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UKRAINE today marks the bloody second anniversary of Putin’s vicious war – but Russia could be defeated in “the next year”.
Military analysts told The Sun that there are six major ways Kyiv can break through the “slugfest” and smash Putin’s forces – but the West must never lose hope in a Ukrainian victory.
Getty
Getty
Getty
It is a difficult moment for Ukraine. The conflict has ground into a painful war of attrition – a bloody stalemate characterised by ferocious fighting that more resembles 1916 than 2024.
Kyiv’s battle-weary troops are currently facing down an attempted Russian advance along the entire 600-mile front, determined to take back the hard-won but minimal gains Ukraine made in its thwarted summer counteroffensive.
On Wednesday, 66 different combat clashes were recorded along the front line.
Plenty of the eastern front has become a wasteland of muddy carnage, tank carcasses, decomposing bodies and the burnt skeletons of cities that cost both sides far too much.
Last week, Ukraine lost the key eastern city of Avdiivka after a months-long apocalyptic battle – marking Russia’s most symbolic win since the fall of Bakhmut last May.
However, retired US general Ben Hodges warned that this is no time to lose hope as Ukraine’s “decisive moment” is still to come.
The former commander of the US Army in Europe stressed that this is not truly the second bloody anniversary of war between Russia and Ukraine, but its tenth.
Ukraine can win this war in the next year… we just have to give them the means
John Herbst, former US ambassador to UkraineExactly a decade has passed since unmarked Russian tanks rolled into Crimea and began its illegal annexation of the strategic peninsula while their forces began to back separatist militias in Donetsk and Luhansk.
Lt. Gen. Hodges said: “In 10 years with every advantage in numbers, modern equipment, industry… [Russia] still only controls about 18 per cent of Ukraine. They had more [24.4 per cent], and they’ve lost some of that.”
Listing off the hundreds of thousands of Russian casualties and tanks, vehicles, ships and weapon systems destroyed, he added: “They have failed.
“Grain is getting out of Odessa, sanctions against Moscow are having an impact, Russia’s defence industry is in tatters, and sabotage attacks are taking place across Russia.”
And as the war grinds its third year, Hodges proposed six major ways Ukraine can seriously start winning the war.
1. Lights out in Russia
An essential part of winning this war, Hodges said, will rely on Ukraine putting pressure on Russia’s critical energy infrastructure, including targeted attacks.
Bringing the war to Putin’s door by constant strikes or sabotage attacks on industrial facilities like oil depots would help disable Russia’s military industrial complex, cutting off Putin’s war chest.
Unlike what Hodges is calling for, Moscow has been launching indiscriminate and widespread attacks on not only Ukrainian civilian centres but its civilian energy infrastructure since the start of the war.
Picking up accusations of war crimes, Putin has found no issue intentionally inflicting £9.5billion worth of damage to Ukraine’s energy grid and water infrastructure, leaving millions to suffer without heating or drinking water.
2. Cripple Putin’s Black Sea Fleet
For months, Ukraine has been terrorising Russia’s once feared Black Sea Fleet, which Hodges remarked is a “really cool name for a not very good navy”.
“The whole world has watched as Ukraine uses air and sea drones and British and French-supplied Storm Shadow missiles to threaten Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.”
Despite having no large naval ships left of its own, it is estimated that Kyiv has managed to sink nearly a third of the fleet (25 warships and one submarine).
What’s left of it is has retreated and is now expected to relocate to a naval base to a Moscow-backed Georgian breakaway region.
Hodges argued that the attacks must continue until the fleet is destroyed – vanquishing Russia’s supremacy over the tense waters and ending its stranglehold over Ukrainian exports.
3. Battle for Crimea
Tuesday marked 10 long years since Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean peninsula.
But Hodges, among a chorus of other military experts, hails Crimea as still the most “decisive terrain” in the battle against Putin.
“If Crimea falls, so could Putin,” Hodges argued.
Ukraine, he said, has always understood this. “They know they’ll never be safe or secure or able to rebuild Ukraine as long as Russia occupies Crimea.”
Ukraine is now penetrating Crimea almost consistently, expanding is sabotage operations, striking with Storm Shadow missiles and its own evolving longer-range warheads to hit deep targets deep inside and serve up Putin repeated humiliations.
Keir Giles, a senior fellow at Chatham House’s Russia programme, believes Kyiv’s strategy must intensify.
He told The Sun: “Crimea must remain the decisive terrain of the war.
“If Ukraine can make Crimea untenable for Russia, regardless of the position of Ukraine’s 1000km front line, then that is going to be an immediate and major setback with major ramifications for the war.”
Russia’s £3bn Kerch Bridge stretching to Crimea pictured burning after a strike by Ukraine
As a Christmas gift for Putin, a British-supplied Storm Shadow missile sunk a key Russian warship the Novocherkassk4. Unlock manpower
Neither side publicises their losses, but Kyiv estimates that Russian casualties have now passed 400,000, while analysts believe the ratios of Russian losses to Ukrainian sit anywhere between 3:1 to 5:1.
But as Ukraine digs in for a long war, its population wavers under 37million while it fights a country with almost four times that – the question is how to secure a solid flow of recruits.
A new mobilisation bill is under consideration but so far President Volodymyr Zelensky has bulked at reducing the age of mobilisation from 27 to 18.
The existing troops – which have an average age of 43 – are both exhausted and short of men to man the trenches.
“They have got to fix their personnel system,” Gen. Hodges said.
“They have enough people, but have not been able to sort out the politics of the system that will help generate enough manpower.”
5. Beef up defence industry
This step, Hodges called, “winning the war of industrial competition”.
By that he means building its own defence industry up to such an extent that Russia can hardly compete.
Already, Ukraine has been forced to overhaul its economy to meet the needs of war.
According to a report by the Wilson Center, Russia’s military potential, not Ukraine’s, is being degraded.
The US think-tank praised Kyiv’s ability to design and develop increasingly advanced weaponry – including an army of homegrown drones – and adapt its weaponry to each new phase of the conflict.
The report concluded that Ukraine is beyond capable of winning a war of attrition against Putin.
6. United front
In a surprise shake-up this month, Zelensky booted out his adored and highly-respected commander-in-chief Col. Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi in favour of the commander of his ground troops General Oleksandr Syrskyi .
It was part of a larger overhaul of his war cabinet as Zelensky had warned “a reset is necessary” after months of speculation of internal rifts.
“Ukraine really needs stability,” Hodges said, referring to Ukraine’s military leadership. “This twisting in the wind is very unhealthy”.
Ukraine was forced to retreat from the highly symbolic eastern city of Avdiivka last week
Getty
The burnt skeleton of a city that got caught in one of the bloodiest battles of the Ukraine war
Reuters
APA tough, but decisive moment
In a sobering battlefield assessment, Colonel Richard Kemp summed it up as a “very, very tough situation for Ukraine”.
The former British army officer told The Sun: “Russia’s got the initiative at the moment.
“Ukraine is now back in a position where it has to fight a defensive war for the time being at least until it gets sufficient munitions, planes, weapons and they build up manpower.”
Ukraine’s new commander-in-chief, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrski, declared as much last week in a frank evaluation of the scale of the problems he was inheriting.
“The enemy is now advancing along almost the entire front line, and we have moved from offensive operations to conducting a defensive operation,” he said.
The military’s new objective is to dig into their positions, wage a more technological war and attempt to “exhaust the enemy”.
However, cutting through the bleakness, John Herbst, former US ambassador to Ukraine, believes that Ukraine can “break through this slugfest”.
The senior director at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Centre told The Sun that the decisive moment is approaching and “Ukraine can win this war in the next year or two.”
“Ukraine needs to continue to show the initiative and fighting spirit that they have demonstrated since the big invasion began.”
Herbst also slammed “ignorant” Western policymakers for blaming Ukraine’s military on its ‘failed’ counteroffensive last summer.
“It is nonsense,” he argued, “we did not give them the weapons they needed to have a strong counteroffensive on land because of our timidity and that’s truly unfortunate.”
“The US [army] would never attack into static positions with mine fields without substantial air cover and longer-range missiles. We spoke about [the offensive] as if Ukraine could make it happen and then criticised it for not happening.”
Pointing to Kyiv’s “spectacularly successful” offensive in August 2022, he said: “They know how to fight. We merely need to give them the means to win this fight.”
Reuters
Newsflash
Reuters
Zelensky is pictured shaking hands with former commander-in-chief Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi as he announced his sacking on Feb 8
Ukraine’s new commander-in-chief Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi is a hardened warrior who has overseen most of Ukraine’s major battlefield victories
English (US)