“What we see as the end of the war?” said Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday, Ukraine’s 31st Independence Day. ‘We always said: peace. Now we say victory.’
Vladimir Putin said a week earlier in a military-patriotic amusement park – where Russian children can storm a replica of the Reichstag – that “the special operation” will end as soon as the safety of “Russia, our citizens and the people of the Donbas” is guaranteed.
After six months since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the biggest ground war in Europe since 1945 seems to have only just begun. The tens of thousands of dead between February 24 and August 24, 2022 will likely go down in the history books as the victims of the first battles. The 14 thousand deaths of the past eight years in eastern Ukraine have already been forgotten.
Some commentators saw the agreement on the resumption of Ukrainian grain exports as a prelude to an agreement on a ceasefire or even peace. But where Zelensky and Putin sent negotiating teams to each other in the first weeks, they now give the impression that the war can only be ended in one place, and that is on the battlefield.
On to the end
“We are not going to seek agreement with terrorists,” Zelensky said. “Now that we’ve been through so much, we don’t have the right not to go through to the end.”
Pushing the Russian army back to the positions of February 24 is no longer enough for Ukraine. Zelensky does not want to speak of a victory until all 25 Ukrainian regions have been cleared of Russian military personnel, including Crimea and the parts of the Donbas that Russia already captured in 2014. Without concessions or compromises, because “those words were destroyed with missiles,” said Zelensky, who said last spring that diplomacy alone could end the war.
Military experts consider the recapture of Crimea completely unrealistic. But Zelensky wants to radiate that Ukraine is ready for a war of attrition. Ukraine’s recent attacks on Crimea should bolster its ambitions. Ukraine’s Security Council chairman Oleksi Danilov called the attacks part of “a step-by-step demilitarization of the peninsula with subsequent liberation.”
Years of war
Ukraine must first prove that it is not only able to hold back Russia, as it now succeeds almost everywhere along the front, but that it can also push Russia back. The only major area reconquest, in the north of the country, dates from April. A counter-offensive towards the southern port city of Kherson has yielded little. Russia has moved weapons and troops south in anticipation of a heavier Ukrainian counterattack.
Western allies say the Ukrainian military is keeping its plans strictly to itself. That was already the case in the run-up to the war: the US said it knew more about the Russian invasion plans than about the Ukrainian defense plans.
Like Zelensky, Western leaders say they are ready for years of war. Aid to Ukraine will continue “as long as necessary,” NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said on Ukraine’s Independence Day on Wednesday. The US gave the Ukrainian army a birthday gift of 3 billion euros in weapons. In addition to sending supplies, the US government has now placed orders with arms manufacturers to supply Ukraine with long-term weapons. Included in a short-term delivery are 40 vehicles to clear minefields, intended to give Ukraine a better chance of retaking territory.
Vaguely defined goals
Russia is also preparing for a long war now that the blitzkrieg has failed. Using terms like “denazification” and “demilitarization” of Ukraine, Putin has vaguely defined Russia’s goals to declare victory at any moment. But now that even the only concretely formulated goal – taking the Donbas – has not yet been achieved, Putin will not be satisfied with the current territorial gains. Apparently he thinks it is still too early for annexations of occupied territory, possibly because he first wants to conquer the province of Donetsk.
Russian stamina will be put to the test. The Russian soldiers in Ukraine have been at their limit in recent months, the conclusion seems to be since hardly any territory has been conquered since the beginning of July. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu this week, after six months of war crimes committed against the Ukrainian civilian population, made a highly implausible statement: the Russian army would slow down due to measures to prevent civilian casualties.
Night shifts
Putin has put domestic industry in war mode. Russia’s defense industry is many times larger than Ukraine’s, but it is under pressure. Western sanctions complicate the production of modern weapon systems that work with foreign chips. Last month, Putin signed a law used to allow arms manufacturers to ramp up production through night shifts and longer work weeks.
Putin does not seem to have to fear an uprising by his own people. But the further the losses mount (Western governments estimate that Moscow has lost more soldiers in the past six months than during the 10-year Soviet operation in Afghanistan), the more difficult he has to justify his operation. Also for Russians ‘the special operation’ is starting to look suspiciously like a war.