Russia Matters, 11/25/24

Ukrainian intelligence believes that Russia is gearing up for a bold assault on the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, which is located 30 kilometers from the front, according to a Nov. 25 story in The Economist, entitled “Ukraine’s warriors brace for a Kremlin surge in the south.” Vladimir Putin’s war machine is pushing harder and crushing Ukrainian morale.” East of Zaporizhzhia, in the Donetsk region, Russian forces are already moving faster than at any time since the early days of the invasion, according to this U.K. newspaper, whose latest daily tracking estimates that Russia has gained 739 square kilometers in the past 30 days.¹ The Economist estimates that Ukraine’s problems at the front “are worsening mainly because of manpower issues,” such as lack of personnel reinforcement and age-induced health problems of the new recruits. The DC-based Institute of the Study of War (ISW), which has no love lost for the Russian aggression, put it mildly in its latest assessment of that aggression: “Russian forces’ recent confirmed battlefield gains near Vuhledar and Velyka Novosilka demonstrate that the war in Ukraine is not stalemated.” Not all agree with this estimate, however. Rod Thornton of King’s College London told the New Yorker: “It is a stalemate” because “there are advances on various fronts, but a few hundred meters or kilometers here and there.”