Ukraine, Russia, and the fog of war
Neil Hauer
DONBAS, UKRAINE — It has been just over a year since Russia’s armed forces poured across Ukraine’s borders, heralding vicious battles across the country in the largest war on the European continent since World War II. Ukraine’s defense has been valiant, first in deflecting Russia’s assault on the capital Kyiv and then scoring some stunning victories in reclaiming swaths of land in the east and south. The high-water mark of these was the November liberation of Kherson, the only provincial capital to fall to Russian forces and whose recapture was as important symbolically as it was impressive militarily.
But that was more than three months ago. Since then, Russian forces have dug in, reinforcing their shattered combat groups with mobilized troops to launch fresh assaults on beleaguered Ukrainian positions in the country’s east. The war since Kherson has been one of brutal, grinding combat with few notable victories for Ukraine’s armed forces. Just as in the earlier stages of this war, however, that picture could change quickly. It’s worth taking a look back to the other seemingly ironclad narratives that dominated earlier stages of the war in order to understand just how sharply the picture could shift once more.
The first six weeks of the war were perhaps the clearest example of this phenomenon. Just prior to the invasion, the broad consensus was that Russian forces would overwhelm Ukrainian defenses with long-range fires and precision missile strikes, brushing aside Kyiv’s forces in the field en route to besieging major cities and possibly toppling the government. But the actual invasion was characterized by Russian incompetence. As Moscow’s troops bumbled across Ukrainian fields in the country’s north, often in long columns of armor unsupported by infantry, Ukrainian troops were able to pick them apart in skillful ambushes and small-unit raids. With Russian tanks stalled at the entrance to Kyiv, Russia’s advance quickly bogged down, its successes in seizing the southern cities of Kherson and Mariupol out-scaled by its embarrassing failures outside the capital. By the time Russian forces decided to withdraw from northern Ukraine in early April, the prevailing view on social media and op-ed pages was that Moscow’s army was wholly inept and hapless in the face of Ukrainian ingenuity.
That changed in May. As Russia redeployed the entirety of its invasion force to the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas, a different war began, one defined by advances in meters. Russia’s overwhelming advantage in artillery firepower, at times firing more than 10 times as many shells as Ukrainian troops, enabled a slow, grinding push forward in a battle of attrition. Russian forces eventually managed to capture the cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk as Ukrainian ammunition stores ran dangerously low. With Ukrainian forces sustaining 200 casualties a day at the height of the fighting, a new narrative took hold: that while Russia may pay a high price in blood, its victories have always been won through sheer force of men and firepower. Ukraine would simply be the latest victim of the Russian meat grinder.
As the seasons turned, so did the war. When summer gave way to fall, Russia’s advances in Donbas slowed to a crawl as Moscow’s depleted forces struggled to maintain their rate of operations, hindered further by devastating long-range strikes by HIMARS-guided missile artillery, delivered to Ukraine by the United States in June. In September, the cracks in the dam burst. A Ukrainian assault in Kharkiv found Russian lines manned only by riot police and reservists, leading to a breakthrough that saw over 10,000 square kilometers of territory liberated in just days. Less than two months later, repeated Ukrainian offensives and persistent HIMARS strikes forced Russia to abandon the city of Kherson, handing Kyiv another major victory. With Russia’s chaotic partial military mobilization, announced in late September, failing to prevent this, it again seemed that Moscow’s forces were on their last legs and a stunning Ukrainian victory was inevitable.
And yet, it’s now March 2023, and the war shows no signs of ending. Russian forces are again grinding forward slowly in the Donbas, pummeling Ukrainian defenders and drawing ever closer to encircling the city of Bakhmut. So, looking at the past year and more recent developments, what might the next few months hold in store?
One important element that seems clear by now is that Russia’s partial mobilization has been successful, at least to some degree. In the early days following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Sept. 21 decree, social media was awash with videos showing chaotic scenes of drunken conscripts arguing with officers and even murdering their recruiters. The massive casualties taken by raw recruits thrown into battle with little or no training was an ill omen for the program. But, however crudely, these conscripts did enable Russia to stabilize its lines and halt the Ukrainian advance in northern Luhansk, while other reports indicate that half of the 300,000 mobilized men were held back for longer training and now stand poised for deployment. It’s far from clear that Moscow will use these men in any rational manner — Western officials estimate that 1,000 Russian soldiers are dying every day in their futile assault on the southeastern city of Vuhledar — but the Kremlin has at least solved its manpower problem for the near future.
It is that availability of bodies that is responsible for the greatest challenge facing Ukrainian forces at present: holding the city of Bakhmut. It has taken six months and many thousands of casualties, but Russian troops, led by the Wagner Group mercenary outfit, have pushed to within a few kilometers of encircling the city of 75,000. Reports here in Donbas indicate a dire situation. One soldier who had recently returned from the city described the situation “in two words: completely f***ed.” He did not believe Ukrainian forces would be able to hold out more than a few more days. Ukrainian volunteers conducting civilian evacuations from Bakhmut for months said they had stopped going to the city in recent days, as vehicles traveling the two remaining supply roads were now being hit directly by Russian anti-tank missiles. Reports are rife of Ukrainian service members refusing orders to return to Bakhmut, tired of being sent into a losing battle they believe to be a lost cause. Other soldiers said they believed the Ukrainian high command has made a decision to hold the city at all costs and that a large counterattack to relieve the defenders is imminent. The only thing that appears clear at present is that the situation is untenable: If Ukraine does not either pull its troops out of the city or conduct a major assault to throw Russian forces back, Bakhmut and its defenders will become surrounded and cut off sooner rather than later.
It is this decisive point that leads directly to the situation Ukraine now finds itself in. Following the recapture of Kherson in November, it was widely speculated that Ukraine would keep up its momentum by launching winter offensives against the demoralized and unwilling Russian conscripts sitting in their trenches. That did not happen, and as it looks now, Moscow holds the initiative. The forces Kyiv had been gathering and reconstituting following Kherson have now been supplemented by the promise of Western main battle tanks, the eventual delivery of which was announced by various partner nations in January. Those tanks have only just started arriving, however, and likely will not be available in full for another several months. There is a growing sense on the ground that Ukraine’s next offensive cannot wait that long — if Bakhmut is really to be held, the Ukrainian counter will have to come soon.
None of this is to lose sight of the greater picture. A year into the war, Russian advances are still measured in meters. Moscow simply does not have the capacity to launch and sustain an offensive on a grander scale than it currently is. Ukrainian forces, meanwhile, have strategic options available to them. A push into Russian-held southern Zaporizhzhia, for example, could threaten to cut off Russian forces in both southern Ukraine and Crimea as well. Successfully executing such a plan, however, is easier said than done. Ukraine now possesses many advantages that would have sounded like a dream to those in Kyiv on Feb. 24, 2022. But war, as the past year has repeatedly shown, is a fickle thing.
Neil Hauer is a Canadian journalist writing on Russia and the Caucasus.