Kyiv’s counteroffensive slog means war is far from over – and Moscow still has chance of succeeding in its revised aims
from the Rusi thinktank, estimate that Ukraine has been making “approximately 700–1,200 metres of progress every five days”, taking care to spare lives and western equipment. But there are, Watling adds, second and third Russian lines, defensive positions estimated at 20 miles deep. Moscow’s defenders are also laying further mines, sometimes with the help of drones, whose density may be less certain, but whose threat is significant enough.
Clearing the mines is dangerous work. In practice, the effort is largely conducted by specialist infantry military engineers at night, who are vulnerable to artillery if they are discovered by Russian drones or otherwise spotted. The terrain is open, with flat fields marked by tree lines and punctuated by occasional villages. Although Ukraine wants more specialist mine clearing equipment from the west, it is not clear this will come through fast enough or be effective enough.
So gradual was the advance in July and August that it was beginning to present Ukraine with a strategic problem. Vladimir Putin may have failed in his original effort to capture Kyiv and so subjugate Ukraine but he still has a chance of succeeding in what appear to be revised war aims: to seize and hold a large chunk of Ukrainian territory, exhausting Ukraine and wearing the patience of its western backers, until perhaps Donald Trump is elected to the White House.
Nor is Russia simply in defensive mode. Its forces launched their own artillery-led counteroffensive in the Kupiansk to Lyman sector, towards the north of the eastern front in early August, out-shelling Ukraine four to one, according to Ukraine’s eastern command and even briefly shifted the frontline about two miles forward and prompted Kyiv to announce
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