Here is an inconvenient fact: Russia is winning the war of attrition in the Donbas. Once it has captured all of Luhansk (the Russians claimed control of Lysychansk, the last major city in the province this weekend) and most of Donetsk, it will be in a formidable position at the negotiating table. [see map below] Yes, Putin failed miserably in his initial war aim--the toppling of the Zylenskiy government--but the Donbas seems a lost cause now, and if the Kyiv government is not careful Ukraine will be cut off from the Black Sea too. Russia appears not to have sufficient military assets to capture the entire country, but it does have the capacity to consume considerable chunks. Ukraine must develop the capacity for offensive operations on a larger scale to fend off the bear. Fighting a defensive war only encourages it. Retaking the city of Kherson in the south seems to be a likely target of a counter-offensive, which would give it two remaining ports on the Black Sea that are vital to its grain export economy.
Meanwhile, the West's economic war is having only limited effect on Putin's ability to pound Ukraine into submission. These charts help explain why:
The EU is literally funding the Russian war machine with oil and gas revenues. It can afford to loose hundreds of vehicles and weapons to superior guns and ammunition. As long as the military can maintain discipline in the ranks, it will continue to press forward with merciless bombardments intended to terrorize civilians, while capturing strategic infrastructure like steel, nuclear, and chemical plants:
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| Russian Oil Exports |
China is Russia's largest oil importer, so even if the West shuts down oil imports from Russia completely, it still has a willing customer in the BRIC block. The EU is hardly monolithic. The countries within the economic union vary widely in their economic policies towards Russia, even after its indefensible invasion of Ukraine. This last chart shows which European countries import the most natural gas from Russia:
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| EU's hole in the dyke |
