The Situation in Ukraine
The war in Ukraine continues to deteriorate as it drags on into its 4th week. Russia has mobilised all of the nearly 200,000 troops it has placed around its border with Ukraine, as well as tanks, warplanes, battleships, and cruise missiles against Ukrainian forces.
Russia has faced stiff and impassioned resistance from Ukraine however, and a blitzkrieg that was only meant to last a few days at most is soon to enter its second month.
Something has obviously gone very wrong on the Russian side of this war, and grave miscalculations have obviously been made by Russian military leaders for their “special military operation” to have gone this far off schedule.
None of the Russian’s main strategic objectives have been achieved thus far, with only minimal gains being made whilst incurring losses in equipment and personnel at far higher rates than predicted by either western or Russian estimates.
So far, Russian forces have captured Kherson, the only major city to be occupied, as well as the towns of Melitopol, Bucha, Hostomel, Konotop, Izium, Pripyat, Chernobyl, and a few other smaller towns and villages.
The cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Mariupol, Zaporizhzhia, and the capital Kyiv, are currently under siege as Russian forces attempt to capture them. As of the publication of this article, they all remain in Ukrainian hands. Kharkiv has heretofore seen the fiercest fighting, dubbed the “Stalingrad of the 21st Century” by some commentators, and Mariupol the worst humanitarian situation as Russian forces surround the city and launch artillery at civilian areas.
Russia has consistently denied that it has targeted civilian infrastructure, despite undeniable evidence that it has, including thousands of civilian casualties.
Khorobra Ukrayino
The fact that Russia, one of the world’s foremost military powers is failing so profoundly in its attempt to occupy and oppress Ukraine shows that this war of aggression has not gone according to plan, despite protestations to the contrary from the Kremlin.
Kyiv has been Russia’s primary target since the first day of their invasion, but the city is still free. Not only this, but military analysts predict that it is unlikely the city will fall any time soon. Russia’s naïve assumptions that Ukrainian forces would promptly surrender, and civilians would welcome them as liberators has been resoundingly disproved.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has attempted to frame his invasion as a war against the Ukrainian government, more specifically, against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s administration, seeing Zelenskyy’s low pre-invasion polling figures as a weakness he could exploit.
However, this assumption has also been turned on its head, with Zelenskyy now being seen as the heart of Ukrainian resistance, and his post-invasion approval ratings skyrocketing as a result of his courageous and passionate public defiance to Russian aggression.
He has also been praised as the main reason Ukraine is receiving as much foreign military and humanitarian aid as it is, delivering poignant, moving speeches to national and international political bodies around the world.
He has also stayed in Kyiv throughout the invasion, frequently photographed wearing military equipment, and is reported to have survived numerous assassination attempts by Russian infiltrators.
Even if Putin succeeds in killing Zelenskyy, Ukrainian resistance will undoubtably continue for as long as it is able, making this war as costly as is possible for Russia.
The World United
As well as mounting military losses, the Russian economy has been crippled as a result of western sanctions, with the Ruble now worth over one hundred times less than the US Dollar as of this article’s publication.
Russia has been removed from the SWIFT banking system, and its central bank assets frozen as the west and most of the rest of the world turns its back on Russia.
Alongside the west, Singapore, South Korea, and Japan have sanctioned Russian businesses, banks, and individuals, and even China is limiting its economic interactions with Russia. The sanctions imposed by the west were already unprecedented in their severity, but when China, a country Putin had put significant effort into strengthening his relationship with, distances itself from Russia, surely Putin must get the message that he is as alone as he can be.
His only international allies, namely those who voted against the UN resolution to condemn the invasion, are Eritrea, North Korea, Syria, and Belarus, all nations with appalling human rights records and minimal diplomatic clout.
There were thirty-five abstentions to the vote, most notably China and India, but none of these nations have offered their support to Russia (in fact, many have since supplied humanitarian aid to Ukraine), and the west has made it clear that Putin cannot rely on any of them to help him in his neo-colonial ambitions.
Indeed, US President Joe Biden has recently held talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping to confirm that no aid from China will find its way to Russia, military or otherwise, on pain of economic sanctions, which China can ill afford. Any hopes Putin may have held for Chinese assistance for his war are fading fast.
These developments have ensured that Russia is now as economically and diplomatically isolated as possible, making its ability to wage war as limited as it can be.
The Crime of the Century
Not only has Russia’s economy been virtually crushed by unprecedented economic sanctions, but its reputation worldwide has also been decimated.
Russia has gone from a nation viewed with caution, scepticism, but acceptance by the global community, to almost complete revulsion in a matter of weeks. Even those nations apathetic to Ukraine’s suffering will not work with Russia for fear of repercussions from those nations supportive of Ukraine.
Any hopes Putin’s government had of somehow maintaining good relations with the rest of the world have been ruined, and rightly so. War crimes have been committed, and are being committed by Russian troops against the civilian population of Ukraine, and will no doubt continue to be committed until the war ends.
Russian armed forces have made a reputation for themselves as being totally indiscriminate in the pursuit of their strategic objectives; the conflict in Syria proved that.
New rumours are now circulating that Russia is considering using chemical weapons in Ukraine, weapons prized not for their usefulness in killing military personnel (most of whom are supplied with appropriate protective equipment), but for the terror they instil in civilians.
The fact that Russia is even considering resorting to as barbaric a tactic as this shows that they are becoming more and more desperate to force Ukraine to surrender. The use of these tactics will most certainly have the opposite effect, if the will of the Ukrainian people remains as strong has it has been.
Failure
In my mind, Putin has already lost. His war that was only meant to last a matter of hours now humiliates the vastly unprepared Russian forces each day it drags on. The initial plan laid out by Russia’s commanders has failed, and so new plans have been drawn up on the fly to compensate for the unexpectedly strong, organised, and efficient Ukrainian resistance.
Before the invasion began, Ukraine had an excellent inter-regional rail system that connected all parts of the country with the nations on its borders, an advantage the Russians sought to exploit. If Russian personnel and equipment could be brought in by rail and sent all over Ukraine, Russia may well have won the war by now.
Fortunately, Ukraine foresaw this eventuality. The same morning that Russian forces moved past existing lines of conflict in Donbas, every rail link into Ukraine from Russia and Belarus was destroyed by Ukrainian forces.
This means that Russia is now relying almost entirely on trucks and similar land vehicles to transport its military around the country. Convoys of land vehicles are not only less efficient than trains, but are more easily attacked and ambushed, as has already been demonstrated in this war.
Such heavy reliance on trucks has meant that the cost in fuel for the Russian military has become so great that their trucks, tanks, APCs, and other vehicles frequently run out of gas to become stranded by the roadside, easy pickings for resourceful Ukrainian patrols.
The worsening conditions of Ukrainian roads has also become a thorn in Russia’s side. As the frost and snow of winter melt away into spring, the amount of mud generated on these roads has caused entire convoys of vehicles to become sluggish, often becoming stuck for hours, even days, again making them sitting ducks for Ukrainian anti-vehicle weapons.
Not only this, but Russia is swiftly running out of not just fuel for its vehicles, but supplies for its men. Ammunition is becoming scarce, and each bullet fired increases the costs of what has already become a money pit for the Kremlin. Soldiers are being supplied with outdated, hazardous equipment, including MREs that expired in the 80s, and bandages manufactured in the 70s.
The use of such antiques is not only dangerous for the troops and humiliating for the Kremlin, but it also shows the crisis being experienced by the Russian military due to their woeful lack of preparation for this campaign.
From Here, Where?
As dire as the situation is for both Ukraine and Russia, this war is still far from over, and can escalate into something exponentially more serious on a hair trigger.
After the string of failures experienced by the Russian military thus far, they have announced on Friday that the “first stage” of their military operation is complete, and will now focus on “liberating” the Donbas region.
They say their forays into the rest of Ukraine have been successful in weakening the Ukrainian military, as was their plan all along, I’m sure. The fact that only one major city, Kherson, is in Russian hands, and the Ukrainians now seem to be successfully repelling Russian attacks and even gaining back some territory shows that Russia finally sees the futility in attempting to capture the entire country, and have hedged their bets by now only seeking to occupy more of Donbas.
This does not mean Russia is weaker now, far from it. As Russia is backed further and further into the corner by the international community, and as the completion of its strategic aims continue to experience embarrassing setbacks, it only becomes more dangerous.
Putin, I think it is safe to assume at this point, is not of sound mind. This war is entirely his doing, and each of the escalations we have already seen in the past few months can only have been ordered by him.
He is undoubtably one of the most prolific war criminals of the 21st Century. Each home destroyed, each life uprooted, each man, woman, and child needlessly and senselessly killed in Ukraine rests entirely on his shoulders.
He is not the type of man who accepts defeat, and I doubt we have seen the true depths of his depravity yet. Like an animal, he becomes more dangerous when wounded and backed into a corner.
Russia will, in all probability, use chemical weapons against Ukraine’s civilian population. They did not need an excuse to launch their invasion, despite their half-baked attempts to concoct one, and will surely not need one to deploy these heinous and illegal instruments of terror against innocent people.
They have made false claims that US-funded medical laboratories in Ukraine are used to manufacture chemical and biological weapons, and will use this lie to torture and kill civilians in another fruitless attempt to force some sort of secession from Ukraine.
Putin will not stop there. Russian state TV anchors have already floated the idea of a tactical nuclear strike to gain advantage in this war, and nothing is said on Russian state TV without being sanctioned by the Kremlin.
This proves once more that Putin is considering the most drastic measures possible to satisfy his selfish, neo-imperial, wholly evil “Novo Rossiya” fantasy. He has been quoted as saying, “a world without Russia is not a world worth living in”, insinuating that he is willing to kill and destroy everything and everyone in a nuclear war for…what? Because a western military alliance is moving a little too close to his border? Because of his ridiculous belief that the entire western world is somehow hell-bent on seeing Russia and its culture wiped from existence? Or because of his unbridled and unfounded hatred of Ukraine and its people?
The west has made many mistakes in the way nations interact with Putin’s Russia. Too many times have we assumed that Putin wouldn’t do something, and acted surprised when he went ahead and did it. Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Crimea and the Donbas, and now Ukraine in its entirety. Each time, we hesitated, we debated, we lacked any foresight, and through this, we let Putin believe he can get away with whatever he wants with little more than a small economic and diplomatic slap on the wrist.
Now we must change. We must now go forward against Putin not with the question of “if he does such-and-such”, but with the assumption that he will just go ahead and do it. Our mindset must be, “he is going to use chemical weapons, how do we stop him?” That way, he will not continue to catch us off-guard, and we can begin to be more ready to face him on the global stage.