With spectacular attacks and acts of sabotage against the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, a military airport and ammunition depots in Crimea and in Russia, the Ukrainians have also exposed the enemy’s critical weak points.
This enabled Kyiv to at least temporarily slow down the Russian barrage of fire in the Donbass. Moscow takes the threat of an offensive in the south seriously and has deployed additional units to the Kherson and Zaporizhia areas to strengthen the defense lines.
However, the Ukrainians not only lack the soldiers for a decisive blow that could break through on a broad front, they also lack the heavy weapons.
pressure on the West
This insight is not new, and Kyiv regularly and publicly calculates for its partners the arms supplies required for a major offensive: 45 mechanized and eight artillery brigades with 1,400 tanks, 1,500 howitzers and 50 to 60 Himars rocket launchers.
Ukraine says it needs 50 to 60 Himars rocket launchers for a major offensive.
(Photo: The Washington Post/Getty Images)
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his advisers should also be aware that the West is neither technically nor politically in a position to fulfill these wishes. But the demand creates pressure to act and to justify itself – especially at a time when new commitments from Europe are becoming scarce.
Internal communication is even more important, albeit much more complex: Zelenskiy promises like a mantra that he will not only take back the territories lost to the Russians since February 24, but also the illegal “people’s republics” in the Donbass and the Crimean peninsula.
>>Read here: Russia’s anti-aircraft defenses active again over Crimea – Ukraine apparently fends off attacks in the east and south
To relativize this position against the background of military reality would be political suicide. The bloodshed by Ukrainians over the past six months has reinforced the restoration of pre-2014 borders as a national “creed.”
The goal of recapturing the “temporarily occupied areas” is therefore of great importance for morale. The city of Cherson in particular, whose rapid fall in March has become the epitome of incompetence and possibly even treason, has a high emotional value.
However, the promise of an offensive is also central to the resistance movement active under the Russian occupiers: should the population give up hope of returning to Ukraine and come to terms with the status quo, this would also weaken the broad will to support the “partisans”. .
Zelensky is under great political pressure, including from within. He definitely wants to prevent an atmosphere of normality.
(Photo: Reuters)
With its frequent attacks against collaborators and artillery shelling of military installations and command posts in the occupied cities, the leading Ukrainian military intelligence service wants to prevent an atmosphere of normality from developing. And he is trying to thwart Moscow’s plans to incorporate the Ukrainian territories into the Russian Federation through pseudo-referendums.
hoping for a retreat
In the south, Ukrainian forces are making the most of their limited forces in the hope of at least forcing the Russians to withdraw from the right bank of the Dnieper through constant pinpricks and pressure on supply lines. The journalist Ivan Yakovina calls this a “hybrid offensive” and refers to the successful precedents in Kyiv or on Snake Island, where Moscow capitulated to the supply problems.
The general staff seems to be hoping that the decisive battle will never come. To do so, he would have to establish a local numerical superiority, which would only be possible at the cost of weakening other parts of the nearly 800-kilometer front.
The risks recently became apparent in the Donbass, when the Russians broke through the Ukrainian defensive wall in the strategically important village of Piski. Military expert Tom Cooper writes that this was the result of the withdrawal of artillery pieces from this sector, leaving Kiev troops vulnerable to Russian fire.
The section was only temporarily stabilized by the relocation of reserves with great losses. In the area around Zaporizhia, too, the Russians put the enemy under pressure with intensified attacks.
The unstable situation for both sides illustrates how improbable a decisive blow has become after six months of war. This is well known in Moscow as well as in Kyiv, which is why, according to the Ukrainian media, both sides have put out their diplomatic feelers in the background. Discreet discussions are said to have taken place during Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visits to Sochi and Lviv.
This is how the Handelsblatt reports on the Ukraine war and the consequences:
In the short term, however, Russia is more interested in an agreement, since its position on the battlefield has deteriorated and a ceasefire would offer the chance to consolidate its own land grab. Zelensky, on the other hand, emphasizes that there is simply no negotiating partner on the part of the Russian “monsters”.
But the clock is ticking for him, too: Kyiv has to assume that the Russians will organize themselves again sooner or later, and with the poorer weather in the fall, the conditions for a military advance will become significantly worse.
In addition, in the colder months of the year, the Ukrainians will have far more to do with securing the supply of electricity and heat to the population – and they will be correspondingly more vulnerable to Russian pinpricks.
More: Read the current developments in the Ukraine war in the Newsblog.