Russia's failure in Kharkiv these days can be said to be quite heavy and extremely humiliating.
This piece of land is about 2,000-3,000 square kilometers. After the Russian army shrunk the front from Kyiv and other places, it took more than 4 months and sacrificed a lot of soldiers to occupy it.
But this time, under the storm of the Ukrainian army, it took only about three days to lose all of them. This speed is really surprising.
More importantly, the Russian army lost its armor and armor along the way in the process of evacuation.
In addition, this failure also exposed several fundamental problems of the Russian army: First, the Russian army has serious loopholes in the field of intelligence collection, and it is ignorant of such a major local military operation of the enemy; second, it is in tactical command. (Because of lack of intelligence and misjudgment of the enemy's situation) made a serious mistake, the staff failed to see through the tactics of the Ukrainian army, and fell into the Ukrainian army's strategy of turning tigers away from the mountains; third, the Russian army's front-line military strength was stretched, and it was no longer able to take care of multiple battlefields. That's why Putin recently signed an order calling for an additional 137,000 recruits.
Tracking the entire war process, it is easy to draw a conclusion that the Russian army's defeat this time and the previous setback in the "all-out offensive" had to shrink the front line and turn to the "key attack" on the Donbass and southern regions. It is by no means cold in one day, it is the result of the superposition of many factors, and it is a long-term accumulation process from quantitative change to qualitative change.
From the Russian perspective, the most fundamental point is that after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, its operational thinking, battlefield command, scientific and technological level, weapon system, intelligence collection, etc. could no longer support its strategic ambitions and operational planning, and it was not in line with Ukraine’s behind-the-scenes strategy. There is an iteration gap between the U.S., which provides arms and intelligence assistance to the Ukrainian army.
If Russia can't make up for these shortcomings as soon as possible, it is foreseeable that it will face more fiasco, at least it will fight very hard and pay greater sacrifices.
A Ukrainian soldier carries an unexploded Russian aerial bomb.
(AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
However, also from the current battlefield situation, we can also see that compared with all the land occupied by the Russian army (about 20% of the total territory of Ukraine), the proportion of the lost part of this defeat is actually not large, and Some key locations and areas that Russia has digested politically, such as most of the Donbass and Crimea, are still in the hands of the Russian army.
This is the second point I want to talk about in this article. It is necessary to see the changes in the local battlefield, but also to see the entire war pattern, and to see the key elements that support the direction of the war behind it.
From the perspective of the overall battlefield pattern, although the Russian army has lost a large area of occupied areas and is extremely embarrassed in local battlefields, after all, they still control most of the occupied areas, and compared with Ukraine, Russia still has obvious strength advantages.
Some people may say that Ukraine is not fighting alone. Behind it is the United States and almost the whole of Europe. The United States and Europe will definitely support Ukraine in carrying out the war to the end, until Ukraine regains all its lost territory and achieves complete victory.
I seriously doubt it.
Reasons for expressing serious doubts: First, "recovering all the lost territories and achieving complete victory" is not in the plans of the United States and Europe at all. Their purpose is to consume Russia and drag it down, not to help Ukraine regain its territory.
The second is that as the war lengthens, European and American attitudes towards war may change.
The first is Europe, where war weariness is brewing and rising along with the refugee problem, inflation and energy crises, bringing more and more pressure to the governments of various countries. Under such pressure, how long can Europe last? A big question mark.
A Ukrainian interior ministry engineer collects unexploded shells, grenades and other devices.
(AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
In addition, on the US side, who can guarantee that after the Biden administration loses power, it will not immediately stop military aid to Ukraine?
Historically, the United States has actively participated in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Afghan War, but they have insisted on it for several years.
Especially in the Vietnam War and the Afghan War, the United States was decisive and ruthless when it decided to withdraw, and did not care about the life and death of the local regime at all.
Who is sure that this situation will not happen again in Ukraine?
Therefore, although Russia suffered heavy losses in the war, in the long run, from the perspective of various key factors that determine the direction of the war, because of the huge economic and people's livelihood losses caused by the war to Europe, as well as the unstable nature of the electoral system in Europe and the United States, as the war drags on In the long run, Ukraine is far more at risk than Russia.
Therefore, for Ukrainian Zelensky, the most favorable choice is to take it as soon as possible when the war weariness in Europe and the United States has not yet spread widely, and Europe and the United States are still willing to provide military assistance.
It is almost impossible to expect to regain all the lost ground, including Crimea and the Donbass, with the support of Europe and the United States.
Russian-Ukrainian War | Ukrainian Counteroffensive Reports to Teblinn: Significant Progress From Gorbachev to Putin: How did Russia Go from Comprehensive Westernization to the Russian-Ukrainian War?
Russo-Ukrainian war final judgment: Ukraine has to make a difficult decision after all