Russia’s war against Ukraine is entering its next phase. The always optimistic Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at least publicly assumes that the war will be over by the end of this year. It is more likely that it will continue for years to come. In the best-case scenario, it will drag on at a comparatively low level, as has been the case in eastern Ukraine since 2014.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has not given up on his goal of completely subjugating Ukraine. The question is whether he can implement it. Last week, Putin boasted that Russia hadn’t really started its war yet. From a military point of view, this is transparent boasting: In reality, Russia has lost tens of thousands of soldiers. Since Putin shies away from declaring a state of war and a general mobilization, he has great problems finding new soldiers for the slaughterhouses in Ukraine.
In addition, his army lost a large part of its equipment in the first months of the war. And fortunately, Ukraine can finally effectively destroy Russian ammunition dumps, command posts and staging areas in the occupied territories with the US and UK’s mobile satellite-guided missile launchers. The armament of the Ukrainians fighting for their country and their freedom, which will be necessary for many years to come, can probably prevent Putin from realizing his dream of conquering all of Ukraine.
recaptures? The Ukrainians will not be able to do that for a long time
Nevertheless, the Ukrainians can currently be happy if they keep the status quo – and if the Russians succeed in preventing the complete conquest of the Donbass and the last Ukrainian bastions there, such as Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. Well over a million people in the occupied territories are already paying a high price: with Russian terror and the deportation of hundreds of thousands – another Russian war crime.
But as far as recapturing the occupied territories is concerned, the Ukrainians will not be able to do this for years to come. They have lost tens of thousands of their army’s best fighters to death or wounds; an army which, according to figures from the London Institute for Strategic Studies, numbered just over 125,000 combat-fit men when the war began at the end of February. In the east, in view of the high losses, the Ukrainians have already sent untrained volunteers to front positions, effectively as cannon fodder. Even if Ukraine can at least hold the rest of the Donbass thanks to new weapons, it will take at least months before they have even halfway made up for the losses with new soldiers (whose training began in Great Britain, for example) and with new equipment.
Kyiv claims that with a major offensive it can liberate the Kherson region in the south, which is of strategic importance: as a route to Crimea, as a staging area for Odessa, as a granary. Of course, the Ukrainians should be able to attack there with multiple superiority – they are obviously a long way from that.
Negotiate with Putin? How does that work?
Even if Cherson were liberated, Ukraine would not be saved either militarily or economically. Not military: the Russians still have a rich arsenal of rockets and cruise missiles that remain unattainable for the Ukrainians and with which Moscow will continue to bomb Ukrainian infrastructure and civilian targets in the coming months, possibly years. Putin, kept afloat by his high revenues from oil and gas sales to China or India, can also afford to replenish his destroyed military stockpiles.
And economically, the situation is like this: even if there is a solution to the question of Ukrainian grain exports, Putin will not allow normal traffic to the Ukrainian ports, which were previously the backbone of the Ukrainian budget with their revenues. In order to fundamentally change this, US President Joe Biden would have to decide to have civilian ships in the Black Sea escorted by US warships. It doesn’t look like that. Moreover, not only at sea but also on land, Putin will try to bomb any Ukraine return to economic and other normalcy.
Anyone who believes that it is possible to negotiate sensibly with Putin, who fulfills all the hallmarks of a dictator, about the future of Ukraine is mistaken. Ukraine will – rightly – neither recognize the criminal occupation of Crimea nor the occupation of other parts of the country and their soon to be annexed by Russia; just as little as the Baltic republics never recognized their alleged affiliation with the Soviet Union for decades. At the moment, the West can only continue to support Ukraine with weapons and money. There are no easy ways out of this war.