Donbas

Ukraine’s swift counter-offensive has captured more territory in four days than Russia’s huge army did in six months. The victories go beyond the 3,000 kilometers of liberated land. The Ukrainians have managed to break and scatter the enemy army across city after city in Kharkiv (in the country’s northeast) and are now moving swiftly into Luhansk (in the north Donbas region). Russian commanders have abandoned major cities and supply hubs, forfeited their hard-won control of vital rail lines and highways, and fled eastward for their lives. Their soldiers have dropped their guns and abandoned vast stores of heavy weaponry, from tanks to anti-aircraft batteries. It has been a complete rout. How did Ukraine accomplish this swift and unexpected victory?

The strategic Ukrainian port city of Mykoliav, that has been under constant Russian bombardment since the onset of war, was locked down for an entire weekend in early August as troops searched for Russian collaborators that had been calling in locations of Ukrainian troops and ammunition. The government arrested scores of traitors during their house-to-house search. Meanwhile in the capital Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelensky has also been sounding the alarm over Russian collaborators after firing both his prosecutor-general and head of the intelligence agency for treason. The former spy chief was a close childhood friend of the president. There are allegations that the entire intelligence agency is riddled with spies, with many defecting to Russia in the early days of the invasion.

A brutal artillery battle: that’s what the latest phase of Russia’s war on Ukraine has become. Vladimir Putin failed in his original goal of seizing the entire country swiftly, beginning with the capital of Kyiv, and installing a puppet government. When Ukrainian resistance prevented that, Putin shifted to a smaller, more achievable objective: establishing complete control over two eastern provinces, Luhansk and Donetsk, which border Russia and are jointly known as the Donbas region. That’s where the war is being fought now, with an uncertain outcome. Victory will depend on who wins the artillery battle. Russia has more blunt firepower; Ukraine has more precise, longer-range weapons — or at least it will have them when more NATO supplies reach the frontlines.

President Biden said this week that a “minor incursion” of Russian troops into Ukrainian territory would not bring about the severe economic sanctions the White House threatened in response to a “significant invasion.” His counterpart in the Kremlin can probably hardly believe his luck. Effectively, Vladimir Putin has been given carte blanche by the West to launch military operations against Ukraine. Of course, the fact that there is no definition of what constitutes a “minor incursion” gifts the White House a preemptive get-out clause from having to truly confront Moscow.