Ukraine: avoiding defeat

By Richard North - November 1, 2024

One might have a little sympathy with the British legacy media over their reporting on Ukraine, given the crowded news agenda. They have the budget to obsess over, the US presidential election coming up, the Spanish floods, and sundry other stories crying out for attention. So it is hard to see how they have any room or resource to cover a minor issue like a war on Europe’s doorstep.

However, any slight feeling quickly evaporates when one finds that most national newspapers have managed to run a report on the conflict but, of those that have, they have all chosen to feature the claims that North Korean troops have been deployed in the Kursk oblast which, as the Financial Times suggests, could see action within a matter of days.

That, it appears, is the extent of the reporting with which British audiences must be content, unless they are prepared to spread their search and go to the likes of the New York Times for a more detailed overview.

Under the headline “Russia’s Swift March Forward in Ukraine’s East”, the paper opens its report by telling us that, for much of the past year, Russian troops launched bloody assaults on Ukrainian positions that often yielded only limited gains.

But, it says, the relentless attacks are now starting to pay off: In October, Russia made its largest territorial gains since the summer of 2022, as Ukrainian lines buckled under sustained pressure.

Such is the speed of current developments though, that the latest statistics have to be pulled off Twittter to give some idea of the scale of events.

Since the beginning of Ukraine’s Kursk offensive in August, we are told, Russian forces have captured 1,006 square Km in just the Pokrovsk-Kurakhovo direction. That is twice as much as Ukraine’s current control over territory in the Kursk oblast, whittled down to a mere 537 square Km.

The entire active front mostly comprised the Donbass oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk, but also embraces the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts in the south and the Kharkiv and Sumy oblasts in the north.

Collectively, they account for 1,652 square Km of territory captured by the Russians since the start of the Kursk incursion, and that figure excludes the 540 square Km of territory Russia has recaptured in Kursk as part of its ongoing counter-offensive.

These territorial gains, the NYT points out, have allowed the Russians to take control of strategic towns that had anchored Ukrainian defences on the Donbass front, beginning with Vuhledar in early October. Over the past week, a battle has raged in Selydove, which the Russians now claim to have captured.

The paper refers to an expert view which holds that these gains, among the swiftest of the war, will help the Russian army secure its flanks before launching an assault on the city of Pokrovsk, a key logistics hub for Ukrainian forces in the Donbas.

Currently, the focus is on a sizeable salient in the centre of the Donbass front, bounded in the North by the town of Kurakhove.

The Ukrainian defences, which have been static and steadily strengthened since 2014, are now said (by multiple sources) to be on the point of collapse and the Russians are poised to sweep north and south from the wings of the salient, potentially to seal off a huge area, trapping a sizeable Ukrainian force.

Ukrainian journalist Yuriy Butusov warns that the situation at the front is critical. He concedes that, in some directions the front is simply collapsing, which makes it impossible for Ukrainian forces to hold the southern part of Donbass.

This is reflected in an earlier article in the Economist, where the headline nearly tells the whole story. “Ukraine is now struggling to cling on, not to win”, it says gloomily, with the sub-heading telling us: “Russia is slicing through Ukrainian defences in parts of the battlefield”.

But the magazine points to one of the reasons why this gloomy outlook might not be getting the currency it deserves. It has Lloyd Austin, America’s defence secretary, declaring on a visit to Kiev on 21 October that, “After 970 days of war, “Putin has not achieved one single strategic objective”. During the visit, Austin exuded confidence, declaring: “Moscow will never prevail in Ukraine”.

In private, though, it is a different story. Austin, his colleagues in the Pentagon, Western officials and many Ukrainian commanders, are increasingly worried about the direction of the war and Ukraine’s ability to hold back Russian advances over the next six months.

Apart from the loss of territory – which is said to have come at enormous cost to Russia – the big problem is the steady erosion in the size and quality of Ukraine’s forces.

Ukrainian units, the magazine says, are under-strength and overstretched, worn thin by heavy casualties. Despite a new mobilisation law that took effect in May, the army, outside a handful of brigades, has struggled to recruit enough replacements, with young men reluctant to sign up to tours of duty that are at best indefinite and, at worst, one-way missions.

Western partners, we are told, are privately urging Ukraine’s leaders to lower the mobilisation age floor from 25 to increase the potential pool of recruits. But political sensitivities and fears over an already alarming demographic crisis stand in the way of any change.

And that, it seems, is the least of their woes. According to Major General Serhiy Krivonos,Serhiy Krivonos, former deputy secretary of the National Security and Defence Council, the mobilisation process is already failing.
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Of every hundred called up, 30 of them never report for duty and, after training, another 30 disappear before they reach the front. Another 30 desert once they reach the first trench, leaving only 10 percent of each mobilisation available to fight.

However, Radio Liberty journalist, Vlasta Lazur, notes that the Ukrainian authorities have their own way of dealing with the issues arising. Simply, when talking to journalists, soldiers are ordered to speak in glowing terms of “victory” and “going forward”.

On the other hand, they are forbidden to use words such as “retreat” or to say things like the enemy “had penetrated our defences”. This, according to Lazur, had one cynical soldier remark that he should say that “we are advancing on the Dnieper”.

But, even at the highest level, things are not going well. Zelensky is airing multiple complaints, one of which that Ukraine has received just 10 percent of US aid approved by Congress earlier in the year.

He also bitterly complains that he is still waiting for a batch of MiG-29 combat jets, promised to him in July by Poland.

The catch was that Polish prime minister Donald Tusk made the transfer conditional on his forces acquiring suitable replacements but, since then, nothing has materialised – with no reasons being made public.

Zelensky adds that he has “constantly asked” Poland to shoot down Russian missiles flying in its direction, particularly to protect the gas storage facility in the town of Stryi in Ukraine’s Lviv Oblast, located nearly 100 Km (62 miles) east of the Ukrainian-Polish border.

Yet,. once again, nothing is happening. The Poles claim that they are not alone in this decision to engage. They need Nato support, yet allies have advised the Polish government to exercise restraint when dealing with unidentified airspace violations.

His current complaint is that his Western allies have not adequately responded to the involvement of North Korean troops.

“The reaction to this is nothing, it has been zero”, he says, calling on “strong countries” such as Japan and South Korea to reach out to China, for it to intercede and act as a restraint on what North Korea is doing.

The final blow is that as one of the secret components of his “victory plan”, Zelensky asked the US for a supply of long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles. But, instead of keeping it secret, officials leaked the request, which they ruled out as “too escalatory”. The missile is also a nuclear platform

Said Zelensky bitterly, “It was confidential information between Ukraine and White House. How to understand these messages? So, it means, between partners there is (sic) no confidential things”.

One way or another, the Ukrainians across the board, must be feeling more than a little bruised at the moment, and the expectation is that things can only get worse, on both the military and political fronts.

In the latter domain, the US presidential election dominates thinking, with fears that a Trump victory will lead to an enforced settlement, with Ukraine conceding territory to Russia, something Zelensky says his country’s constitution doesn’t allow him to do.

Thus, as the Economist concludes, much of the thinking now on Ukraine is how to avoid defeat. And there do not seem to be any answers forthcoming.