As today marks two years since the Russian invasion, the term war fatigue is already a cliché among Ukraine’s allies who support the country with weapons and financial resources. This fatigue simply translates into the lack of good news for at least the last eight months and since the start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive this summer. Not only was the Kyiv army unable to carry out the objective (and the responsibility was not solely its own), but it has not achieved any tactical success since then. It tends to be ignored, however, an important strategic victory, which was to secure merchant traffic through the Black Sea and evade the Russian fleet.
The second anniversary is presented, on the other hand, with a Russian triumph, or at least that is what Moscow has claimed, with the corresponding propaganda and the distribution of medals: the conquest of Avdiivka, but one should not be deceived. The enclave does not represent a significant tactical victory beyond the fact that, by occupying it, the Russians manage to move Ukrainian artillery away from the city of Donetsk, capital of the province of the same name in the Donbass region. As for the symbolic order – which always matters – it is true that the Ukrainians had never lost Avdíivka since on July 30, 2014, during the first weeks of the Donbass war, they expelled the pro-Russian separatists.
The Russian triumph is highly questionable considering that, moreover, it represented an advance of only about ten kilometers in four months. And at the cost of thousands of soldiers (17,000, according to Ukraine, 16,000, according to Russian military blogger Andrei Morozov, who apparently committed suicide after the controversial report). If we consider, for example, that one of the Russian objectives is to occupy the entire Donetsk province and that the border is about 60 kilometers from Avdiivka, we can get an idea of ??the situation on a front that covers in total, from north to south, about 1,600 kilometers. Avdíivka would be just one of the starting points in three lines of attack (see the attached map), leaving the other two from Kreminnà and Bakhmut in a northerly direction towards Chassiv Iar, where the Ukrainian defenses protecting Kramatorsk and Sloviansk are located. At the same time, the Russians attack the pocket around the town of Robótine, which the Ukrainians opened in the pretense of a counter-offensive.
But these are, in any case, tactical moves in the search to cause as much stress as possible to the Ukrainian forces and cause some kind of break, since Kyiv, after the fiasco of the summer, has been concentrating on strategic defense. Moscow, according to the Institute for the Study of War, in Washington, to advance would have to face extensive maneuvers in the open field in fortified territory, in a way similar to what happened to the Ukrainians in June.
The synthesis of all this is the stagnation, as already recognized in November by the now deposed head of the Ukrainian General Staff, General Valery Zalujni, with the difference that the Ukrainians are now in worse conditions.
Avdíivka has been the demonstration. According to the Western allies, and the Ukrainians themselves, the withdrawal took place due to the shortage of artillery ammunition (there was also the danger of a bloodbath like that of the Battle of Bakhmut). Some witnesses collected by The Kyiv Independent at other points on the Donetsk front talk of needing “permission” to fire only five 155 mm howitzer shells where ten would be needed, or of hitting a target with only three shots when, for the same case, the Russians would use ten.
Added to this – confirming what some independent Russian sources announced a year ago – is an improvement in the efficiency of the Russian aviation with the use of glider bombs, which allows Moscow to assert that it has air superiority in the Donbass . And there is also the supply of artillery ammunition, drones and missiles by North Korea and Iran.
The Ukrainians are the first to recognize that the Russian army they now face is not the same as the one they defended brilliantly and with few resources in the first year of the war. It has improved a lot. And he has the initiative; however, it is not clear what he will use it for. Airstrikes will continue as before, mainly to wear down Ukrainian defenses and allied supplies, but, in conditions of positional warfare in which the element of surprise tends to disappear, no strategic moves are foreseen. You have to count on the continued Russian rearmament and Vladimir Putin’s apparent bet that US support for Ukraine will break, especially if Donald Trump is re-elected in November.
The prospects for Ukraine in the third year of war are not good and depend on one external and one internal factor. The external is none other than the military aid of the allies. On the one hand, the freezing – at least for the time being – of the North American side; on the other, the apparent European inability to supply enough ammunition. In this sense, Denmark has wanted to set an example and has ceded its artillery to Ukraine, as it considers that that is where it is needed right now for the defense of Europe.
There remains, of course, the refusal to send missiles to Kyiv that could attack the interior of Russia. Ukraine needs to deeply attack the Russian logistics chain (a weak point in the first year of the war that the Russians have been solving) to weaken the front. And military technology, above all, as Zalujni himself said some time ago.
By the way, the replacement of the general by Oleksandr Sirski – the favorite of President Zelenski – should not represent major changes, since the circumstances on the ground are what they are. In the internal order, the key factor of a new and necessary mobilization will weigh more. Ukraine is estimated to have a strength of one million men, and most of them need rest, but a rotation only seems possible with another cam. How many soldiers are needed? It is not clear and the issue is still subject to political debate. However, and unlike the jaded European public, Ukrainians retain faith in victory: 85% according to a poll by the Razumkov Center in January. What kind of victory? This already has different nuances.
