The Ukrainians have multiplied military successes in recent days against Russia. So much so that there is now more and more talk of a possible Ukrainian victory. But this goal is still far from being achieved.
On one side, there are the Russian troops who have withdrawn of Ukraine’s second largest city, KharkivSunday May 15, and which seem unable to cross the Donets River to sink into the Donbass. On the other hand, the Ukrainian forces took advantage of these setbacks to advance to the Russian border.
Even the end of the siege of Azovstal, the gigantic industrial complex of Mariupol, in the south of the country, can be considered a victory for kyiv. Admittedly, the Ukrainian resistance pocket ended up giving way on Monday, May 16, but “mainly because the Ukrainian soldiers had run out of ammunition and not because the Russians managed to take the site”, summarizes Jeff Hawn, specialist Russian military issues and an outside consultant for the New Lines Institute, an American center for geopolitical research.
This fierce fight has, in any case, dealt a very heavy blow to Moscow in terms of image. “Official Kremlin propaganda has always consisted – even beyond the war – of suggesting that Vladimir Putin is working to restore Soviet-era Russian greatnessbut, in Mariupol, the Russian army destroyed what was the largest industrial site in the former Soviet Union”, underlines Jeff Hawn.
From Kharkiv to the Russian border
Au 82e day of the conflict, the balance of power has evolved considerably according to this expert, who judges that “we have gone from a desperate situation for Ukraine to a situation which can inspire measured optimism in the Ukrainian general staff”.
The failure of the Russians to quickly take kyiv had already marked an important victory for Ukraine. But the scaled-down goals of “liberating” Donbass seemed easier to achieve for Moscow.
Except that here again, the Russian army appears to be struggling. “The greatest achievement of the Ukrainians during this second phase of the conflict was to push the Russians out of Kharkiv and to the Russian border,” said Huseyn Aliyev, a specialist in the Ukrainian-Russian conflict at the University of Glasgow.
A victory all the more important that “it was not a question of defending, as in kyiv, but of launching an offensive and retaking the city”, adds Jeff Hawn. And in the wake of pushing a numerically larger force back to the border.
This success has allowed Ukrainians to settle on the Russian border, which “is not just important from a symbolic point of view”, assures Sim Tack, military analyst for Force Analysis, a conflict monitoring company. Because on the Russian side, not far from the border north of Kharkiv, is the city of Belgorod “which serves as a logistics node to supply the Russian troops on the front”, underlines this expert. Henceforth, the Ukrainian artillery therefore has an important Russian supply line in its sights.
A third of Russian tanks destroyed
The Ukrainians have not only regained ground from the Russians. They also inflicted huge losses on the enemy. “Russia has probably lost almost a third of the forces it committed to Ukraine,” said the British Ministry of Defense on Twitter on May 15.
“It’s an estimate that’s pretty consistent with the information we’ve been able to glean from our side,” acknowledges Sim Tack. But for him, what is even more important is the number of destroyed or abandoned Russian armored vehicles. “According to the data from the Oryx website [qui fait un décompte des pertes de matériel russe, NDLR]Russia has lost between a quarter and a third of all the tanks in its army, which is simply enormous”, underlines this specialist.
Here again, the dynamic works in favor of the Ukrainians. As the Russians will find it increasingly difficult to renew the destroyed equipment, “equipment sent to Ukraine by the West – such as American howitzers or American Switchblade kamikaze drones – is starting to arrive on the front line “, summarizes Sim Tack.
A set of elements that prompted the British Ministry of Defense to raise the “possibility of a Russian defeat”. “It’s a prospect that can now be envisaged, but Ukraine is still far from being able to claim that it has won the war”, assures Huseyn Aliyev.
First, because “Russia continued to advance in the Donbass region” while all eyes were on the battle for Kharkiv, recalls Sim Tack. Russian forces now occupy almost the entire administrative region of Luhansk and are trying to do the same around Donetsk.
“The Russians have gained ground but at a very high price”, assures Huseyn Aliyev. It is in these two oblasts (administrative regions) of Luhansk and Donetsk that everything is played out now. The advantage of the Ukrainians lies in “their very solid defensive position on the other side of the Donets River”, assures Jeff Hawn. Enough to make the capture of the major cities of the region still under Ukrainian control – such as Kramatorsk or Sloviansk – very difficult for the Russians.
A possible Ukrainian victory, but what victory?
But a potential victory for Ukrainian forces hinges on their ability to retake towns already occupied by Russia. “It’s very complicated because to take back Kherson, for example, they will have to cross multiple small rivers and the Russians are not the only ones to have difficulty crossing these natural obstacles”, underlines Huseyn Aliyev.
Not to mention that ammunition is also starting to run out on the Ukrainian side, and “everything depends on the ability of Western countries to continue to send equipment to the Ukrainian army”, continues this expert from the University of Glasgow.
It is still necessary, also, to agree on the conditions of a victory in the eyes of Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukrainian president was able to be quite vague on the issue. Thus, at the beginning of May, he assured that he wanted to be the president of a Ukraine “of which the Crimea is a part [annexée par la Russie en 2014]”, highlighted le Wall Street Journal. But a few days later, he was talking about a return “at the borders before the start of the invasion“.
“Currently in kyiv, there is clearly a maximalist vision and a minimalist vision of war objectives”, recognizes Huseyn Aliyev. The problem of a return of Crimea to the fold of Ukraine is not primarily military. “If the Ukrainians manage to completely push Russian forces out of the country, they will have such an advantage that pushing into Crimea may seem possible,” said Sim Tack.
But politically, that would be another story. “We would go from a defensive war to what could appear to the Russians as an invasion. In which case there would probably be a much stronger mobilization to defend a region that the Russian population considers to be legitimately part of Russia”, summarizes Sim Tack.
If Ukraine ends up taking a decisive advantage, the country’s leaders may not want to inflict too great a political snub on Vladimir Putin. It is indeed necessary to be wary of an injured animal which has a finger on the nuclear button.
Another scenario would then be for the war to end in a double victory. Ukraine could then affirm that it repelled the invader, but could – during the negotiations – leave the door open to a special status for the Donbass so that Moscow can affirm to its population that the objective of defending the interests of the pro-Russian regions is reached.