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Mariupol, Ukraine (CNN) --
Even in the 21st century, warfare is affected by the weather, and that may become a factor in any Russian offensive in Ukraine.
The question on the lips of the Ukrainians, and perhaps the Russian generals: "Has Rasputitsa arrived early?"
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Rasputitsa is the term for the mud of spring, when road travel in Russia and Ukraine gets tougher.
Its impact is usually felt most in March, when the snows begin to melt.
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Ice floats in the Sea of Azov in eastern Ukraine. Decades ago, the sea normally froze in the coldest winters.
So far this winter has been unusually mild in much of Ukraine.
As CNN drove from the eastern port city of Mariupol to Zaporizhzia in central Ukraine on February 1, it began to rain.
The driver shrugged in disbelief.
"It should be snow," he laughed himself.
In Zaporizhzia, crusty snow banks were melting into a trickle of brown water.
Even at midnight, when a blanket of fog hung over the Dnieper River, the temperature hovered around freezing.
The sleet turned to drizzle and vice versa.
Military analysts are debating whether the continued mild winter could affect plans for an offensive.
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied that it intends to attack Ukraine, but more than 100,000 Russian troops are massed near Ukraine's borders, along with heavy weapons, tanks and ballistic missiles.
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Social media videos from various areas where Russian forces are deployed, some posted by soldiers themselves, show soft, waterlogged ground and lots of mud.
Data from Copernicus, the EU's Earth Observation programme, shows that much of Eastern Europe experienced temperatures well above average in January.
Ukraine saw temperatures between 1 and 3 degrees Celsius higher than the average of the last 30 years, one of the many changes that the climate crisis has brought to this region.
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Copernicus also notes that in January, "Eastern Europe was predominantly wetter than average" and the soil in Ukraine was wetter than normal.
The combination means less frost and more mud.
That doesn't surprise Svitlana Krakovska, director of the Laboratory of Applied Climatology at the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute in Kiev.
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A road connecting eastern Ukraine with the center is surrounded by snow that is thinning due to warmer-than-usual weather.
“What we are seeing on a long-term trajectory is fewer snowy days and freezing nights.
We definitely see much stronger warming here than the global average," he told CNN.
The US assessment is that a Russian incursion would be easier if the temperature drops.
"[Russian President Vladimir Putin] will have to wait a bit until the ground is frozen to be able to cross," US President Joe Biden said at a news conference last month.
At a Pentagon briefing in late January, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said that when Ukraine's "high water table" freezes, "it becomes optimal conditions for tank maneuvers." and wheeled vehicles.
US officials have said that Putin would understand that he would need to mobilize by the end of March.
But Dara Massicot, senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, says, "While frozen ground would be nice for Russian forces, it's not a determining factor. It's important to note that precision-guided missiles and airstrikes are not influenced by this factor."
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Russian forces have improved substantially over the past decade, Massicot says.
The air force has become better at targeting and communications, and many of its pilots have gained combat experience in Syria.
"The Russian army trains throughout the year to get experience with different weather conditions."
Russian tanks, hundreds of which are now within range of the Ukraine border, are not greatly hampered by soft ground, although they are likely to advance faster on icy ground.
Still, the tanks move only at the speed of their logistics tail, vehicles that could be slowed down by bad weather "if they had to go off the road for any reason," says Massicot.
She notes that Russia has deployed logistical teams to help overcome such problems, including recovery vehicles and bridge building materials.
Floating bridges have also been observed on rail convoys to Belarus since the end of January.
Ground conditions would be more important in some places than in others.
Eastern Ukraine is rolling farmland, ideal terrain for tanks.
But the northern border with Belarus includes thousands of square kilometers of swamps and marshes that would impede a strike force (as the Nazis did in 1941 during Operation Barbarossa).
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There is some snow on the ground in Mariupol, but not as much as decades ago.
According to the Institute for the Study of War: "Marshes can be difficult, in some places probably impossible, for mechanized forces to traverse when wet."
Much depends on the type and scale of military operation that Russia may have in mind.
In the early stages of a conflict, air and missile attacks would be more important than a wave of mechanized units.
"The skies would not be a factor for Russian precision-guided cruise or ballistic missiles, or even some of their most accurate long-range artillery systems," says Massicot, who was previously a senior analyst at the Pentagon on the Russian military.
"Cloud cover is not especially a factor for fixed locations like military installations or command and control when the coordinates are known."
Russia has mobilized a substantial number of Iskander ballistic missiles, which have a range of about 300 miles (450 km), near Ukraine in the past month.
In the east, Ukraine's front-line positions have not moved for years;
missiles and long-range artillery could attack them regardless of the weather, perhaps providing a breakthrough point for Russian armor.
Attack aircraft, which would be tasked with attacking Ukrainian units on the move, would need relatively clear skies.
So would planes to drop air assault troops into the conflict zone;
according to defense analysts Janes, "multiple units of airborne forces (VDV) deployed in Belarus have also been identified."
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A low cloud base hampers air operations, as well as satellite reconnaissance, and could weaken Russia's considerable air superiority, creating what one military analyst called "a fairer fight."
But it is a double-edged sword.
Heavy cloud cover (and at night) would allow the Russians to move troops toward the start lines undetected from above.
If the Kremlin decides to attack, a period of bad weather followed by clear skies would be optimal once operations are underway.
The skies would also be important to the Ukrainians.
If they opted for a highly maneuverable defense, they would require US and NATO-provided airborne intelligence to focus limited resources on key points to slow the Russian advance.
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Of course, weather conditions are not the only, or even the main, consideration for the Kremlin.
The progress (or lack thereof) of negotiations on Russia's published demands sent to the US and NATO will likely be the deciding factor.
Coming up with some justification, a casus belli, for going to war would provide an important message to a skeptical Russian public.
Shaping information warfare is a key part of Russian strategy.
A changing climate in Ukraine
Krakovska, author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released last year, says there is a clear connection between climate change and Ukraine's changeable winters.
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A soldier walks through muddy trenches in Mariupol, covered with a thin layer of snow.
That's particularly pronounced in eastern Ukraine, where winter temperatures are around 3 degrees Celsius warmer on average than they were in the 1960s.
"Thirty years ago, we would have had snow cover, especially [in eastern Ukraine], for at least three months of the cold season, and we would have had freezing nights for about five months," Kralovska said.
"In 2020, we didn't really have winter at all, only a few days were below freezing and we didn't have a lot of snow, just a little."
Russian President Vladimir Putin used to be ambivalent about global warming.
In 2003, he even said that "Perhaps climate change is not so bad in a country as cold as ours? 2-3 degrees would not hurt."
More recently he has acknowledged the damage he is doing to Russia's environment.
Now it could affect the calculations of his generals.
Winter weather in Ukraine can be fickle, but the outlook for the rest of February in Kiev is milder than average, local forecasters say, with daytime temperatures well above freezing and very occasional sunshine.
Timko, Ukraine's own groundhog, apparently thinks the Rasputitsa mud may come a little earlier this year.
He didn't see his shadow when he came out of hibernation last week.
CNN's Angela Dewan, Brandon Miller and Gianluca Mezzofiore contributed to this report.
