I have seen a lot of people being either very confused or misinformed on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, how it is going, how it is likely to progress or even end and finally what this means more broadly.
This first mytake will just be a simple recap of what actually happened, just so people are up to speed.
First of all, this is a conflict a long time in the making. Skipping over a lot of the hows and the whys as they will be brought up in later posts to some extent, for the purposes of this recap the conflict between Russia and Ukraine officially began in 2014 with the civil war in Donbas and the Russian annexation of Crimea.
At this point there has not been a direct physical conflict between Russia and Ukraine as Russia used indirect means to support the separatists and annexed Crimea without having to attack. Over time the conflict escalated and in 2018 the first case of direct violence happened as Russia fired on and captured 3 Ukrainian ships.
This further escalated with Russia repeatedly stationing large amounts of troops on the border while supporting the separatists in the Donbas region which ultimately culminated in 2022 with Russia recognizing the two separatist factions as independent nations as an excuse to move in to "help them" and also triggering the invasion of Ukraine while calling it a "military action" with some flimsy and obviously false goals.
While I would like to go into all the details of how Russias initial strike went down and their military goals, I do not think it is warranted. Simply put, they were superficially similar to something a competent military would do but very anemic.
All the elements were there. Missile strike on key targets, aircraft launching to secure air superiority and suppress anti-air, rapid insertion of special forces, launch of cyber attacks and multi-prong ground assaults. There was an element of everything on display and I will get into that later but all of these were woefully small and could not achieve any real objectives.
If you want to see an example of this done right you can look up the beginning of Desert Storm. Point is, the opening of this invasion was not long or intensive enough. It is the part where you are supposed to overwhelm your opponent with all the shit you can throw at them and do so for as long as its needed until they are unable to mount a proper defense.
The sign of a good opening barrage is the lack of power, communication and ability to resist such as AA or military formations. As far as I can discern, Russias opening did nothing of any significant military value aside from provide a few explosions for the media and hit a bunch of civilians for no reason. It is in a word, embarrassing.
Putting aside the lackluster support, the ground forces probably did the best out of all of these branches and got at least some ground to show for it. There was three main fronts with three major objectives. First and most importantly was the encirclement of the capital of Kyiv where they intended to replace the government with their own puppet government as well as parade up and down the streets as demonstrated by the soldiers packing parade uniforms.
The second goal was to encircle the Ukrainian forces in the east on the border of the separatists as that is a major part of their military. The third was to push out of Crimea and establish a land bridge back to Russia as well as capture the major commercial port of Odessa.
Today only the third goal has partially been fulfilled with the land bridge between Crimea and Russia sort of being secured with only the besieged city of Mariupol remaining. There is question how valuable this land bridge is after they systematically reduced the infrastructure in the city to rubble but its at least something. Russia has also been forced to re-evaluate their goals in this conflict.
To categorize what happened I will divide the Russian advances into 3 categories. First we have everyone on the Separatist border. This has basically not moved at all since the start of the conflict. Ukraine after fighting over this exact border for 8 years had plenty of soldiers, supplies, experience and was properly entrenched to resist the Russian attack.
Category 2, at all the northern fronts the Russians quickly advanced along roads without securing the area around it. This was partially done because they did not have enough manpower, partially because they were rushing to complete their objectives and partially because the terrain was bad such as the infamous mud that wrecked the Nazis and forests. Either way they advanced until they hit the first major center of resistance and then ground to a halt. This usually meant they had long supply lines open at the back that kept being ambushed because the area was never actually secured.
Category 3, the southern front around Crimea. This has been by far the most successful one and I am not quite as well informed on it as the others because I did not find it as interesting. As far as I can make out its because of 3 major reasons. First the terrain is far more favorable. Secondly there are less Ukrainian regular forces and thirdly its a region that is more supportive of Russia.
So, what were Ukraines perspective on this? To put it simply, they only had two major goals. One is to give ground to buy time and find an opportunity to grind the Russian advance to a halt and the second is to promote civilian resistance. Worst case scenario they intended to disperse their forces and fight in a way you more commonly see successfully done against USA in the middle east.
This strategy does not rely on beating your opponent in a conventional military conflict but instead make it too costly for them to continue the conflict and force them to back off. It is a brutal and costly way to fight but its a way to "victory" that does not require you to win a single battle which is appealing for anyone that can't stand up to their enemies in a fair fight.
Very early on it became clear that Russia does not have the logistics to support this invasion. Images flooded the internet showing Russian tanks being abandoned without fuel and soldiers not getting food or equipment. They also had major morale issues with soldiers not wanting to fight or just running away. Perhaps most notably is the poor condition of the Russian equipment which probably through rampant corruption has completely undermined the quality and even functionality of a lot of Russian equipment. A famous example was someone finding out the supposed armor plates attached on a Russian tanks simply being made out of cardboard.
The Western sanctions also bit hard into the Russian economy which while Russia was somewhat prepared for did not mean they anticipated just how harsh they would bite. A big part of the preparations against the sanctions is made up of foreign assets which got confiscated as part of the sanctions and now Russia is facing selective default.
This is made worse by the excellent work by the irregular Ukrainian forces fighting behind enemy lines to disrupt convoys and supplies as well as other elements like drone strikes. At the start of April Russia could not continue to sustain the original plan and gave up on their original goal of ending the war quick by taking the capital and installing a puppet government. Pretty much all the forces in the north was therefore pulled back and redeployed to the separatist front to try make a decisive win against the core of the Ukrainian army instead.
This is about where we are today. Russia has pulled out of the North, gotten stalled in the South and preparing to make another major offensive in the East to try cut off a large Ukrainian force inside a pocket there. However Russia has suffered major losses, especially to its more experienced forces in the North and requires maybe a few months to reorganize before it returns to the same strength it had at the start of this war and ready for a major offensive on that scale.
Ukraine on the other hand started drafting soldiers early in the war and is growing its own numbers. That said, they have showed that they have few formations capable of offensive operations right now which limits their ability to counter attack to properly punish Russia in its moments of weakness.
There are many smaller events such as the shelling of the nuclear plant, assassination attempts against the Ukrainian leader, various betrayals, generals dying, sinking of Russian military ships etc.. All very interesting and important but they are not going to change the war itself.
Point is that the current situation is that Russia is unable to mount large scale attacks because most of their elite units are damaged and Ukraine does not have the forces to mount a proper counter attack to capitalize on this change in posture. Aside from some minor engagements we are just sitting here waiting for the next big offensive to begin. Also I am aware that I became more rambly and less focused by the end, its getting late and I can only think about bed right now. Ill see if I can write the next part tomorrow or over the weekend.
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