Is Russia winning the war in Ukraine?
Sam Hawley: Hi, I’m Sam Hawley, coming to you from Gadigal land. This is ABC News Daily. The world’s attention may have shifted to the war in the Middle East, but in Ukraine, the battle drags on as a second winter sets in with no end in sight. It comes after a brutal counter-offensive as Ukrainian soldiers tried but failed to take back significant territory from the Russians. Today, Dr. Samir Puri, a visiting lecturer at King’s College London and a former ceasefire observer in Ukraine on who’s winning the war and how long Ukraine can rely on Western support.
Samir, the world’s focus, of course, has shifted to the Israel Gaza war… for obvious reasons. But the battle in Ukraine is as intense as ever. And it’s really hard to believe that that war has now been raging for 22 months.
Dr Samir Puri: Yes, in its full-scale incarnation since Russia went all in at the start of 2022. Events in the Middle East have completely taken the world’s attention away, and I think the two most specific things that Ukraine has lost, aside from just people talking about it with as much frequency, they’ve clearly lost the full attention of the USA, which is something we’ll come to later on. I think they’ve also lost that um- How can I describe it? – The fact that hearts around the world, I think, weeped for Ukraine in unison and felt that this was the focal point of war, caused suffering, and that has been diluted and replaced by arguably the biggest cause that can bifurcate opinions all around the world. That’s Israel-Palestine. That’s been doing that for 100 years. So I think if you’re Zelenskyy, if you’re Ukraine, you feel bereft of the attention you formerly had.
Sam Hawley: At the beginning of the war. Of course, back in February 2022, Moscow made a number of miscalculations, and it was surprising, wasn’t it, how well Ukraine was standing up to the might of the Russians at that point.
Dr Samir Puri: Yes, and that’s what combined to produce, I think, that wellspring of optimism that Ukraine could actually possibly even see off its invading neighbour.
ABC News clip: On the northern outskirts of Kyiv. Ukraine’s defence has proved strong.
ABC News clip: Russia appears to be withdrawing some of its ground forces from areas around Ukraine’s capital, leaving a trail of dead bodies and landmines behind them.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine: Over the past week, our heroic armed forces have dealt powerful blows to the enemy.
Dr Samir Puri: But just to really quickly recap, the Russians tried to to short circuit the conflict by capturing the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. Also, the Russians invaded from multiple directions in Ukraine. Arguably, with hindsight, they may have been better off concentrating their forces in one place to really overwhelm Ukraine. But then the flip side of it is Ukraine’s defences were heroic. They were well supplied by the Americans and also the British.
Sam Hawley: Just remind me the scale of the support Ukraine has received to date.
Dr Samir Puri: Do you know? Honestly, every time I learn the number, the tens of billions that America has given to Ukraine, it’s been updated since the last time I checked. But it’s even in the first year, I think it was 30 billion or so of US dollars worth of security assistance and other assistance, and the number keeps creeping up. It is an enormous amount, and it is actually more or less been matched by the EU, European support to the Ukrainians as well. It is no exaggeration to say that the two vital ingredients to Ukraine’s defences are the heroism of Ukrainians who are fighting and enduring those conditions, and the influx of foreign money.
Sam Hawley: And let’s discuss that a bit further in a moment. But first, Samir, take me to the battlefield. A counter-offensive was launched by Ukraine six months ago. Remind me what that was and what the Ukrainian military was trying to achieve.
Dr Samir Puri: So the main word hanging around this conflict and the start of this year was, was indeed this counter-offensive that Ukraine was going to mount to build on the optimism and the sense of success that already had from defending itself so well the year before, to sweep out the Russians from as much of the territory they occupied. And they were occupying about 20 per cent of Ukraine around the start of this year. This counter-offensive, as we now know, was quite hastily put together by the Ukrainian military. Remember, Ukraine is fighting alone. They don’t have any allies who are fighting shoulder to shoulder with them, but they’ve got plenty of friends, NATO and Western friends, including Australia, giving them tanks, giving them armoured personnel carriers. So they had a hodgepodge of equipment coming in, everything from Australian APCs to American M1 Abrams tanks to British Challenger two tanks. But the Ukrainian crews were quite hastily trained on these pieces of equipment. But most critically of all, Ukraine has no real air force to cover them as they moved forward. And what ensued was actually, I think, very tragic. And I think this will be the word that will hang over this counter offensive when the histories are written. Ukrainians facing very well dug in Russians vast minefields, trench systems cut a long story short. The Ukrainians had to advance, often on foot de-mining areas, as they went. They suffered horrific losses and they only really broke through in one small village in south Ukraine called Robotnicza. And overall, the counteroffensive was was a was a failure. A failure of Ukraine’s army to move forward, and arguably a big failure of the ways in which the west had backed Ukraine, and how that that backing had been interpreted by the Ukrainians again to attack on a couple of different fronts. Whereas the reporting suggests the Americans said you should concentrate your forces on one front. But alas, thats where we are now. We’re at a failed Ukrainian counter-offensive.
Sam Hawley: And as you mentioned, the casualties just huge…
Dr Samir Puri: Yes. And that’s one of the most heartbreaking things about this is you. You read the battlefield hospital accounts and of the hospitals just behind the front line, and, you know, you are left with the impression that even if the Ukrainians are trying to protect the lives of their troops, the attrition rates are extremely high. And the big question now is, did Zelensky and his generals have one roll of the dice with this counteroffensive? And have they already made that roll?
Sam Hawley: So now, Samir, tell me, when you look at a map of Ukraine, how much ground then has Russia gained at this point? And where should we be looking when we look at the map? Well, quite.
Dr Samir Puri: Surprisingly for, you know, speaking as someone who was based in Donbass, myself, in that first invasion, some of the cities that featured very heavily then are featuring very heavily right now. So Avdiivka is the city that is the current focal point of Russia’s offensive. The Russians are sort of focusing intensively on one small town after the other over in the east of Ukraine, and the Ukrainians are currently holding on reasonably well. But the Russians seem to have the capacity and the willpower to throw countless amounts of armoured vehicles and their armed forces against these hard targets. It seems like they’re just running repeatedly against the brick wall. But as we saw with the other city that they captured Bakhmut, formerly known as Artemivsk, a little bit further to the north of Avdiivka, which they captured at the start of this year. They do actually knock that brick wall down after throwing just, you know, huge numbers of bodies at it. And they’ve made some progress in Avdeevka. And one can just imagine that the Russian political leadership and military leadership have steeled themselves to the huge costs that their people are bearing from this conflict. They think that the costs are worthwhile, which seems unbelievable to everybody else looking at this from the outside. And they’ll just suppose like an army of termites, you know, keep eating away at different parts of Ukraine’s defence until they hope Ukraine falters, which is, I think, really the story of this winter of the year coming ahead.
Sam Hawley: Samir, we talked earlier about the huge support that Ukraine has received from the US, from Europe, even Australia, of course, and the US. It’s warned it’s running out of money. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, has said as much. He’s been urging Congress to release more funds, but he’s facing some resistance.
Jake Sullivan, US National Security adviser: Without congressional action, the administration will run out of resources by the end of the year to procure more weapons and equipment for Ukraine, and to provide equipment from US military stocks without impacting our own military readiness.
Sam Hawley: So what happens if funding from the US and other major allies starts to dry up?
Dr Samir Puri: So we’ve been here before in history, and I don’t want to make this sound, you know, more more dramatic than it is. And the scenarios are very different. But everyone remembers what happened to the South Vietnamese army. You know, a couple of years after the Americans left and Congress stopped funding, they lost the war. Everybody remembers what happened to the Afghan National Army when the Americans closed up Bagram Air Base and left. And obviously, you know, funding was a moot point by then. They also collapsed against the Taliban. So there is a historical pattern. I say that I bring those examples up because those are the examples that Putin and Sergey Shoygu, his defence minister, will will be fantasising about happening in Ukraine. Now, I don’t think something as sudden as that would happen in Ukraine if for no other reason. That is, it is in Europe. And NATO would very, very directly bear the brunt of a sudden Ukrainian collapse. There’s one thing the Russians have very cleverly secured ammunition resupply from the North Koreans. And on the other hand, many frontline Ukrainian units have reported to the media. They’re having to ration their artillery shells when they’re firing them. And you can well imagine a day may come where the Russians, the Ukrainians, on something like Avdeevka, they pummel it with their usual quota of artillery shells. The Ukrainians don’t have the same volume to retaliate with. And then things may start to change and things may start to tip in Russia’s favour.
Sam Hawley: All right, well, Samir, I just want to end by going back to that map. If Russia earlier this year had 20 per cent or had taken 20 per cent of Ukrainian territory, what is the figure now? And what does that map show us? Does it show us that Russia is winning this war?
Dr Samir Puri: So the exact percentage I couldn’t tell you, but I think it’s dropped from about 20 per cent to maybe about 17, 18 per cent. Does it mean that they’ve won? I think how I’d explain it, because victory is a very difficult thing to convey in a drawn out war of attrition like this. If the Russians don’t lose the 20 or 18 per cent of territory they have now, they don’t. They don’t lose the war, but they don’t necessarily win it either. I suppose if the Russians fully capture the four Ukrainian provinces that Putin has declared officially annexed, so that’s Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Luhansk, they sort of hold sort of, you know, sort of between 50 and 70, 80 per cent of each of these. If they capture 100 per cent of all four, then the Russians could credibly say that they’ve achieved the aims that Putin sort of redrew for them in sort of September 2022. But let’s not forget his aims in February 2022, when he invaded, was to change the political leadership in Kyiv. And there’s a really, I think, unresolvable debate at the moment as to whether Russia wants to still go all the way and capture Kyiv, and I just don’t think we know. I just think we’re in it for the long haul. I always thought we were in it for the long haul, and sadly, I still think, as I thought a year ago, some sort of de facto partition of Ukraine is what’s going to happen.
Sam Hawley: Dr. Samir Puri is a visiting lecturer at King’s College London and a former ceasefire observer in Ukraine. He’s also the author of the book Russia’s Road to War with Ukraine. This episode was produced by Nell Whitehead, Bridget Fitzgerald, Anna John and Sam Dunn, who also did the mix. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I’m Sam Hawley. ABC News Daily will be back again tomorrow. Thanks for listening.
