IT IS NOW six and a half months – almost 200 days – since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. In that time, Russian forces have increased their territorial gains to take all of the Luhansk Oblast and are consolidating modest advances in the Donetsk region.
With the destruction of Mariupol, Putin has achieved a pyrrhic victory of sorts in securing a land corridor from the Crimean Peninsula to Russia.
But, that’s it. Putin has failed to decapitate President Zelenskyy’s regime and has failed to break out of the Donbas to take key cities such as Kyiv, Kharkiv or to approach Odessa in the south. After 200 days of combat, with losses estimated as high as 35,000 Russian troops killed in action, Putin’s forces have been contained well to the east of the Dnieper River.
The strategic failure of Putin’s invasion
To put this in context, Afghanistan – like Ukraine, with a population of around 40 million people – was over-run by a small allied force in 2001 in just two months of combat, leading to the collapse of the Taliban <chrome_find class=”find_in_page”>regime. In 2003, the US and her allies, with similar troop numbers to those of Putin in Ukraine, eliminated Saddam Hussein’s <chrome_find class=”find_in_page”>regime and occupied Iraq after approximately 26 days of combat.
Both invasions were disastrous in political and human terms – but, militarily they showed the lightning speed at which modern conventional forces can project force and seize territory.
In 2008, Russian forces entered Georgia and permanently occupied parts of Abkhazia and South Ossetia after just two weeks of combat. In 2022, Russia is stalled in Ukraine. From a military perspective, this war has demonstrated very clearly that Putin’s military machine lacks the capacity to act effectively in the combined arms role.
Russia’s air, ground and naval assets have failed to integrate in the battle space and have failed to achieve the type of kinetic operational tempo needed to achieve victory on the ground. As Autumn takes hold and winter approaches, there is little chance of a Russian breakthrough. The military campaign has been a signal failure for Putin and Generals Gerasimov and Shoigu.
Despite the intensive disinformation and propaganda campaigns underway – there will be considerable unease and embarrassment in the Kremlin about the under-performance of the Russian military in this conflict.
Kherson push back
Ukrainian forces began a counter-offensive in the south east against Putin’s forces in Kherson in August. Progress there has been painfully slow, with the Kremlin re-allocating and re-deploying most of its effective – but depleted – regular combat units to meet this threat. In this attritional battle, losses have been high on both sides, with little or no territorial exchange.
In the last few days, Kyiv has launched a new counter offensive far to the north of Kherson and east of Kharkiv. Reports indicate that Ukrainian troops have pushed east, re-taking the towns of Verbivka and Volokhiv Yar, advancing towards Shevchenkove. This axis of advance is encroaching on the key transit hub of Kupyansk. Initial reports suggest that Ukrainian forces have advanced approximately 10km per day into Russian-held territory.
This offensive may be a feint to force Putin to divert some of his regular forces from around Kherson to meet this new threat. If however the Ukrainians maintain their momentum and reach Kupyansk, they may be in a position to isolate the Russian-held town of Izyum – a key strategic military gateway for Putin’s forces throughout the Donbas.
If Ukraine’s flanking operation encroaches Izyum, this would represent a major setback for Putin. At present, it is reported that there are few Russian defenders along this avenue of approach – with forces believed to consist in the main of Wagner mercenaries and local pro-Russian militia units.
Putin’s forces are today under pressure. From his perspective, he can reinforce and counterattack the Ukraine axis of advance from Russia proper. If he can scramble scratch units to border – presumably by rail. That gives Zelenskyy’s forces a narrow window to exploit their advance and consolidate.
Human toll
As the ‘conventional’ war grinds on – with horrific loss of life on all sides, particularly among the civilian population – the stakes are getting higher. Propaganda and disinformation have reached fever-pitch as all parties to the conflict seek to exert pressure and maintain political traction.
The Kremlin has turned off the Nord-Stream pipeline – exacerbating an energy crisis throughout the EU. Tellingly, Putin has begun to explicitly deny any ‘loss of face’ in the invasion of Ukraine. In advance of his meeting with Chinese premier Xi Jinping in Uzbekistan next week, he has insisted that Russia ‘has not lost anything’.
This is the first time in the conflict that Putin’s rhetoric has framed the conflict in Ukraine in relatively negative terms. To date, he has only spoken of victory. It will be interesting to see if Xi Jinping endorses Putin’s war in Ukraine when they meet next week.
As the war grinds on and as winter approaches, Putin is running out of military options. His routine in offense has been predictable to date – an unimaginative attritional assault on Ukrainian towns and cities. There has been no evidence to date of the grand deception plans or ‘Maskirovka’ for which the Russian military is renowned. Putin’s offensive – from day 1 – has been characterised by a litany of intelligence failures and a series of brutal and criminal assaults on civilian targets.
Nuclear threat
Among those are the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant located at Enerhodar on the southern shore of the Dnieper River. Europe’s largest nuclear power plant was seized by Russian forces in March of this year. At the time, grave concerns were raised about the risk to the plant’s reactors and infrastructure by Putin’s troops.
In that phase of the war, the plant was seized by armoured units closely supported by infantry. In that scenario, most of the heavy weapons deployed in the vicinity of the plant were direct-fire systems.
In other words, Russian commanders would have had line of sight on the plant’s buildings through open and optical sight systems. To some extent, this limited the risk of a nuclear disaster.
At present, the power plant is at the epicentre of Ukraine’s counter-offensive in the Kherson region. Long-range artillery duels are now being fought in the vicinity of the Zaporizhzhia plant. These are not guided weapon systems and are ‘dumb’ projectiles fired in salvos along a rough bearing and trajectory.
Thousands of artillery rounds – each consisting of an average of 7 kgs of high explosive detonating up to 2000 shrapnel fragments – are being fired in this area and in the neighbouring Nikopol district. The margin for error for these artillery rounds – in terms of range and lateral spread – represents a clear and grave danger to the nuclear power plant and its extensive infrastructure, storage facilities and waste treatment plants. On any given day, as these artillery exchanges continue, the risk of a Fukishima-style nuclear disaster remains very high. A major international disaster, similar to the Chernobyl incident in 1986 cannot be ruled out.
At this stage of the war, the stakes could not be higher. Putin remains bellicose if increasingly defensive. The EU and NATO – despite the threat of an energy crisis this winter – remain steadfast in their support of Ukraine. Liz Truss, Britain’s latest Prime Minister has retained Ben Wallace as Defence Minister and has appointed James Cleverly to the position of Foreign Minister. Both have military experience and both are hawkish in Britain, and NATO’s response to Putin’s invasion.
The war in Ukraine shows no sign of abating. President Zelenskyy’s forces have taken the initiative in recent days and weeks and will hope to achieve a position of strength from which to force Putin to negotiate.
The war is unlikely to be over by Christmas. The hope must be that it will eventually grind to a halt. The military options are almost played out – with the only alternative for Russia being a major escalation and formal declaration of war on Putin’s part. In this context, It behoves the UN and world leaders to renew their efforts to bring this war to an end and to avert a nuclear disaster – either by way of nuclear accident or nuclear escalation as threatened by Putin from the very outset of this conflict.
Dr Tom Clonan is an independent Senator and former Captain in the Irish armed forces. He is a security analyst and academic, lecturing in the School of Media in DIT. You can follow him on Twitter.
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