Compared with the last two years, the last several days have been like a vacation for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
His nemesis, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is now spending most of his time begging the United States and Europe for military support, a sign that the tens of billions of dollars that once used to flow into Kyiv’s war chest is now increasingly scarce. Back in Russia, Putin’s most prominent opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, died in an Arctic penal colony over the weekend after years behind bars for a litany of spurious charges. And on Saturday, Russian forces finally captured a city in eastern Ukraine, Avdiivka, after four months of brutal combat — Russia’s first territorial gain since May.
Of this news, the battle for Avdiivka is the most significant in terms of Putin’s most important objective: winning the war in Ukraine on Russia’s terms. It’s difficult to underestimate just how brutal, intense and downright hellish the battle for this eastern Ukrainian city was. The only previous battle one could compare it with was the Russian offensive in Bakhmut, in which thousands of Russian convicts-turned-soldiers were ordered to storm entrenched Ukrainian positions to overpower the defenders. It took Moscow more than nine months and 20,000 fatalities to bring a city about a third the size of Des Moines, Iowa, into its grasp. And by the time the Russians planted the flag, Bakhmut was razed to the ground, a collection of skeletonlike buildings and corpses.
Avdiivka was about half the size of Bakhmut, yet the Russians still needed a good chunk of time and perhaps as many as 13,000 deaths to take it. The Russian army went about the job by exploiting its advantage in ammunition, bombs and bodies. According to one account, Russia dropped at least 800 guided bombs, some weighing as much as 3,300 pounds, within Avdiivka’s city limits since January. Faced with dwindling supplies of its own, the Ukrainians simply couldn’t keep up. Ukraine’s top general, Oleksandr Syrskyi, who many fault for sticking around in Bakhmut for longer than was necessary, decided to cut his losses after his troops were in danger of being surrounded.
It’s easy to focus on the nuts and bolts of a military operation in a war like this. But it’s important not to get lost in the weeds. The fall of Avdiivka itself is not necessarily strategically significant. The significant part of this story is what it tells us about the war’s trajectory at it enters the third year this Saturday.
First, there’s no question the Ukrainians are on the back foot. After being repeatedly humiliated during the first year of the war, the Russians have chipped away at Ukrainian positions through a mix of sheer mass on the ground and ordnance in the year. Right now, the Russian army is seeking to advance along five parts of the 620-mile front line. In the Zaporizhzhia sector, approximately 50,000 Russian troops are in the area, trying to retake what little ground Kyiv grabbed during its six-month counteroffensive last year. That counteroffensive, hyped up by Western and Ukrainian officials, turned out to be an epic disaster, sacrificing limited manpower and artillery for territorial gains you would need a magnifying glass to spot. Indeed, it’s not a stretch to say that in hindsight, the counteroffensive proved to be a big mistake, exacerbating the personnel and ammunition shortages that have plagued the Ukrainian army since the fall.
Those shortages shouldn’t be glossed over. As much as Ukrainian officials talk about the guns, ammo and artillery supply gut, they are also running out of fighters. The average age of a Ukrainian soldier at the front is now 43 years old. The men in the trenches don’t get rotated out frequently enough. There aren’t enough trainers to go around. The Ukrainian parliament has been debating a new mobilization law that would lower the age of conscription to 25 from 27, but the measure was so controversial that Zelenskyy didn’t want to be associated with it. Valery Zaluzhny, the man who ran Ukraine’s war effort until early this month, was complaining about all of these issues, going so far as to recommend drafting an additional 500,000 people into the ranks of the Ukrainian army. That recommendation was viewed skeptically by Zelenskyy, who saw it as an expensive and even unnecessary proposition. (Zaluzhny was fired about two months after floating the idea.)
Kyiv, however, will eventually have to subscribe to a nationwide mobilization if the rate of attrition continues at its current pace.
This isn’t to suggest the Russian army is on the precipice of marching on the Ukrainian capital. Far from it. Russia has problems of its own. In terms of the war itself, the Russian military machine has shown itself to be the definition of an unsophisticated force. Putin should be counting his lucky stars that he can throw more bodies into the war than the Ukrainians can, if only because it often takes the Russians tens of thousands of casualties to capture midsize cities.
Despite the recent gains, the war has been a geopolitical debacle of sorts for Russia, which has burned its economic and political bridges with Europe and is now highly dependent on China to import its oil and natural gas. Ukraine is even more closely tied to Western economic and security institutions than it was before Putin ordered his invasion. The conflict has cost a pretty penny as well: A U.S. defense official told reporters last week that the war has cost Moscow $1.3 trillion in lost economic growth through 2026.
2024 is liable to be as bloody as 2023.
Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
Daniel DePetris: Ukrainians on the back foot as the war enters its third year
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20.02.2024
Compared with the last two years, the last several days have been like a vacation for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
His nemesis, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is now spending most of his time begging the United States and Europe for military support, a sign that the tens of billions of dollars that once used to flow into Kyiv’s war chest is now increasingly scarce. Back in Russia, Putin’s most prominent opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, died in an Arctic penal colony over the weekend after years behind bars for a litany of spurious charges. And on Saturday, Russian forces finally captured a city in eastern Ukraine, Avdiivka, after four months of brutal combat — Russia’s first territorial gain since May.
Of this news, the battle for Avdiivka is the most significant in terms of Putin’s most important objective: winning the war in Ukraine on Russia’s terms. It’s difficult to underestimate just how brutal, intense and downright hellish the battle for this eastern Ukrainian city was. The only previous battle one could compare it with was the Russian offensive in Bakhmut, in which thousands of Russian convicts-turned-soldiers were ordered to storm entrenched Ukrainian positions to overpower the defenders. It took Moscow more than nine months and 20,000 fatalities to bring a city about a third the size of Des Moines, Iowa, into its grasp. And by the time the Russians planted the flag, Bakhmut was........
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