Year to the ground: Contours of Russia-Ukraine conflict, 10 months on

Annus horriblis. The late Queen Elizabeth II’s descriptor for the year 1992 could very well be the headline for 2022. 

From devastating floods to crippling droughts, from record-breaking summer heatwaves to once-in-a-lifetime winter storms, and economic and political upheavals of staggering scales, the year has turned out to be one of the worst in recent memory.

But none of the crisis could, perhaps, match the death, devastation and disruption caused by the Russian attack on Ukraine – a bloody and brutal war that has dragged on for 10 months, drawing comparisons with the two World Wars of 1914-18 and 1939-45. 

“At the moment, there is no clear end in sight to the Ukraine conflict. So 2022 could well be remembered as just the beginning of a long and drawn-out war,” says Eugene Chausovsky, a defence expert and a senior analyst at New Lines Institute. 

The year would also be remembered for the emergence of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “as a war-time president and symbol of Ukraine’s perseverance, or potentially the turning point in both Ukraine’s and Russia’s post-Soviet history,” Chausovsky tells TRT World. 

But security experts are not yet ready to compare 2022 with 1914 or 1939. 

“There are more contrasts than comparisons. Opposing military alliance systems were the causal agents in 1914 and 1939, these do not play in the Russian-Ukrainian War whatsoever,” says Edward Erickson, a former American military officer and a retired professor of military history at the Department of War Studies at the Marine Corps University. 

“Both 1914 and 1939 were characterised by long-term pre-war planning, resulting in large-scale massed conventional offensive operations aimed at destroying enemy armies,” Erickson tells TRT World.

“The Russian offensive of 2022 was an ad hoc plan employing widely dispersed uncoordinated attacks aimed solely at regime change rather than the defeat of Ukraine’s armies.” 

There is much evidence which backs Erickson’s argument. Among others, some captured Russian military documents show the Kremlin believed its “special military operation” in Ukraine would end in just 10 days after a successful attack on Kiev, resulting in the collapse of the Zelenskyy government.  

But Kiev did not fall then and has not until now, turning the Russian offensive into a prolonged war. It also evolved its battle strategy to a level where Ukraine can conduct counter-attacks on Russian forces, including drone strikes deep inside enemy territory close to Moscow. 

Since February 24, when Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, here’s how the story has unfolded.  

Kiev roadblock

When Kiev chose to resist rather than yield, it turned out to be the most defining moment of the war, when Russian military plans appeared to have come apart, according to Erickson. “Plans always fail when the assumptions prove invalid,” the military analyst says. 

“Putin’s assumption that the Zelensky government would collapse in a few days was fatally wrong. Russia had no ‘fall-back’ plan, so when the initial offensive failed, the widely dispersed Russian columns could not transition to a conventional posture aimed at defeating Ukraine’s armies,” says Erickson. 

The analyst says that the Ukrainian resistance shifted the momentum to the Zelenskyy government, which rallied its people against Moscow’s attack. 

Chausovsky also sees Russia’s failure to capture Kiev as “the most critical momentum shift” in the Ukraine war. 

“This enabled the Ukrainian government to remain intact and to sustain a fierce and prolonged resistance to Russian forces, one which has been supported with military assistance from NATO,” he says. 

Russian failure was not limited to Kiev. While Russian forces have been able to claim territories in the Donbass region – part of which was held by pro-Moscow separatists since 2014 – and southeastern Ukraine, they could not capture Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-biggest city. 

Key developments

The year has seen a significant flow of Western weapons and funds to Kiev, without which “Ukraine would have been forced to surrender in the late spring,” according to Erickson. “Again, Putin assumed that the US and the West were disunited and incapable of coordinated and rapid intervention. Another bad assumption,” he adds. 

In mid-April, Russia faced a significant setback in an unexpected place, the Black Sea. Moskva, one of Russia’s most powerful warships, was sunk after an apparent Ukraine attack in a warning sign that the Russian fleet is not safe in the region. 

But the next month, Russian forces captured the critical Black Sea port of Mariupol after a four-month-long bloody urban warfare, which also witnessed a fierce standoff at the Azovstal Steel Plant between Ukraine’s far-right Azov regiment and Russian forces. 

In August, Russia faced another setback when one of its airbases in the occupied Crimean Peninsula came under another attack. A series of explosions hit the Saky airbase, destroying seven warplanes and damaging three others, which equals the most extensive Russian air force losses in a single day since WWII. 

The year has also seen dangerous escalations around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the largest nuclear facility in Europe, which has been under Russian control since March.  

Kharkiv counter-offensive 

Through the protracted conflict, Russia has faced several setbacks. Still, few match the shock Ukrainian counter-offensive in Kharkiv in September, putting areas around the city under Russian control in danger and forcing the Kremlin to take some hard measures like its controversial partial mobilisation. 

“Another key momentum shift was Ukraine’s rapid counter-offensive in Kharkiv,” says Chausovsky, adding that it forced Russia into partial military mobilisation and led Moscow to hurriedly announce the annexation of several regions, including Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia. 

The international community has rejected the Russian annexation of Ukrainian regions.

Kherson withdrawal

As the year drew to a close, there were more setbacks for Russia, the world’s second-biggest army. Faced with a fierce Ukrainian counter-offensive, Moscow publicly announced in November that its army would pull out from Kherson, the only regional capital Russia could capture during the war. 

But Russia continues to hold some territories of the Kherson region, east of the Dnieper River, which divides western Ukraine from its eastern part and is also considered a natural barrier between the czarist Russia and the West. 

However, experts think that Russia’s withdrawal from Kherson city is a strategic decision aimed at consolidating Moscow’s hold on the rest of the region, which forms a land bridge between the Crimea Peninsula and the Russian mainland. 

But the Kherson withdrawal might also end Russian efforts to link Crimea to Odessa, a critical Black Sea port of Ukraine.

Bakhmut battle

Unlike Kherson, one battle which Russia appears to be determined to win is at Bakhmut, a city located between the Russian-controlled Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine.

The fierce Bakhmut battle – drawing comparisons with similar urban warfare in Iraq’s Fallujah, Syria’s Aleppo and Russia’s Stalingrad during World War II – has reduced the city into rubbles over the past six months. Still, none of the sides is showing any signs of giving up.

Last week, Zelenskyy made a dangerous and unexpected visit to the war-torn city to increase his troops’ morale against the fierce Russian offensive. 

While the city is less strategic than Kherson for both sides, the warring parties have their own reasons to continue fighting, according to experts. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to show a success story to his worrying public that the Ukraine war is winnable despite the setbacks, according to Esref Yalinkilicli, an Eurasia analyst. 

Bakhmut’s capture might also open the Russian military’s path to Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, two important industrial centres of Ukraine in the energy-rich Donbass region.

On the other hand, Ukraine does not want to give any breathing space to the Russian forces, worried by the fact that if they lose Bakhmut, it could cause a momentum shift towards Moscow at a crucial juncture of the conflict. 

Also, if Ukraine can retain Bakhmut, it might be possible to target other Russian-controlled areas like Horlivka, another important city, aiming to cut off supply lines between Donetsk and Luhansk, Yalinkilicli adds.