Evolutie razboi

 3 faze razboi – Russian attacks were initially launched on a northern

front from Belarus towards Kyiv, a north-eastern
front towards Kharkiv, a southern front from Crimea, and a south-eastern
front from Luhansk and Donetsk.[41][42] Russia's advance towards Kyiv stalled
in March, with Russian troops retreating from the northern front by April. On
the southern and south-eastern fronts, Russia captured Kherson in March and
then Mariupol in May after a siege. On 19 April, Russia launched a renewed
attack on the Donbas region, with Luhansk Oblast fully captured by 3 July.
[43]
 Russian forces continued to bomb both military and civilian targets far from
the frontline.[44][45] Ukrainian forces launched counteroffensives in the south in
August, and in the northeast in September. Soon after, Russia annexed the
four partially occupied Ukrainian oblasts
of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
 The reports said that Russian land forces had crossed from the east, heading
for Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city; from the south, heading from Crimea
towards Kherson; and from Belarus to the north, heading for Kyiv, the capital.
It was unclear in what strength they were moving. But Mr Putin seemingly
covets all of Ukraine, just as American and British intelligence reports had
claimed all along.

 1. Februarie – aprilie atac major al Rusiei – Kiev, Harkov, Herson, Mariupol –
esec in Harkov si Kiev; nord-est; est; sud;
 Blitzkrieg esuat initial – atac asupra Kievului; Reusita in sud – Herson,
Zaporoje, Mariupol
 In the chaotic opening month of the campaign, some Russian units wandered
the battlefield without air defence. Russian tanks have fought in isolation from
reconnaissance units sweeping the path ahead or dismounted infantry
flushing out anti-tank squads in woodland or urban areas
 Ukraine’s armed forces are unlikely to withstand this assault for long. The first
round of Russian air and missile strikes was almost certainly intended to
destroy Ukraine’s integrated air defence network; one of the targets hit was an
air-defence battery in Vasilkiv, a town near Kyiv. If Russian warplanes have
command of the skies its paratroopers and helicopter-borne forces will be
able to bypass large concentrations of Ukrainian soldiers in order to seize key
objectives well behind the front lines, going back on themselves to mop up
pockets of resistance later. On the morning of February 24th there were
reports that Russia had attempted to land paratroopers at Gostomel airport
outside Kyiv. Ukraine claimed to have shot down some of the helicopters and
captured Russian personnel.
  the Russian forces in a position to invade and the auxiliary forces which may
follow behind them, such as units of Mr Zolotov’s national guard, “appear
more than sufficient to attempt an occupation of Ukraine's eastern regions”,
argues Michael Kofman, an expert on Russia’s armed forces at cna, a think-
tank. Ukraine’s eastern areas plus Kyiv amount to only 18m inhabitants, he

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 notes; the coast adds another 3m. That would give Russia a comparable
force-density ratio—the number of troops relative to the population—to that
which 177,000 troops gave America when it occupied Iraq.

 And Russia enjoys advantages that those Americans did not. Its army does
not suffer from the same language barriers; it understands the terrain; and it
will be “much more ruthless in the application of violence”, notes Mr Watling.
The 9th Directorate has been working on lists of potential collaborators who
might take on government roles—as well as people who might lead the
resistance.
 As Mr Tertrais notes, Russia’s aims are limited in principle, “but wars have a
tendency to not follow the path traced by those who launched them”. That is
not least because others get a vote
 The first wave of his invasion proved as rotten as the cabal who planned it—
just like his earlier efforts to suborn Ukraine. Mr Putin seems to have believed
his own propaganda that the territory he has invaded is not a real country.
The initial assault, which led with botched helicopter strikes and raids by
lightly armed units, was conceived for an adversary that would implode.
Instead, Ukrainian spirits have flourished under fire. The president, Volodymyr
Zelensky, has been transformed into a war leader who embodies his people’s
courage and defiance.
 It wasn’t. Russia’s generals opted to begin their assault with a series of
baffling and fruitless raids and failed at the vital task of suppressing their
enemy’s air defences. Though Russian forces were quick to advance out of
Crimea in the south, their progress towards Kyiv and various cities in the east
was slower than expected.
 But the Russians were also poorly prepared for the amount of resistance they
encountered. Anti-tank missiles sent to Ukraine by the thousand in recent
months have worked well, says one European defence official. The absence
of air superiority allowed Ukraine’s Turkish-made drones to get to their
targets.
 In some cases, its tactics have verged on the suicidal. A video reportedly
taken in Bucha, north-west of Kyiv, shows a Russian armoured vehicle using
its loudspeakers to tell civilians to remain calm. A man wielding a rocket-
propelled grenade strolls up to the vehicle and calmly destroys it.
 The first major city to fall was Kherson, on the Black Sea. On the day that it
fell, March 2nd, the mayor of Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, said his own city
was being “pounded” with shells, rockets and air strikes. Russia is on the
verge of completing a land bridge from the Donbas region to the Dnieper river
along the Black Sea coastline

 How well Russia would fare against such foes, were they real, is hard to say.
The poor performance of the army and air force in Ukraine has shown a
surprising—to some, astonishing—lack of operational acumen. Joint
operations have sputtered, equipment has performed poorly, logistics
and resupply units have failed to keep up with combat forces. At least
three senior commanders have been killed because, frustrated by the slow
pace of progress, they went to the front and into harm's way.

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Michael Kofman of cna, a think-tank, says that Russia is making “steady progress”
towards its military objectives but attrition, logistical problems, and morale could
leave it “combat ineffective” within a few weeks. It would not be defeated; but it
would be forced to pause its operations

The siege of Kyiv, if it transpires, will probably show who is right. Despite the much
discussed immobility of a huge convoy to its north-west, the city centre, accessible
only from the south and south-east, is increasingly cut off. The Institute for the Study
of War, a think-tank, says that Russian forces are being concentrated in suburbs to
the west (Irpin) and east (Brovary) within rocket-artillery range of the centre.

The Institute sees this as preparation for an assault in the coming days. But it also
sees indications that Russia is struggling to put together the combat power such an
attack requires. One red flag is that elements of the Rosgvardia (national guard),
Chechen fighters loyal to Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen republic, and
troops from Wagner Group, a Kremlin-linked mercenary outfit, are all gathering
around the city, presumably to supplement the regular army.

To understand the scale of Mr Putin’s lies, consider how the war was planned.
Russia’s president thought Ukraine would rapidly collapse, so he did not prepare his
people for the invasion or his soldiers for their mission—indeed, he assured the
elites that it would not happen. After two terrible weeks on the battlefield, he is still
denying that he is waging what may become Europe’s biggest war since 1945.
He has wrecked the reputation of Russia’s supposedly formidable armed forces,
which have proved tactically inept against a smaller, worse-armed but motivated
opponent. Russia has lost mountains of equipment and endured thousands of
casualties
Mariupol, once a city of 400,000, was surrounded by Russian forces from Crimea
and Donbas in the first week of the war. It has fared far worse since than the other
cities around which the Russians are encamped, in part because of its strategic
importance—it is crucial to the establishment of a land bridge from Donbas to
Crimea—in part because, unlike Kharkiv or Kyiv in the north, it is entirely encircled.
Mariupol exemplifies that savagery. On March 10th Russian aircraft started to bomb
the city; unlike Kyiv, it has no air defences. Soon a few bombs a day became a few
dozen bombs a day. On March 16th Russian missiles fell on a swimming pool, a
cinema and a theatre; all three were being used for shelter by civilians. The theatre
contained over 1,000 people, according to an eyewitness there the day before; the
word “children” was written in large letters on the pavement outside the theatre, but
did nothing to prevent the attack. No one currently knows how many survived, nor
how many may remain buried alive.
On March 20th a Russian bomb hit a school on the eastern side of the city, where
400 people were reportedly sheltering. Later that day, Russia delivered an
ultimatum: surrender the city by 5am the following morning. The Ukrainian

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government refused. But it has no way of breaking the blockade. On March 19th Mr
Arestovych said the nearest available forces were more than 110km away.
With 3,500 Ukrainian soldiers facing 14,000 invaders, around a tenth of the total
estimated Russian force in the country, their prospects look daunting, even though
attackers are generally reckoned to need a large numerical advantage.

Abundant evidence from a range of sources, including pre-cooked Russian media

reports published in error, shows that Russia both intended to take Kyiv and
expected to do so quickly. Ukrainians claim to have found dress uniforms
presumably packed for victory parades. But a pincer movement from the north-west
and north-east of the capital met fierce Ukrainian resistance and suffered from
jammed up supply lines.
Two large cities, which successfully resisted separatists in 2014, are being reduced
to rubble; a land corridor from Donbas to Crimea has been established; a quarter of
Ukraine’s population displaced (10% as refugees abroad); thousands if not tens of
thousands of civilians killed, and all this after only one month into the war.
Ukraine has won the first phase of this one simply by surviving. Now it needs to
advance, and so Mr Zelensky needs redoubled Western help.
 2. April-august – stabil – artilerie plus infanterie - Donbas Retragere in martie
– refocus pe Donbas Aprilie-august – cucerire Luhansk, dar ft lent
 hen russian and Ukrainian negotiators met in Istanbul to discuss a potential
settlement on March 29th Alexander Fomin, Russia’s deputy defence
minister, had something to offer. “In order to increase mutual trust and create
the necessary conditions for further negotiations,” he said, Russia would
“drastically reduce” operations around Kyiv and Chernihiv, a city 150km to the
north.
 Spreading the invasion over four separate salients—a push south from
Belarus to Kyiv, one out of Russia towards Sumy and Kharkiv in Ukraine’s
north-east, one from further east into Donbas and a fourth north out of Crimea
—was always going to leave Russian forces overstretched.
 In recent weeks, Russian forces have attempted to move south from the north
bank of the Donets river in Izyum, a town 125km south-east of Kharkiv, at the
same time as they advance north along a front that stretches from the
outskirts of Zaporizhia, on the Dnieper, to Mariupol on the coast. This looks
like an attempt to isolate the Ukrainian troops fighting Russian proxies in
Donbas—what Ukraine calls the Joint Forces Operation (jfo).
 Before the war the jfo consisted of ten particularly well equipped and trained
brigades, all of them battle hardened. Some of those troops were redeployed
to fight invaders elsewhere. How many of them remain in the area, and what
condition they are in, is very hard to gauge. But one credible estimate has
two-fifths of Ukraine’s army still in the area. Were the Russians to cut those
forces off and, thanks to numerical advantage and the tactical edge provided
by encirclement, defeat them, it would be a huge blow to Ukraine

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  If or, more realistically, when besieged Mariupol falls, Russia will have more
troops to commit to the advance, though they may be battered and
exhausted. But it will also need to fix a range of other deficits, including
problems using air power. Its planes still seem unable to track and hit moving
targets, for example. And it will need to improve its woeful logistics. Encircling
the jfo will require much longer supply lines than any Russia has made use of
so far in its campaign.

 The balance of defence versus offence; the ability to keep supply lines
open; the morale and willingness to fight of the opposing side; the
capacity to “close the skies”. If there is to be a large, decisive clash in
Donbas it could turn on any one of those factors. But what would come after?

 Comandantul-șef al Forțelor Armate ale Ucrainei, Valeri Zalujnîi, i-a spus
şefului Statului-Major american, generalul Mark Milley, într-un apel telefonic
că „situația de pe câmpul de luptă este stabilizată”, în mare parte datorită
utilizării de către Ucraina a sistemelor de rachete M142 HIMARS Ministrul rus
al apărării, Serghei Șoigu, a ordonat generalilor să acorde prioritate distrugerii
rachetelor cu rază lungă de acțiune și a armelor de artilerie din Ucraina, după
ce armele furnizate de Occident au fost folosite pentru a lovi liniile rusești de
aprovizionare, informează Reuters.
 Trupele ruse înaintează în estul Ucrainei, după ce au învăţat din greşelile
făcute în primele etape ale invaziei lor în această ţară, inclusiv printr-o mai
bună coordonare a atacurilor terestre şi aeriene şi o mai bună organizare a
liniilor logistice şi de aprovizionare, au declarat joi postului CNN doi oficiali
americani ce au acces la analizele făcute de serviciile de informaţii ale SUA.
Analizele Washingtonului anticipează o bătălie lungă şi sângeroasă în estul
Ucrainei, cu mari pierderi umane şi materiale în ambele tabere. Iar în timp ce
armata ucraineană îşi consumă din muniţiile compatibile cu propriul
armament, guvernele occidentale se află în faţa unei decizii dificile asupra
sporirii asistenţei militare destinate Ucrainei.
  According to American defence sources, 10% of Russia’s invasion force has
been lost, presumably either killed or wounded. It is shy at least 233 tanks, 32
surface-to-air missile launchers and 41 planes, drones and helicopters,
according to Oryx, a blog which tracks such weapons using pictures made
public on the internet. On top of that which has been destroyed, a fair bit of
workable Russian kit has been captured—much of it towed away gleefully,
and on video, by farmers with tractors. These are severe losses of men and
materiel. What is more, they seem to have fallen disproportionately on elite
units such as the vdv airborne forces, Spetsnaz special forces and the First
Guards Tank Army, an armoured force purportedly both well trained and
equipped. British defence intelligence says that these losses are so severe
that they have left Russia “struggling to conduct offensive operations”. It has
been forced to redeploy forces from its eastern military district (which
stretches to Vladivostok), from its Pacific fleet and from Armenia; it is also
recruiting Russian and Syrian mercenaries.

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 
 3. Septembrie – contraatac Ucraina Din august – contraofensiva Ucraina –
Harkov; Herson
 Ofensiva fulger a forțelor armate ucrainene în regiunea Harkov din nord-estul
țării a dus la prăbușirea frontului rusesc ca un castel de nisip însă factorii care
au dus la reușita sa țin mai mult de deficiențele proprii ale armatei ruse. este
clar că a existat o prăbușire masivă a moralului în rândul forțelor rusești din
regiunea Harkov. Ele au predat orașe aproape fără luptă și au abandonat
cantități vaste de echipament
 Războiul din Ucraina a intrat în "a treia etapă", spune ministrul ucrainean al
apărării, Oleksii Reznikov, în timp ce Kremlinul anunță că intervenția militară
rusă din Ucraina va continua "până când vor fi îndeplinite obiectivele stabilite
inițial". "Prima etapă în război a urmărit să îi descurajeze pe ruși. A doua a
constat în stabilirea unui echilibru între ei și noi pe front, stabilizarea frontului
și testarea capacităților lor de rezistență", a spus ministrul.
 Obiectivele Ucrainei sunt eliberarea tuturor teritoriilor ocupate, "inclusiv
Crimeea (anexată în 2014 - n.r.), Lugansk și Donețk (în Donbasul de est -
n.r.). Gărzile de frontieră își vor instala posturile pe granița ruso-ucraineană,
acolo unde se afla ea în 1991", a subliniat Reznikov.
 Rusia deține în continuare o cincime din teritoriul Ucrainei, potrivit BBC, ceea
ce înseamnă că războiul este în continuare departe de a se fi terminat.
 The Kharkiv offensive is the most significant shift in Ukraine’s favour since the
end of March, when Russia’s army, mauled and bogged down in the suburbs
of Kyiv, retreated from the entire region around the capital in what it described
as a “goodwill gesture”. Coincidentally, the latest offensive is being run by
General Oleksandr Syrsky, who also organised Kyiv’s defence in February
and March. He appears to have spotted a weak point in Russian lines near
the city of Balakliya, which had been in Russian hands since March 2nd.
 A Ukrainian military intelligence source says that the success of the offensive
was contingent on American-supplied harm anti-radiation missiles, which
home in on the emissions of Russian air-defence radar and other equipment.
It also relied on surface-to-air systems that threatened Russian aircraft:
Ukrainian sources single out Germany’s Gepard, a set of anti-aircraft guns on
tracks. This threat left Russia reluctant to deploy air power; when it did, it
suffered losses.
 Ukraine’s leaders have long sought a turning-point in the war: an operation
that would demonstrate to Western backers that Ukraine can win it, if provided
with the right weapons. This week General Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s
commander-in-chief, made his first public statement of the conflict on that
subject. Success was “directly and exclusively dependent on the resources
available to Ukraine”,


 When we first spoke, in early September, Goemans predicted a protracted
conflict. None of the three main variables of war-termination theory—
information, credible commitment, and domestic politics—had been resolved.

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 Both sides still believed that they could win, and their distrust for each other
was deepening by the day. As for domestic politics, Putin was exactly the sort
of leader that Goemans had warned about. Despite his significant repressive
apparatus, he did not have total control of the country. He kept calling the war
a “special military operation” and delaying a mass mobilization, so as not to
have to face domestic unrest. If he started losing, Goemans predicted, he
would simply escalate.
 The revelations of Russian weakness and Ukrainian strength have buoyed the
Ukrainian public; the discovery of the massacres of civilians at Bucha and
now Izyum have enraged it. If once there was space in Ukrainian public
opinion for concessions to Russia, that space has now closed
 Dozens of outside actors have been pulled into the conflict: the thirty countries
of NATO, on the side of Ukraine; Belarus, for now, on the side of Russia. “This
is a large European war, something we thought we would not see,” Goemans
said. “It’s trench warfare, like World War One.


Rusia – putini oameni; mobilizare grea; Ucraina – mai – oameni, dar neinstruiti si
fara arme; apoi insa au reusit sa rezolve ambele probleme cu ajutorul vestului
Reznikov a precizat că Ucraina are o forță de un milion de oameni formată din
700.000 de militari, ceilalți 300.000 urmând să fie constituiți din garda națională,
poliție, forțele de frontieră. El a declarat că a fost mulțumit de faptul că partenerii
Ucrainei au fost capabili să ajute Ucraina să își refacă stocurile de muniție epuizate,
subliniind în special rolul ministrului britanic al apărării Ben Wallace. Cu toate
acestea, Reznikov a adăugat că ar dori ca NATO și partenerii să crească ritmul
livrărilor de arme.
Ucraina – construit armata – 1 milion de oameni; training si arme; Rusia – nu a
folosit tot potentialul – nepopular

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