Currently, there is no foreseeable decision in Ukraine. The counter-offensive on land is making slow progress, as reported by the German news website merkur.de.
Sönke Neitzel expressed his unwavering confidence: “Unlike the attack on Crimea in 2014, Russian soldiers now face fierce resistance. Putin’s generals probably did not anticipate this scenario,” the military historian explained shortly after Russia’s incursion into Ukraine to n-tv. A “Blitzsieg” like at that time did not happen. The Russians lacked the element of surprise, while Ukraine, especially its capital Kyiv, put up a tough defense.
One and a half years later, the situation has turned: The Ukrainian counter-offensive, which began in June 2023, is lagging behind the hoped-for progress, and the Russian attackers are also stubbornly resisting. Only in the Black Sea is Vladimir Putin’s fleet managing to make territorial gains. The American military expert Michael Kofman judges in an online magazine titled “War on the Rocks” that the war in Ukraine has become what it should never have been: a positional war that leads from trench to trench and allows only minimal territorial gains with a lot of movement. Kofman emphasizes, “This war has turned into a war over rows of trees. The differences in the front lines stretch over just a few hundred meters.”
Image: Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Vladimir Putin (23-04-2021).jpg, via Wikimedia Commons (no changes made)