Kherson

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?

Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine has moved into a new phase, a very encouraging one for Ukraine and its western allies. In Phase 1, Russia tried — and failed — to seize the capital city of Kyiv with a blitzkrieg assault. The idea was to decapitate the Zelensky government quickly and install a puppet regime, subservient to Moscow. After that failed, Russia focused on taking the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine and forming a “land bridge” to Crimea, which Russia seized in 2014. Russia has had some success in this Phase 2 of the war, at very high cost, but movement along that front has now stalled.

As the war in Ukraine approaches its six-month anniversary this coming Wednesday, the fighting shows no sign of stopping. Peace talks are a figment of the imagination, as Russian president Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky remain just as committed to achieving their objectives today as they were when the war first broke out. The Russians continue to pound residential areas with artillery in the Donbas, hoping to slowly capture more territory after months of slow, high-cost maneuvering in the Donetsk region. The Ukrainians, meanwhile, are settling on a new strategy in the south, harassing Russian supply lines deep into Russian-occupied territory.