Today, two years after the Russian invasion, the term war fatigue is already a cliché among Ukraine's allies who support the country with weapons and financial resources. That fatigue simply translates into a lack of good news for at least the last eight months and since the beginning of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the summer. The Kyiv army not only failed to carry out its objective (and the responsibility was not solely its own), but it has also not achieved any success in the tactical field since then. An important strategic victory, however, tends to be ignored, which was to ensure merchant traffic through the Black Sea, bypassing the Russian fleet.
The second anniversary is presented, however, with a Russian triumph, or at least that is what Moscow has intended, with its corresponding propaganda and its distribution of medals: the conquest of Avdíyivka. But don't fool yourself. The enclave does not represent a significant tactical victory beyond the fact that, by occupying it, the Russians manage to draw Ukrainian artillery away from the city of Donetsk, capital of the province of the same name in the Donbass region. As for the symbolic order – which always matters – it is true that the Ukrainians had never lost Avdíyivka since July 30, 2014, in the first weeks of the Donbass war, they expelled the pro-Russian separatists.
The Russian victory is very questionable considering, furthermore, that it represented an advance of only about ten kilometers in four months. And, of course, at a cost of thousands of soldiers (17,000, according to Ukraine, 16,000, according to Russian military blogger Andrei Morozov, who apparently committed suicide after his controversial report). If we take into account, for example, that one of the Russian objectives is to occupy the entire Donetsk province and that its limit is about 60 kilometers from Avdíyivka, we can get an idea of the situation on a front that covers in total , from north to south, about 1,600 kilometers. Avdíyivka would be just one of the starting points in three lines of attack (see attached map), the other two starting from Kreminná and Bakhmut in a northerly direction and towards Chásiv Yar, where the Ukrainian defenses protecting Kramatorsk and Sloviansk are located. At the same time, the Russians attack the pocket around the village of Robotine that the Ukrainians opened in their intended counteroffensive.
But these are, in any case, tactical movements seeking to cause the greatest stress to the Ukrainian forces and provoke some rupture, given that Kyiv, after the summer fiasco, has been concentrating on strategic defense. Moscow, according to the Institute of War Studies in Washington, to advance would have to face extensive open field maneuvers in fortified territory, similar to what happened to the Ukrainians in June.
The synthesis of all this is stagnation, as the now dismissed Ukrainian Chief of Staff, General Valeri Zaluzhni, recognized in November, with the difference that the Ukrainians are now in worse conditions.
Avdíyivka has been the demonstration. According to the Western allies, and the Ukrainians themselves, the withdrawal was due to a shortage of artillery ammunition (there was also the danger of a bloodletting like that of the Battle of Bakhmut). Testimonies collected by The Kyiv Independent at other points on the Donetsk front speak of needing “permission” to fire only five 155 mm howitzer shells where ten would be needed, or of hitting a target with only three shots when, for the same case, the Russians would use ten.
Added to this – confirming what was announced a year ago by independent Russian sources – is an improvement in the efficiency of Russian aviation with the use of gliding bombs, which allows Moscow to claim that it has air superiority in Donbass. And the supply of artillery ammunition, drones and missiles by North Korea and Iran is also added.
The Ukrainians are the first to recognize that the Russian army they now see before them is not the same as the one they defended themselves against brilliantly and with few means in the first year of the war. Has improved a lot. And he has the initiative; However, it is not clear what he will use it for. The air attacks will continue as before, especially to wear down the Ukrainian defenses and the supplies of the allies, but, in conditions of positional war in which the factor of surprise tends to disappear, no strategic movements are foreseen. What we have to reckon with is continued Russian rearmament and Vladimir Putin's apparent bet that US support for Ukraine will break down, especially if Donald Trump is re-elected in November.
The prospects for Ukraine in this third year of war are not good and depend on an external and an internal factor. The external is none other than the military aid from the allies. On the one hand, the freezing – at least for the moment – of the North American part; on the other, the apparent European inability to supply sufficient ammunition. In this sense, Denmark wanted to set an example by giving its artillery to Ukraine, considering that this is where it is needed right now for the defense of Europe.
There remains, of course, the refusal to provide Kyiv with missiles that can attack inside Russia. Ukraine needs to deeply beat the Russian logistics chain (a weak point in the first year of war that the Russians have been correcting) to weaken the front. And military technology, above all, as Zaluzhni himself said a long time ago.
The replacement, by the way, of this general with Olexánder Sirski – President Zelensky's favorite – would not have to represent major changes, since the circumstances on the ground are what they are. In the internal order, the key factor of a new and necessary mobilization will weigh more. Ukraine has an estimated force of one million men and most need rest, but a rotation only seems possible with a new levy. How many soldiers are needed? It is not clear and the matter remains subject to political debate. But, unlike the weary European public, Ukrainians retain faith in victory: 85%, according to a poll by the Razumkov Center in January. What kind of victory? That already has different nuances.
