” is the most difficult undertaking in warfare. Yet the Russians simply don’t have sufficient reserves to cover a 600-mile front. When they try to plug one hole in their line, they could create vulnerabilities elsewhere. It’s going to be a long slog, but “the odds in this case favor David over Goliath.”