It’s been one month since Putin escalated his murderous invasion of Ukraine. Can its defenders repel Russia’s attacks?

The present sta­tus of Vladimir Putin’s war of aggres­sion in Ukraine is very flu­id, vio­lent, and fre­quent­ly star­tling. NPI will try to err on the side of cau­tion when evi­dence behind claims or state­ments are lacking.

Nei­ther Russ­ian nor Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary forces have been able to achieve deci­sive vic­to­ries in their most recent com­bat against one anoth­er, but pat­terns are emerg­ing that could reach deci­sive moments with­in the next two weeks or less.

In the greater Kyiv met­ro­pol­i­tan area, Ukrain­ian forces are attempt­ing to trans­late the retak­ing of the towns of Markariv and Kukhars­ka into attacks beyond them, accom­pa­nied by attacks on the oppo­site side of the tip of the Russ­ian salient north­west of Kyiv and just north of Bucha and Hostomel.

The like­ly objec­tive is to force the Rus­sians to with­draw or lose artillery and ground-to-ground mis­sile units and thus min­i­mize their abil­i­ty to suc­cess­ful­ly bom­bard Kyiv, but appar­ent­ly the Russ­ian defense has been soft enough that the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary is talk­ing about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of iso­lat­ing and sur­round­ing a por­tion of Russ­ian mil­i­tary forces with­in the salient.

(This has­n’t stopped Russ­ian forces from bom­bard­ing a neigh­bor­hood near­by the cen­ter of Kyiv on Wednes­day, March 23rd.)

Regard­less of whether or not such a pos­si­bil­i­ty exists, it has been con­firmed that Russ­ian units are adopt­ing defen­sive posi­tions in most of the salient north­west of Kyiv and imme­di­ate­ly sur­round­ing the besieged town of Chernihiv.

More impor­tant­ly, it appears that recent fight­ing imme­di­ate­ly to the south and south­east of Cherni­hiv has result­ed not only in reopened sup­ply lines to the city, which had been momen­tar­i­ly closed, but also may have cre­at­ed an iso­lat­ed Russ­ian pock­et between Kozelets and Bohdaniv­ka and anoth­er around the town of Nova Basan. Fur­ther east, though Russ­ian bom­bard­ment has con­tin­ued in Sumy, the Sumy-through-Okhtyrkra area has been large­ly qui­et since a recent failed Russ­ian assault on Okhtyrkra.

Fur­ther south, the Rus­sians have large­ly con­tin­ued their slow but steady progress. With­in the Lunan­sk and Donet­sk oblasts of the Don­bas region, the Rus­sians are fight­ing hard to turn the flanks of the exten­sive defen­sive lines both sides have cre­at­ed since the 2014 inva­sion, specif­i­cal­ly at Marin­ka to the south and an area between the towns of Yampil, Sievierodonet­sk and Lystchan­sk to the north.

The Rus­sians are also tak­ing cues from the Ukraini­ans: they’ve been bomb­ing key rail junc­tions behind the lines to min­i­mize access to sup­plies and muni­tions and have been using drones more often to find and fol­low sin­gle or small groups of mobile Ukrain­ian units to destroy larg­er con­cen­tra­tions in the process.

And when that has­n’t worked, they’ve been will­ing to be worse.

There have been grum­blings that Russ­ian forces have used white phos­pho­rus in night­time attacks around Kyiv and the Don­bas for the last week, and this has final­ly led to for­mal accu­sa­tions of such use around the town of Kram­a­torsk.

Anoth­er appar­ent Russ­ian effort has been to detect Aero­scope sig­nal­ing on drones man­u­fac­tured by Chi­nese firm DJI, which exists to deter­mine when such drones enter restrict­ed air­space in peace­time, to track and kill their operators.

The prob­lem is that while most DJI drones in Ukraine are being used by its mil­i­tary, the drones are inex­pen­sive enough that civil­ians have them in sig­nif­i­cant num­bers as well. The Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary is appeal­ing to DJI to turn off Aero­scope sig­nals with­in Ukraine, as it may have led to the deaths of over one hun­dred Ukrain­ian chil­dren play­ing with some­thing they con­sid­er a hobby.

Toward the south­west, Mar­i­upol is slow­ly being reduced to rub­ble and ash by Russ­ian forces. While appar­ent­ly around 190,000 civil­ians have been able to with­draw from the city to areas behind the front lines with­in Ukraine, there are still at least two hun­dred thou­sand civil­ians thought to be in the city, which has no elec­tric­i­ty, nat­ur­al gas or potable water available.

The Rus­sians have forced the evac­u­a­tion of over sev­en thou­sand civil­ians in the city into either the occu­pied Lunan­sk and Donet­sk oblasts of the Don­bas region, or to with­in Rus­sia itself.

In either case, this lat­ter group of civil­ians have not con­tact­ed rel­a­tives or friends since their removal from Mar­i­upol, and no aid agency has been able to con­firm where they are in order to pro­vide for their needs.

In addi­tion to attempts to cre­ate human­i­tar­i­an cor­ri­dors out of Mar­i­upol, with mixed results, there are sev­en attempt­ing to come into being and suc­cess­ful­ly used as of Sun­day, March 20th.

The Rus­sians have been ruth­less in tak­ing Mar­i­upol, with prime exam­ples from the media being the destruc­tion of both the Mar­i­upol Dra­ma School with a bomb shel­ter hous­ing between a thou­sand and twelve hun­dred women, chil­dren and the elder­ly, and lat­er an art school with over four hun­dred res­i­dents, many hud­dled in its basement.

But for all this, even with­in this area the lines of bat­tle are still porous.

On Tues­day, March 24th, appar­ent­ly one Russ­ian war­ship was sunk and two more dam­aged at the port of Berdyan­sk, some fifty miles south­west of Mariupol.

This was a force that dis­persed Russ­ian naval infantry, muni­tions and sup­plies toward Mar­i­upol, and which would have been used lat­er in any amphibi­ous attack on Odesa.

There is some ques­tion as to how much Ukrain­ian sup­plies and war materiel were pre-posi­tioned with­in the city, as giv­en its loca­tion on the Sea of Azov, which in turn makes it cru­cial for con­trol of the Black Sea, the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary like­ly saw it as a prime tar­get in the event of an inva­sion. Most mil­i­tary observers have been sur­prised by the extent to which the city has held out so far. This mat­ters because the more Russ­ian casu­al­ties there are in tak­ing Mar­i­upol, the less forces are avail­able for rein­forc­ing attacks toward Marin­ka or points fur­ther west.

Fur­ther south­west, Ukrain­ian coun­ter­at­tacks have been made toward Kher­son, ini­tial­ly through bom­bard­ment and/or mis­sile attacks on the near­by air­field at Chornobayiv­ka on March 15th and 18th — this may have led to the with­draw­al of Russ­ian mil­i­tary heli­copters at the air­field.

On Wednes­day, March 16th, there was an attempt to force local nota­bles from Kher­son, through a group called the “Kher­son Res­cue Com­mit­tee for Peace and Order,” to cre­ate a new col­lab­o­ra­tionist author­i­ty that would even­tu­al­ly lead to the cre­ation of a new break­away republic.

The effort failed, how­ev­er, and lat­er that same evening, Ukrain­ian spe­cial forces units freed Melitopol’s elect­ed May­or, Ivan Fyo­dor­ov, from his Russ­ian captors.

On March 20th, Pavel Slo­bod­chikov, an assis­tant to Russ­ian col­lab­o­ra­tionist Kher­son City Coun­cil mem­ber Volodymyr Sal­do, was, with his wife, assas­si­nat­ed.

Demon­stra­tions against Russ­ian occu­py­ing forces by the cit­i­zens of Kher­son have been ongo­ing since its sur­ren­der by the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary, but they were fired upon for the first time on Mon­day, March 21st, result­ing in at least two wounded.

Ukrain­ian forces have been able to suc­cess­ful­ly push back Russ­ian forces near Myko­laiv, with suc­cess­ful attempts toward the east at tak­ing the near­by towns of Khrysto­foriv­ka, Hrei­hove, Kyse­liv­ka and Per­vo­maiske, pos­si­bly through the Ukrain­ian 79th Air Assault Brigade. Mean­while, Russ­ian forces have been mak­ing explorato­ry attacks to the north­east of Kherson.

One is toward the city of Kryvyi Riv, which would place them anoth­er step clos­er to pock­et­ing Ukrain­ian forces in both the Don­bas and pos­si­bly the Sumy-through-Okhtyrkra area.

The sec­ond is toward the city of Nikopol, across the Dnipro Riv­er from the occu­pied town of Ener­ho­dar and its adja­cent Zapor­izhzhia com­mer­cial nuclear pow­er facil­i­ty. This would also be a means of fur­ther ensur­ing that Dnipro Riv­er water can’t be blocked from access to the Crimean penin­su­la, which relies almost entire­ly on the riv­er for its supply.

(A dam built by the Ukraini­ans after the 2014 inva­sion to block access was blown up by the Rus­sians ear­ly in the 2022 invasion.)

The fight­ing at this point has clar­i­fied each side’s weak­ness­es and strengths.

Russ­ian com­bat effec­tive­ness and coor­di­na­tion have been severe­ly dis­si­pat­ed through hav­ing six axes of attack against Ukraine.

At this point, beyond explorato­ry attacks out­side of the Don­bas, the focus now appears to be on ensur­ing a sup­ply line from Kher­son to the Russ­ian city of Ros­tov-on-Don, in prepa­ra­tion for a future push toward Ode­sa, and attempt­ing to break the Ukrain­ian forces in the Don­bas with an effort toward pock­et­ing forces there and to the imme­di­ate north before they can escape the net and cross the south­ern approach­es of the Dnipro River.

The Rus­sians have been fight­ing some­what more intel­li­gent­ly late­ly, but can they afford to con­tin­ue to sus­tain such heavy loss­es? The Syr­i­an mer­ce­nar­ies may not be com­ing. Even if the mil­i­tary of Belarus wants to assist, the ongo­ing “rail­way war” could wreak hav­oc with that plan, and if they attack the north­west por­tion of Ukraine with­out sig­nif­i­cant Russ­ian fire sup­port, they will be slaughtered.

Call­ing up con­scripts through­out Rus­sia to replace loss­es may harm the image with­in Rus­sia that this con­flict is both lim­it­ed and under control.

The Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary, with an extra­or­di­nary lev­el of of sig­nals intel­li­gence, sup­plies and muni­tions pro­vid­ed by NATO, has fought a resilient and adapt­able defense against a huge but large­ly incom­pe­tent Russ­ian mil­i­tary that has relied too much on shock and awe, mass and fire­pow­er to ensure a quick victory.

The first prob­lem is how to cre­ate a more flex­i­ble defense in the Donbas.

The Rus­sians are try­ing to starve the Ukraini­ans of future muni­tions there and grind away at their posi­tions, and if they lose key points along their defen­sive lines, the geog­ra­phy behind them will be very dif­fi­cult to defend until they reach the Dnipro Riv­er. That in turn could unrav­el the defense of Kharkov to Sumy, and cause Cherni­hiv to be at risk of being sur­round­ed again.

The oth­er prob­lem is that while the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary has been very effec­tive as a defen­sive force, at some point they will have to be able to com­mit to sig­nif­i­cant offen­sive oper­a­tions. And that means artillery or its equiv­a­lent in greater num­bers than they have present­ly. They are care­ful­ly using what they have in their approach toward Kher­son, the Cherni­hv area and north­west of Kyiv, but they will need much more offen­sive fire­pow­er to even­tu­al­ly break the Russ­ian army.

This may be where the new Amer­i­can Switch­blade weapons sys­tem proves effec­tive, but for the imme­di­ate future, the dif­fi­cul­ty will be how to get enough artillery from NATO to Ukrain­ian units with­out run­ning into a dilem­ma sim­i­lar to that of the Pol­ish Mig-29 air­craft poten­tial­ly avail­able to Ukraine.

There has been no word of the sta­tus regard­ing the Zapor­izhzhia com­mer­cial nuclear pow­er facil­i­ty or the sta­tus of its oper­a­tions and main­te­nance staff since short­ly after its takeover by Russ­ian mil­i­tary forces on March 4th.

Only a por­tion of the Ukrain­ian staff at the Cher­nobyl com­mer­cial nuclear pow­er facil­i­ty in the north of Ukraine, occu­pied by Russ­ian mil­i­tary forces since Feb­ru­ary 24th, were rotat­ed out of main­te­nance and replaced with fresh staff on March 20th. This was imme­di­ate­ly fol­lowed on Tues­day, March 22nd, by a series of for­est fires with­in the Exclu­sion Zone of the facil­i­ty, which suf­fered a reac­tor breach, explo­sion and wide­spread dis­per­sal of radi­a­tion in 1986.

Mon­i­tor­ing of both facil­i­ties by the Inter­na­tion­al Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency has essen­tial­ly been unavail­able since their occu­pa­tion by the Russ­ian military.

Over three and a half mil­lion peo­ple have fled Ukraine, and over six and a half mil­lion peo­ple with­in Ukraine are inter­nal­ly displaced.

Over six­ty per­cent of those that have left Ukraine now reside in Poland, which had over three hun­dred thou­sand Ukraini­ans work­ing there with tem­po­rary res­i­dence per­mits before the war. There are con­cerns that appro­pri­ate lev­els of fund­ing aren’t yet in place to accom­mo­date such large num­bers of refugees, espe­cial­ly with respect to health con­cerns in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

There is also the issue of whether refugees want to, and the extent to which they will be, accept­ed by oth­er coun­tries with­in NATO. The Unit­ed States is expect­ed to imme­di­ate­ly take in around 100,000 refugees, though details are not yet final.

Gen­er­al Magomed Tushaev’s pass­ing may not be accu­rate, though it’s still open to ques­tion. There is alleged­ly a video from Mon­day, March 21st, that shows him active with Russ­ian-sup­port­ing Chechen forces with­in the Don­bas region, but the sit­u­a­tion is murky at best.

Regard­less, the num­ber of Russ­ian offi­cers dying in Ukraine keeps ris­ing, one of the newest and high­est ranked being Lieu­tenant Gen­er­al Andrei Mord­vichev, who died dur­ing one of the two attacks on Chornobayiv­ka airfield.

Here is a help­ful explain­er of the process and obsta­cles involved in suc­cess­ful­ly pros­e­cut­ing Pres­i­dent Putin of Rus­sia (or any high rank­ing offi­cer of the Russ­ian mil­i­tary, for that mat­ter), which Putin has been declared by Pres­i­dent Biden.

Pres­i­dent Biden will also, like­ly this week, extend per­son­al sanc­tions against the lead­er­ship of Rus­sia and its oli­garchs to include mem­bers of the Russ­ian Duma.

Over four hun­dred com­pa­nies world­wide have now with­drawn from, or have tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed busi­ness for the time being, with­in Russia.

Cargill has decid­ed to trim exist­ing oper­a­tions and not invest in new plans as well, but that isn’t entire­ly sit­ting well with the state where its glob­al head­quar­ters is based. Cum­mins has sus­pend­ed all exist­ing oper­a­tions with­in Rus­sia as of March 15th.

Nes­tle, which had been adamant about main­tain­ing all oper­a­tions with­in Rus­sia, on March 23rd declared that it would only main­tain oper­a­tions for baby food and “essen­tial nutri­tion.” Renault, of a sim­i­lar frame of mind, has on the same day decid­ed to sus­pend oper­a­tions at its Moscow plant and is review­ing its options. One com­pa­ny that has refused to leave Rus­sia is Koch Indus­tries, which has led to dis­tanc­ing by Amer­i­can elect­ed offi­cials it has finan­cial­ly sup­port­ed in the past.

Hal­ibur­ton has decid­ed to end cur­rent oper­a­tions and future plans with­in Rus­sia, while its pri­ma­ry com­peti­tors have decid­ed to con­tin­ue exist­ing work but not com­mit to any future efforts for the time being.

British Petro­le­um gave up its $25 bil­lion invest­ment in Russ­ian oil com­pa­ny Rosen­felt on Feb­ru­ary 28th. Exxon­Mo­bil backed out of an off­shore project near Sakhalin Island and decid­ed to halt all future invest­ments in Rus­sia as of March 1st. French oil pro­duc­er Total­En­er­gies, the fifth largest oil com­pa­ny in the world, decid­ed to stop pur­chas­ing Russ­ian oil before the end of 2022.

(Remain­ing silent so far have been the sec­ond and third largest oil com­pa­nies in the world, PetroChi­na and Chi­na Petro­le­um & Chem­i­cal, who are appar­ent­ly try­ing to decide how best to take advan­tage of sud­den­ly open possibilities.)

While these might seem like weak respons­es, Rus­sia relies on sales of petrol to remain finan­cial­ly viable and over time this will mean less rev­enue as no new wells are quick­ly devel­oped and exist­ing wells con­tin­ue to decline in output.

Putin has respond­ed to all of this with a deci­sion to require all Russ­ian oil sold to “unfriend­ly coun­tries” be trad­ed in rubles.

His hope is to sta­bi­lize the ruble ver­sus oth­er cur­ren­cies due to demand for the ruble to pur­chase con­tracts, and high­lights the key means of hurt­ing Rus­sia that has­n’t hap­pened yet — a ban on imports of Russ­ian energy.

The Unit­ed States is mov­ing for­ward with a ban, but the Euro­pean Union has not.

Ger­many, which gets 55% of its nat­ur­al gas, 35% of its petro­le­um and 35% of its coal from Rus­sia, fears a deep and last­ing reces­sion if an imme­di­ate ban takes effect. Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orbán of Hun­gary, which relies on Rus­sia for almost all of its ener­gy require­ments, has flat out reject­ed this option.

Bul­gar­ia, which relies on Rus­sia for 70% of its ener­gy require­ments, won’t try to stop a ban but would require an excep­tion for itself. There’s talk of poten­tial­ly reduc­ing reliance on Russ­ian ener­gy sources sig­nif­i­cant­ly with­in the Euro­pean Union by the end of this year and full inde­pen­dence “before 2030,” but it’s a safe bet that one of Pres­i­dent Biden’s goals while vis­it­ing NATO, EU and G‑7 lead­ers in Lux­em­bourg, Brus­sels and Poland is to make this a real­i­ty much soon­er than later.