The war in Ukraine has been going on for over 1,000 days, which is almost 3 years. We are now at the threshold of another, 3rd winter, which may turn out to be the hardest for our east neighbour since the beginning of the conflict: both due to the hard situation on the front and the condition of infrastructure in the back. Importantly, an crucial part of the factors that will influence the course and result of the war is beyond Kiev's control.
Frozen front
Traditionally, the situation on the front lines in the Russian-Ukrainian war stabilises during the autumn-winter period and early spring. The reason for this condition is two. 1 is the weather conditions – these tend to deteriorate importantly at the turn of October and November. The rainfall at this time of year makes maneuvering highly hard or impossible – especially erstwhile it comes to dense equipment specified as tanks, although local conditions are problematic besides for lighter vehicles as well as for people. The second crucial component is the deficiency of plant clothing at the time: most of the activities take place in areas that can be called agrarian areas – open spaces, farmland and akin places. The deficiency of vegetation is simply a crucial limitation of the ability to mask your own activity, which, while mass and widespread usage of thermal and akin equipment, makes any action or even preparation for it visible from a distance of many kilometres (there is besides a greater thermal contrast in winter).
Thus, the dynamics of armed action is importantly reduced or limited to urbanised areas, and action can usually be carried out utilizing infantry units operating with the support of artillery and unmanned workers. This resulted in fights for Bachmut and Soledar in the winter of 2022/23, and then for Awdijiwaka in the winter of 2023/24. They ended with the failure of the mentioned towns by Ukraine, which the Russian side paid with dramatic losses of respective tens of thousands killed and wounded in each of these cases. Ukrainian losses were importantly smaller, though besides significant. Despite this, these actions did not affect the military situation of the parties to the conflict in a strategical dimension – this 1 has actually remained unchangeable since the fall of 2022, erstwhile the Ukrainian army seized Kherson, thus ending the armed action on the northern shore of Dnieper. From that point on, the front line remains unchangeable (if not counting operations in the Kursk Oblast), and the war is de facto positional: neither Russian territorial conquests limiting to tiny towns and villages nor Ukrainian counter-offensive in the spring and summertime of 2023 have changed this.
Most likely the situation on the front will not change substantially during the coming winter. So far, there is no indication that the Russian army, with an initiative, could break Ukrainian defence and lead to major territorial changes. besides the Armed Forces of Ukraine, despite successes specified as the seizure of fragments of the Kurdish circuit or obtaining approval to usage western weapons against targets in Russia, they are incapable to take offensive action to change the current state of affairs. Both sides are severely exhausted by human losses and equipment after nearly 3 years of war, which will shortly find the positioning nature of the conflict.
Backroom: A hard winter for the 3rd time
Although military action has been limited to the confederate and east regions of Ukraine since mid-2022, the consequences of the ongoing war have affected the full territory of the country – mainly due to actions that lead the Russian air-space forces. These activities are carried out by means of aerial assaults: drones (mainly Shahed/Gerań type), Ch-101 maneuvering missiles and akin (fired mainly from Tu-95MS strategical aviation aircraft; little commonly 3M14 Calibr missiles, fired from Russian Navy ships in the Black Sea), Ch-47M2 Kindrazi hypersonic missiles (fired from MiG-31K aircraft), as well as Iskander-M ballistic missiles, as well as S-300 rockets, utilized as non-directed ballistic missiles. The usage of mass-guided KAB air bombs is besides crucial in the actions of Russian forces, mainly in front areas.
Donetsk District, 31 March 2023: Ukrainian soldiers from 80 Brigades remove snow from artillery positions, photo. AA/ABACA/Abaca/East News
A fresh component of Russian activities, which did not appear until the second half of November, are medium-range ballistic missiles. specified a rocket was launched by Russia towards the city of Dnipro – it is not rather clear so far whether it was an intercontinental ballistic rocket or a fresh construction: the Russian president in his speech stated that a fresh ballistic rocket was utilized under the name of Oresznik (Ros. Leszczyna), a medium-range missile. If a fresh weapon strategy was actually used, this would be the effect of the action resulting from Moscow's exit from the 1987 INF Treaty, prohibiting the improvement and possession of medium-range missiles. The fall of Oresznik did not origin much damage, although it was a possible demonstration of Russian capabilities – missiles of this kind are to be capable of carrying atomic warheads (a rocket launched on Dnipro was most likely not equipped with heads containing explosive material).
The aim of the Russian attacks is primarily the facilities of Ukraine's energy infrastructure. Starting from the beginning of the war, these actions led to the failure of at least half of power by Ukrainian energy in terms of power generation. This is mainly due to the physical demolition of power blocks in Ukrainian power plants and CHP plants. The harm besides affects transmission lines, although it is much easier to repair them than to build fresh power plants. This situation makes it essential to introduce power outage graphics, besides for individual customers – they last from a fewer to even a twelve hours on a regular scale, which becomes an crucial problem for society during the autumn-winter period, especially during frost. It should be assumed that specified actions will besides proceed in the coming months: although it is improbable that they could lead to a fundamental change of social sentiments (Ukrainians are mostly prepared for power shortages and another consequences of Russian shelling), they will surely make life hard for Ukrainian society.
Perspective: certain uncertainty
Ukraine's situation does not improve the deficiency of clarity as to how allies' policies towards Kiev will look in the coming months and years. The U.S. election ended with Donald Trump's victory, and his policy towards Russia, Ukraine and European countries in general – remains a large unknown so far. The American president-elect had previously announced that he would end the war within 24 hours, without specifying how it would have been done – akin declarations should be treated as an component of election folklore alternatively than anything else. It is possible to both keep and even increase US support for Ukraine – however, it seems more likely to effort to force any form of truce, possibly even under threat of halting military aid. The elections will most likely besides take place in Germany, which besides play an crucial function in supporting Ukraine - so far Olaf Scholz's action (including a fresh telephone call with Vladimir Putin) has not yielded any concrete results. Although the European Union and Britain theoretically have the capacity to take on a burden Ukraine support (as mentioned in mid-November at the gathering of the 5 largest EU countries' abroad ministers), this may in practice be a very complicated task.
The current most likely script seems to be to frost the conflict with the current front line as a temporary Ukrainian-Russian border. The truce, if formally signed, will not be a peace treaty, giving a chance to stabilise the situation. This will have a negative impact on both Ukraine and the safety situation throughout the region of Central and east Europe. Thus, the military threat from the Russian Federation will stay an crucial challenge for Poland and another east states of the NATO flank.
