Throughout its war with Russia, Ukraine has shown a remarkable capacity to take its much bigger invader by surprise. Since its repulse of Russia’s onslaught in February 2022, the Ukrainians have scored morale-boosting hits on their enemy.
Last week’s sudden incursion into Russian territory is, however, much more dramatic than previous Ukrainian coups. It came as Western military commentators seemed to agree that Vladimir Putin was winning a brutal war of attrition against his smaller neighbour, maybe forcing Ukraine to accept his demands in the coming months. So, the West was as surprised as the Kremlin by recent events.
In an address on Sunday, the Russian leader accused Ukraine of breaking “all permissible boundaries” after they grabbed up to 95 square miles of land and forced thousands of civilians to evacuate in the process. This morning, black smoke has been seen billowing from the Russia-occupied nuclear power plant Zaporizhzhia – both Russia and Ukraine accuse one another of causing the fire.
There are some fears that a humiliated Putin will launch extensive revenge attacks against Ukraine, after he vowed to “take tough measures in response” to Kyiv’s nearly week-long cross-border assault.
Sceptics of the strategic wisdom of Kyiv’s dramatic advance tend to see it less as a game-changer than as a battlefield blip – like Hitler’s Battle of the Bulge, which knocked the Allies sideways for 10 days over Christmas 1944 but actually drained away what was left of his army’s reserves.
Yet by grabbing a swathe of territory in western Russia itself, Kyiv has dealt a harsh blow to Putin’s propaganda image inside Russia – and its portrait of the progress of the war inside Ukraine.
An advance of six miles in a week might not sound like a blitzkrieg but the Russians would be very happy to achieve that pace further south, where they have pushed forward in recent months at a snail’s pace and at a huge price – more like the Somme in 1916.
A war of attrition favours the Kremlin because it has more cannon fodder to throw into the Ukrainian cauldron than Kyiv has.
The casualties suffered by both sides are horrific, by the standards of even Putin’s brutal Chechen war after 1999. Despite the human cost, neither Ukraine nor Russia has been fully mobilised for war as during the Second World War.
Nato advisers deplore the lack of mass mobilisation of student-age young men in Ukraine, while their fathers die at the front. However, Putin, too, has preferred drafting young men from regions well away from sensitive cities like Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
Rather than a fight to the finish, like the Second World War, Ukraine and Russia may be manoeuvring for a compromise of peace out of this mayhem – which would save the face of both Putin and Zelensky.
This week’s battlefield success could give President Zelensky an excuse for peace talks from a sudden position of strength. In recent weeks, his government has been quietly sounding out Russia’s friends like China and Turkey about a possible ceasefire, even peace terms.
Zelensky will remember how he faced a virtual mutiny before this current war when he suggested talks with Putin five years ago. Many of his troops and the widows and orphans of the war dead since 2022 would be outraged by a “sell-out” but maybe they could accept an “honourable” halt to the war on the back of Ukrainian battlefield success.
There are many other talks to be had – not least gas pipeline vulnerability, the economic impact of the continuing conflict and whether territorial swaps are on the agenda.
Putin’s control of Russia’s media means that he could declare victory and stop the war.
A narrow window of opportunity to stop the slaughter in Ukraine could be opening if both the Kremlin and Kyiv see benefits for them in an unsatisfactory peace. It might well only be a truce but for many ordinary soldiers on both sides, it will be a life-saver.
Is peace in sight? Sadly, not immediately. But this week’s shock might give Putin pause for thought. His forces are not rolling forward fast enough while Western support for Ukraine has revived in recent months.
It might stall again if Donald Trump wins the US presidential elections. However, if Trump loses, Putin faces four more years of US-led “proxy” war against Russia.
