The Russian leader’s justification for this blitzkrieg on Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, mixed ahistorical fallacy — asserting Ukraine has never been a real independent country — with complaints that NATO enlargement had risked his country’s border security.
However, his tank columns were quickly pushed back in a stunning defense by Ukraine. Since then, his forces have reverted to attritional trench warfare, attempting to wear down Ukraine by throwing forward waves of troops in what analysts call “meat grinder” tactics.
As both side dug in, progress has been achingly slow, with CSIS putting the rate of Russian advance at around 165 feet a day, and capturing only 1,930 square miles — 1% of Ukrainian territory — since January 2024. That’s less than the famously pyrrhic Somme offensive in World War I, in which British and French troops advanced 263 feet per day.
From the skies, Russian bombers and drones have launched almost nightly attacks on Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure such as power grids. This continued overnight into Wednesday, with Russia launching 95 attack drones and killing at least 10 people in the past 24 hours, Ukraine’s air force said.
Ukraine has responded by targeting military sites inside Russia, including Sunday’s remarkable operation dubbed “Spiderweb” in which it fired more than 100 drones at multiple air bases — one of them 4,000 miles from Ukraine — after smuggling them in the back of trucks.
Kyiv’s intelligence agencies followed this up Tuesday by detonating underwater explosives on one of the supports for the Crimean Bridge, a road and rail link built in 2018 and used to transport military supplies to the annexed peninsula.
Even so, Putin — as well as Russian and American lawmakers — have stated that they believe the Kremlin has the battlefield advantage. Russia may be losing more troops and materiel, but it also has a larger population from which to draw and greater military manufacturing capacity.
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