As the Russian invasion of Ukraine now surpasses 100 days after Vladimir Putin’s planned ticker tape parades on Kreshchatyk Street in downtown Kyiv, here is the latest situation report:
1) Ukraine is not winning the war. No, Ukraine is not losing the war either, but the current trajectory of the conflict will end up with the Russian occupation of a quarter to half of the country. Imagine the United States losing all territory east of the Mississippi River, and that is potentially what Ukraine is facing if the current battlefield situation doesn’t change (just replace the Dnipro River with the Mississippi).
The war is not ending soon either, and is now likely to continue till the end of the year. Ukraine won two phenomenal “against all odds” battles in Kyiv and Kharkiv during the first two months of the war. However, winning key battles does not 100% equate with winning the war.
2) While Western media coverage of the war in Ukraine is declining (shame on Fox News and particularly Tucker Carlson for creating the “Coward Caucus” within the GOP, which has decided to turn a blind eye to the genocide of a Christian nation), the conflict is intensifying with record casualties.
The main battle is in Ukraine’s Donbas region in the east, where Russia is attempting to achieve its goal of pushing Ukraine out of Luhansk and Donetsk Regions. This “goal” was announced the day before the war began by the leaders of the so-called [Russian-supported and funded] Luhansk and Donetsk people’s republics.
Achieving this goal is clearly a minimum bar for Russia to claim victory in the conflict for their domestic audience. Meanwhile the casualties on record are, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky, numbering “60-100 soldiers per day killed in action and something around 500 people wounded in action”.
At the moment, Ukraine is battling street to street in the war-ravaged city of Severodonetsk in Luhansk Region. Russian casualties are typically twice that of Ukraine’s, but Russia’s forces are three times bigger than Ukraine’s.
While slowly losing the Donbas industrial region would be bad for Ukraine, the bigger danger is that large parts of the Ukrainian army could be encircled. If this were to happen, it could result in the Russians making another attempt to take Kyiv. Now that it’s summertime, Russian tanks aren’t stalled by the mud and could besiege the capital within days.
3) This is a different kind of battle than during the first two months of the war, when Russia attempted to seize Kyiv and Kharkiv. Having suffered heavy losses in both soldiers and equipment (an estimated 31,000 dead, 1,380 tanks, 3,390 armored personnel carriers, 210 planes and 175 helicopters destroyed), Russia changed its tactics in the battle for Donbas.
Now Russia uses drones to identify Ukrainian military positions and then provides the locations to battlefield headquarters so that Russian rockets and artillery can be used to shell those areas.
Since Ukraine does not have long range multiple launch rocket systems to counter these tactics, this makes Ukrainian soldiers vulnerable to death and injury. While Russia has used up around 60% of its precision guided missiles, that still means Ukrainians can expect a full summer of missile attacks ahead before the entire supply is depleted.
4) The only bright spot for the Ukrainian army at the moment is in the south of the country, where Ukraine is retaking territory in the northern part of Kherson Region. Kherson is critical for Russia because it gives them a land bridge to Crimea and more importantly, it supplies all the water needs for the peninsula.
In the meantime, Russia continues practicing amphibious landings on Snake Island. The island was made famous by the Ukrainian commander who refused to surrender to the Russian missile cruiser the Moskva.
The island has been relevant since Herodotus mentioned it and its Temple of Apollo (relics located in the Odesa Archaeological Museum) in his comprehensive “The Histories”. More recently it is known to sit upon large underwater oil deposits.
The concern from the military point of view is that Russia will soon attempt an amphibious landing to either cut off Bessarabia (the southern part of Odesa Region) from Ukraine or attempt a siege of Odesa itself.
Odesa is the crown jewel of Putin’s “Novorossiya” (new Russia) plan. Fortunately for Ukraine, the sinking of the Moskva cruiser has demonstrated that Ukraine has proper anti-naval defenses in and around the Black Sea, despite not having a functioning navy.
5) It is crucial for Ukraine to hold Odesa since from there it has access to the sea.
Agricultural nations like Ukraine depend on sea access to be able to export food. Without this access, food produced by Ukraine becomes pricey, causing other countries to find different producers. Due to the war, the early estimates are that Ukraine will export less than 15% of its agricultural products this year.
While Ukraine still has enough food to feed itself, it means that the Middle East and Africa will suffer from a lack of Ukrainian grain. This, in turn, is likely to result in starvation for some countries. Thus, the war will affect not just Ukraine, but also Africa and the rest of the world. Now there is discussion under way involving NATO countries on how to secure the shipping routes from Odesa through the Bosphorus Straits and out to the world.
However, such discussions are only in the early phases and would not be realistic without military protection by the West (or at least Black Sea partners like Turkey and Romania).
6) While the West has supplied huge numbers of arms and equipment to Ukraine, it is generally arriving too little, too late. In addition, supplies of javelins, which eliminated the threat of Russian tanks around Kyiv and Kharkiv in the first two months, are now low.
Nonetheless, some NATO allies are generously helping out, with Poland announcing this week the $680 million supply of weapons to Ukraine.
The British and the Baltic States also continue to provide advanced weaponry, with the politically revived (thanks to Ukraine) Prime Minister Boris Johnson team pumping up the defenses with Brimstone anti-tank weapons.
However, the weapons that can turn the tide of the war and result in Russian forces retreating out of Ukraine, are American ones. Yes, eventually the economic sanctions will take a larger toll on the Russian population and possibly force an end to the war.
However, the U.S. has had sanctions on Iran for most of the last 43 years and the Ayatollah regime still remains in power.
Therefore, only the introduction of increasingly lethal weaponry from the U. S. will inflict enough pain on the Russian army that it will be forced to retreat. This, of course, increases the risk of a direct U.S. – Russia conflict.
Hence, this is why the US has hesitated to supply Ukraine with certain weapons and in a timely manner. We will see if that continues or changes as Russia refuses all attempts at negotiation.
7) The growing isolationism in the U.S. is worrisome.
In my lifetime, I have never seen more craving for cowardice in the party of Ronald Wilson Reagan than now.
I was born in the state of California in 1971 under a dynamic and conservative Governor named Ronald Reagan.
Of course, that leader later became our American President for eight blessed years.
Make no mistake, the modern Democrat Party is far from what John F. Kennedy had in mind when he wrote “Profiles in Courage”, thus “wokeness” will not win this war.
In fact, it’s a surefire recipe for American humiliation and global disaster. Nonetheless, the lessons of history are that isolationism only leads to ruin.
America no longer has the luxury of the Monroe Doctrine and must lead regardless of whether it wants to or not.
One argument I heard in Washington when I was back last month was that the $40 billion in aid for Ukraine could have gone to build “the wall”. If Joe Biden were not President, then that is true.
A wall with Mexico will not be built under the current President. However, we do have an opportunity to build an equally important wall. We need to build a wall with Russia (in Ukraine) and the Germans will pay for it.
That’s right, the wall we need to build is with Russian military aggression against our allies in Europe.
Critically, the Germans will actually pay for this wall to atone for their guilt in whoring themselves for cheap Russian energy via the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. The narcissistic nature of Germany’s total disregard for European security sparked this war.
Russia knew that Germany lacked a moral compass, and now the rest of the continent is paying the price in terms of economic consequences and potential military repercussions.
In the last 100 years there have been three wars which Germany started. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is hopefully the final part of the trilogy.
8) Meanwhile, I continue my work with Help Ukraine 22 – Operation Palyanytsya (www.hu22.org), which is a humanitarian and medical rescue, relief and resupply project. Take time to donate today and make a difference to the lives of Ukrainian in need!
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and not necessarily those of the Kyiv Post.
