THE WEST BELIEVES THE WAR IN Ukraine is, if not won yet, then at least not lost. That Russia’s invasion has failed, and that the heroic defence offered up by Ukraine has been a glorious feat of arms, scotching Putin’s ambitions. However, the matter of who is winning and who is losing in Ukraine is not the simple morality play we might want it to be. And to see that, we should start at the beginning.
On 24 February 2022, Putin declared the start of Russia’s “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine as invading forces attacked on several axes. The large-scale incursion from various directions was meant to disorient and overwhelm the Ukrainians, while the Russian forces amassed around Kiev were seemingly designed to coerce the government into concessions of some kind.
However, this initial approach failed and the mounting human and material cost of maintaining Russian forces in the area prompted Russia to retreat. The conflict then phased into a war of attrition — which Russia was prepared for, whether or not they were prepared for the depth of Anglo-American-led Western support for Ukraine — and it has remained so ever since. Things improved for the Russians in the late spring and over the summer, when they scored big successes in taking Popasna, Lyman, Lysychansk, Severodonetsk, and numerous other towns.
Then, momentum switched again in the autumn as Ukraine, bolstered by that massive Western military and financial aid as well as multifaceted intelligence and targeting support, identified and exploited parts of Russia’s defence lines in the Kharkov region that were severely
