One year ago, the world for Ukraine turned
upside down.
It was around 5am on February 24, 2022, when we
heard the first Russian cruise missiles slamming into the outskirts of Kyiv.
While the threat of a Russian invasion had been growing for months, it was only
on February 21 that the purpose of the Russian troops arrayed around Ukraine’s
borders became unequivocally clear. Vladimir Putin issued an hour-long screed about how Ukraine was a fake country and the wheels were set
in motion for full-scale war. A few days later, Russian columns poured into
Ukrainian territory.
اضافة اعلان
A year on, Ukraine sits in a position that most
people hearing those first missile strikes would have considered unimaginable.
Ukrainian troops threw back the initial Russian assaults on the capital and
other areas of north Ukraine, before inflicting heavy losses in a slow,
fighting retreat against Russia’s offensive in the eastern Donbas region. By
fall, Ukrainian forces were in position to score several stunning
victories, routing Russian forces in Kharkiv and forcing Moscow to abandon the southern provincial capital of Kherson in November. A partial military mobilization for the first
time since World War II saw Russia replenish its ranks enough to stabilize its
lines and continue fighting in the Donbas, resulting in today’s situation.
While Russia has likely already lost in Ukraine,
having failed to conquer Kyiv or even the entirety of any of the four Ukrainian
regions it officially annexed, it remains up to Ukraine to fully win the war.
As impressive as its successes in the past year have been, the second year of
its defensive battle will demand even greater and more decisive victories if
Ukraine is to liberate the entirety of its territory.
While Russia has likely already lost in Ukraine, having failed to conquer Kyiv or even the entirety of any of the four Ukrainian regions it officially annexed, it remains up to Ukraine to fully win the war.
The past few months of the war have been devoid
of major spectacles despite the continuing high-intensity fighting on the
front. After the loss of Kherson in November, Russian forces withdrew to more
defensible lines across the Dnipro river. A combination of newly mobilized
conscripts and professional troops transferred from Kherson enabled Moscow to
halt Ukrainian advances in northern Donbas and even launch their own renewed
attacks.
The center of the fighting has been the city of Bakhmut, where Russian troops,
led by the mercenary Wagner Group, have slowly ground forward to nearly
encircle the city. The cost in men and materiel has been enormous – images of
dozens of Russian bodies littering the ground outside the ruined city appear
daily.
Since the recapture of Kherson, there has been
little in the way of major Ukrainian operations. In the meantime, Kyiv has
scored a major victory in its quest for modern Western armaments, with
announcements that battle tanks, including the German
Leopard, British Challenger and even the US Abrams will be given to Ukraine’s
armed forces. These will prove a massive boon to the armored formations Ukraine
was already assembling. As the tanks will begin arriving as early as March,
their impact will come sooner rather than later.
That brings us to today, and the next Ukrainian
thrust that everyone is waiting for. With the elimination of the Russian
presence in right-bank Kherson, there are two major fronts left for Ukraine to
go on the offensive, in the country’s northeast and southeast. While a thrust
into northern Luhansk oblast, towards the Russian-occupied cities of Kreminna
and Svatove, will have to come at some point, it is the second option that is
much more appealing: Zaporizhzhye. Here, the front extends across nearly 150
kilometers of broadly open terrain. Were Ukrainian troops to breach the lines
here, they would have another 100km of Russian-occupied flat land lying between
them and the Sea of Azov.
The past few months of the war have been devoid of major spectacles despite the continuing high-intensity fighting on the front. After the loss of Kherson in November, Russian forces withdrew to more defensible lines across the Dnipro river.
A successful drive to the sea in Zaporizhzhye
would constitute an enormous strategic win. It would sever the supply lines to
Russian troops not only in the remainder of Russian-held southern Ukraine, but
also in Crimea. Russian forces to the west of any Ukrainian breakthrough would
be forced to rely on erratic deliveries by sea. Such a push could see Ukrainian
forces approach and even liberate Mariupol, a move that would have enormous
symbolic value following the hard-fought but ultimately futile defense of the
city last spring.
It is for precisely these reasons that the
battle to accomplish this would not be easy. Russia is as aware of the
vulnerability of this stretch of territory as anyone. Moscow’s forces have been
fortifying the front line for months, developing a defense in depth that will
prove challenging to breach. However, it is entirely plausible that Russia’s
armed forces have been ground down to such a level they will be unable to
resist a concerted Ukrainian assault no matter their level of preparation. The
loss of nearly 2,000 Russian tanks, including most of the more modern variants,
and thousands of other armored vehicles will make responding to Ukrainian
armored formations more difficult than ever, as will the ammunition shortages
Russian artillery units are already experiencing. Mobilized conscripts are good
enough for static defense, but it is not hard to imagine a scenario in which
they rout far more easily than the professional Russian troops who have been
killed or put out of service in droves.
But one year into the war, it is possible to envision a roadmap by which Ukraine’s armed forces move towards the endgame of this war, or at least a significant element of it.
The battle to defend Ukraine has been bloody and
difficult. There is, sadly, no plausible situation in which the fighting gets
significantly less deadly for Ukraine as it seeks to liberate the remainder of
its lands. But one year into the war, it is possible to envision a roadmap by
which Ukraine’s armed forces move towards the endgame of this war, or at least
a significant element of it.
The fight to hold off Russia’s conquests has
largely been won. The fight to liberate the rest of Ukraine lies ahead.
Neil Hauer is a security analyst currently in
Kyiv, Ukraine. Usually based in Tbilisi, Georgia, his work focuses on,
among other things, politics, minorities and violence in the Caucasus.
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