War has been raging in Ukraine for 4 months. What comes next, and when will it end?

Joshua Keating and Nikhil Kumar

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Four months into the war in Ukraine, and three months after the Russians announced that they would focus their attacks on the eastern part of the country, the war has become a ferocious battle for the region known as the Donbas. And hopes for a swift victory — or even one that might come in the next several weeks — appear to have vanished for both sides. At various stages of the war, Grid has taken stock of where things stand on the battlefield, potential scenarios for the war’s end and the global impact of the conflict, beyond Ukraine and Russia themselves. In the latest assessment, Global Editor Tom Nagorski spoke with Global Security Reporter Joshua Keating and Deputy Global Editor Nikhil Kumar in a Twitter Spaces event Tuesday.

Tom Nagorski: Josh, to get started, a question or two about what we’ve seen just in the last couple of days: the Ukrainians abandoning a key city, Severodonetsk in the east, after what seemed to be a really nasty battle there. And then renewed Russian airstrikes — including this horrific attack yesterday on a mall, which was quite far from the front lines. Very different developments — what should we take away from these last few days?

Josh Keating: Most of the sustained fighting is happening in the east, and a rather narrow area, mostly in Luhansk, but then moving on to Donetsk, which is the larger region of the Donbas to the south. But while this is happening, there are other developments happening elsewhere in the country, as you mentioned. There continue to be missile strikes throughout Ukraine — this one on the shopping mall was distinguished by just the death toll and what a horrific strike it was. But we have seen regular strikes lately on targets outside the main battle area, even as the war itself has shifted east.

And there’s also been reports of Ukrainian counterattacks, both in the north, near the city of Kharkiv, and in southern Ukraine, near the city of Kherson, which is one that was taken by Russia rather quickly. So while the main action is happening in this relatively small area, there is fighting happening elsewhere. And you could look at these as setting up for battles down the road, because chances are this phase of the fighting is not the last one we’ll see.

TN: It was in late March that the Kremlin said, “We are pulling our forces away from the capital” and from other places to concentrate on these areas you’ve just been talking about. It’s taken a lot of time and certainly a lot of bloodshed. But from a distance anyway, it does seem that the Russians are slowly but surely achieving their aims. Is that a correct conclusion?

JK: I think that is true for now. The Russian forces were bloodied by those early weeks of the war, from the failed attempt to take Kyiv, so they weren’t really coming into this battle fresh. And they just don’t appear to have the personnel needed for large, rapid territorial gains. This is an artillery-heavy war. The cities that they’ve taken — Severodonetsk most recently — the approach is to use artillery to almost level the place before troops move in. This is a slow, grinding form of warfare, but it is one that works to Russia’s advantage just because of their advantage in materiel and the weapons systems they’re using, and the amount of ammunition and they can bring to the fight.

Right now, most experts you talk to say that they expect the pace of fighting to slow even more in the coming weeks, over the course of the summer, as the two sides are exhausted. I think that we’ll see the lines becoming even more fixed. And then it becomes a kind of race to see whether some of these new weapons systems that the West is rushing into Ukraine can turn the tide of battle and maybe allow Ukraine to mount counter-offensives to retake some of this area? Of course, the problem with that is Ukrainian forces are badly depleted, too. They’ve said they may be losing more than 100 troops a day, so they’re not exactly in prewar condition, either.

TN: We hear almost every day a fresh plea — whether it’s from [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy or one of his top aides — for more weaponry. And then we get repeated pledges that the money and the weaponry are coming. It seems like very little has reached the east, or at least it’s not making a difference yet. What’s the story?

JK: I’d say it is starting to reach the east. The thing that’s gotten attention lately is what’s called the HIMARS, the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, which is a kind of mobile precision rocket launcher, and those are apparently now being used in the east, according to the Ukrainian military. The problem really is both how long it takes to get this stuff to the front, and it’s also Ukraine’s capacity to absorb it. At the beginning of the war, Ukraine was mostly reliant on Soviet-era artillery systems, and they fire Soviet-grade ammunition. And they went through that pretty quickly. And so a lot of the resupply effort by the U.S. and other countries has been going all over the world, trying to locate Soviet ammunition for these systems, and the supply of that outside Russia has been mostly exhausted.

What’s happening now is they’re asking for NATO systems, and those are starting to be sent. But it’s not just a matter of getting them there. It’s training Ukrainian troops on how to use them. And what people say is even harder is training mechanics on how to maintain them. These are different systems than what the Ukrainian military is used to. That kind of stuff, in a normal military context, can take months. The Ukrainians say they can do it in weeks. But you know, even weeks, in a war like this, is a lifetime. And it’s really kind of a race against time to get this stuff online in time to make a difference in the Donbas.

TN: Nikhil Kumar, you have, among other things, written a piece for Grid under the heading, “Vladimir Putin is not a pariah.” Nikhil, can you explain what you meant by that — and whether you think it still holds true?

Nikhil Kumar: The answer seems almost blindingly obvious if all you’re doing is listening to and reading what’s coming out of, say, the White House, or other capitals in the West. But it becomes very clear when you widen your lens a little, and look beyond to important places like Beijing, like New Delhi, that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is not quite the pariah that you would initially believe. And that really has to do with the fact that while he and Russia have been subjected to unprecedented sanctions, which have effectively shut Russia out of large parts of the international financial system and affected all parts of its economy, Russia still maintains ties with these other countries, such as China, such as India, and beyond.

And we saw a demonstration of this very recently at the BRICS summit, which was done virtually, hosted by Beijing. And Putin was there, it was his first sort of big multilateral outing, really, since the beginning of the war, albeit virtual, but he was there. And he was there with these other countries — India, China, Brazil, South Africa. And we had the news yesterday from the Kremlin saying that they have accepted an invitation for Vladimir Putin to attend the G-20 later this year in Indonesia. We’ll see if that actually happens.

But it demonstrates that Putin has not been shut out and not been thrown off the world stage in the way that you might believe if you just heard things that were said in the U.S. and Europe. And it really all comes down to his economic clout. At the end of the day, Putin controls a country, an economy that is extremely resource-rich and is a major player in the global gas market and a major player in the global oil market. It continues to supply oil and gas. In fact, supplies have been stepped up to China in India as Russia goes to them and offers very deep discounts at a time when its war has played a big part in driving up these prices internationally.

Over the last few months, we’ve seen Europe, which is heavily dependent on Russian energy, move more and more to cutting into that dependence. But even that process is happening gradually. And it’s happening gradually because at the end of the day, Russia is just too much a part of the global energy market. So whereas in the financial markets and the financial system, the United States can with its allies shut it out, it can’t do so with as much speed when it comes to the energy market.

And the energy market matters, particularly because war is driving up inflation. And that means that these resources become more expensive. And that matters for all these countries — for China, India and others. India’s Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi doesn’t want prices to rise for his citizens. And his ministers have said again and again, “Look, in this war we empathize with Ukraine, but we have our own interests that we need to look after.”

And so that means that at the end of the day, Putin is not quite the pariah that you would initially believe.

TN: This week, the Indian prime minister was invited to join [President] Joe Biden and his counterparts in the G-7 in Europe. And I would imagine they are trying, among other things, to persuade Prime Minister Modi to stop buying — last I saw, it’s north of a million barrels of discounted Russian oil a day. What leverage does President Biden — or any of the European leaders — have to convince Narendra Modi?