Russia will not be successful in Donbass either

Washington Russia had assumed a blitzkrieg, but the march on the capital Kyiv turned into a disaster for Vladimir Putin’s troops. Then the swing: The Kremlin chief shifted the combat strength of his soldiers from the north of Ukraine to the south-east of the country.

“But even with this new strategy of focusing on the secession of individual parts of Ukraine, there was no quick success,” said the renowned US military strategist Jeffrey Edmonds to the Handelsblatt. The Russia expert from the CNA think tank is convinced: the offensive in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions is on the verge of failure.

It’s true that the logistics in Donbass are a bit easier for Putin and that the army has consolidated its command structures, said Edmonds, who advises the US Department of Defense, among other things. But one shouldn’t forget “how bloody” the first weeks of the war in Ukraine were for Russia.