You’d have been forgiven, I think, for believing some of the Russian propaganda about the state of the war in Ukraine over recent months.
It went a little like this: That Russia was playing a long, attritional game, never committing too many forces, but slowly choking and wearing down Ukrainian resistance. This summer had seen a pattern of incremental Russian advances based on the same tactic repeated over and over – massive barrages of artillery to wear down Ukrainian resistance, and then Russian infantry moving forward. It was very slow, but, in the absence of any evidence that the Ukrainians could effectively counter it, one might have understood those who fell for the idea that Russian victory – however long it might take – was inevitable.
Not anymore. These are Russian maps, so is more likely to understate the gains made by the Ukrainians over this weekend than overstate them.
According to this map by the Ru MoD, the RuAF have retreated to behind the Oskil river. This would mean Ukraine just liberated 8370 km2. pic.twitter.com/A4q9IvzJgr
— Def Mon (@DefMon3) September 11, 2022
In three days, over the weekend, Ukraine has reversed all of Russia’s hard won summer gains, and indeed gone further. Many of the towns in the Kharkiv region which have been liberated were first taken by the Russians in the first days of the war. Ukrainian heavy weapons are, for the first time, within range of a Russian city – Belgorod. The official word from the Russian Ministry of Defence is that they have conducted a tactical redeployment of forces, though, to believe that, one must willingly believe that the Russians left behind hundreds of tanks and millions of rounds of ammunition as a generous present to their Ukrainian foes.
No, this was a rout of the Russian army, and a rout that may well have far-reaching consequences.
For one thing, this was far more than the victory that Ukraine needed, but Ukraine did need a victory. As winter bites, and Russian gas shortages in Europe pose all the problems that they will, the absence of any prospect of a Ukrainian victory in the war might well have strengthened the voices in Europe – which had been growing in strength – calling for Ukraine to be forced into some kind of negotiated settlement of the war, and an end to military aid.
Russia’s greatest strength, politically, was the notion that it could not be beaten. This weekend, its army was routed. That will change the political calculus considerably.
It would be pointless for this writer, who has never served a day in uniform, to talk about the military consequences, but the psychological consequences on those involved in the war on both sides are obvious. Russian soldiers have just seen their hard-won gains of the summer – which cost them dearly in blood – wiped out in a few days. Ukrainian soldiers have seen the same. It is not hard to see the impact that these events will have on morale, on both sides.
And then there’s the effect on the populations in the occupied parts of Ukraine. There were reports, this weekend, of those who had “collaborated” with the Russians in the liberated areas receiving visits from the Ukrainian authorities, and reports of many other “collaborators” fleeing the advancing Ukrainian forces. This will, you suspect, make it much harder for Russia to find civilian friends in the areas it still holds, since how long it holds those territories is now in question. It will also give succour the other way – to the Ukrainian resistance behind Russian lines, which now has more reason to fight.
As always, in this war, there will be those, perhaps some of them in the comments on this piece, who will present Russia’s latest disaster as some kind of Putinist masterplan. The most we can say in response to that, I guess, is that it’s a strange kind of masterplan which demoralizes your own side, hands vast amounts of equipment over to the enemy, and threatens your own supply lines to the areas you still hold. But this belief in Putin has never been rationally held to begin with, so I don’t suppose evidence of failure will do much to shake it.
Looking closer to home, it is likely that the short term impact of the Ukrainian advances will not be especially pleasant. Unable to achieve victory on the battlefield, we can expect the Russian President to step up his economic war on Europe. But this, does, I think, say something notable in its own right.
It is fascinating that European leaders are objectively willing to ask their people to suffer more for Ukrainian victory than Putin is willing to ask his people to suffer for a Russian one. His army needs more weapons and soldiers than it has, but he is either unwilling or unable to ask his people to provide either. That says a lot about the relative strength of Russia versus Europe, for all that we might be critical of the latter in other areas.