Russia is expected to launch a large-scale offensive, with Ukraine expected to counter-attack in summer. In the meantime, it’s waiting for more weapons.
When Russia invaded Ukraine a year ago, it shocked the world.
Although, in hindsight, it probably shouldn’t have — after all, Russia had amassed at least 100,000 troops along its border with Ukraine in the months leading up to the invasion, insisting all the time that it had no plans to invade.
Moscow had also been rebuffed by the West after it presented NATO with a list of demands asking for the military alliance to essentially roll back its activity in Eastern Europe, and to guarantee that Ukraine would never become a member of NATO.
Needless to say, the Western military alliance refused to accede to Russia’s demands and a few months later, on Feb. 24, 2022, Russian troops invaded Ukraine from the north, east and south of the country. It targeted the capital Kyiv, Kharkiv in the northeast, Donbas in the east, and the southeast of the country, along a swathe of territory reaching across to Crimea — a peninsula Russia had annexed back in 2014.
While Russian forces were able to seize a portion of Ukraine in the east and south, aided by the conduit offered by Russian-occupied Crimea, the overly-ambitious scale and breadth of the invasion quickly came back to haunt Moscow. In April, it was forced to withdraw its forces from the Kyiv area, a retreat seen as a humiliating defeat for Russia.
Ukraine saw further strategic victories last year as it launched successful and surprise counteroffensives around Kherson in the south, and Kharkiv in the north, where it managed to push Russian forces back deeper into the Donbas.
Since then, however, the conflict has become largely a war of attrition in eastern Ukraine, with fierce fighting continuing around the war hotspot of Bakhmut, a city in Donetsk that Western analysts view as being slowly encircled by Russian forces hell-bent on cutting Ukraine’s supply lines in the region.
The war has arguably become more global too, with Russian President Vladimir Putin repeatedly blaming the West for the conflict and pitching the war as a battle for Russia’s survival. for their part, the West has vowed to support Ukraine for as long as it takes, pledging billions of dollars in military aid and weaponry.Weapons wanted, quickly
As the war enters its second year, military analysts believe that capturing the Donbas region, which includes Donetsk and Luhansk (regions where two self-proclaimed, pro-Russian « republics » are located), remains a key aim for Russia as it launches a new large-scale offensive using several hundred-thousand conscripts drafted by Putin last September.
How that offensive proceeds, and how quickly and effectively Ukraine can counter it, will be decisive, defense experts warn.
Russia’s « main strategic goal remains to destroy Ukraine, all of it, » Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Ukraine’s former defense minister, told CNBC ahead of the one-year anniversary.
« But since they cannot do that, they obviously have some reduced goals and the main one that they’ll be selling internally is the capture of the Donbas, and they’ll sell that a completion of their main objective [if they succeed], » he noted.
