Amy Mackinnon, Robbie Gramer, and Jack Detsch
Almost seven months into a war that has already taken a number of unexpected turns, the Ukrainian military stunned the world as it succeeded in driving Russia’s forces out of swaths of territory in southern and eastern Ukraine in a counteroffensive over the past week. Armed with U.S.-supplied long-range weapons, the Ukrainian military destroyed Russian logistics hubs and arms depots in a series of strikes over the summer, undercutting the ability of Russian troops to bombard Kyiv’s forces from afar and leaving them vulnerable to attack.
The Russian military’s rapid collapse in the face of Ukraine’s surprise offensive has turned the whole narrative of the war on its head, convincing many Western policymakers that Ukraine could actually win a strategic victory, while pushing Putin to his most politically vulnerable point since the onset of the war after a series of embarrassing military setbacks for Moscow.
In a microcosm of the war thus far, analysts say Ukrainian forces in the latest offensive performed better than they could have anticipated, while Russian forces performed worse. Unlike Moscow’s tactical withdrawal from the Kyiv region in the spring as it sought to focus its efforts on eastern Ukraine, this time Russian troops scattered in the face of the Ukrainian advance, leaving behind scores of tanks and ammunition.
No comments:
Post a Comment