18 BriefingThe war in Ukraine The EconomistApril 2nd 2022
son in the south, the only big city the Rus
sians currently occupy. Some of these ap
pear to have been devastatingly effective.
Battles around Myrhorod, roughly half way
between Kyiv and Kharkiv, 400km east, are
thought to have resulted in severe losses
for Russia’s 4th Guards Tank Division. The
unit is part of the army’s elite 1st Guards
Tank Army and operates some of Russia’s
most modern armour. Konrad Muzyka of
Rochan Consulting, a research group,
thinks the division has lost at least a fifth
of its tanks.
Spreading the invasion over four sepa
rate salients—a push south from Belarus to
Kyiv, one out of Russia towards Sumy and
Kharkiv in Ukraine’s northeast, one from
further east into Donbas and a fourth north
out of Crimea—was always going to leave
Russian forces overstretched. They have
paid a heavy price. Though Russia claims
that only 1,351 of its soldiers have died, on
March 30th Victoria Nuland, an official in
America’s State Department, said that the
true figure was more than 10,000. (Ukrai
nian officials put the number at more than
15,000.) The last army to lose soldiers on
that scale in the course of a month was
Iraq’s in 2003. Morale is, understandably,
poor. Jeremy Fleming, the head ofgchq,
Britain’s signalsintelligence agency, says
there is clear evidence of Russian soldiers
“refusing to carry out orders, sabotaging
their own equipment and even accidental
ly shooting down their own aircraft”.
The Russian army's failures and short
comings do not make it a spent force.Though its spokesgenerals were lying
when they said that they had never really
wanted Kyiv, they were accurate when say
ing that they had made progress in Donbas,
and may have been truthful in saying that
that was where their efforts would now be
focused. A researcher at the Conflict Intel
ligence Team, an investigative group, says
that by pouring in troops from Kyiv, Cher
nihiv, Sumy and elsewhere Russia can
probably muster enough manpower in
Donbas to outnumber the Ukrainian forces
there, perhaps by 50% or so: a significant
margin, if not necessarily an overwhelm
ing one.
In recent weeks, Russian forces have at
tempted to move south from the north
bank of the Donets river in Izyum, a town
125km southeast of Kharkiv, at the same
time as they advance north along a front
that stretches from the outskirts of Zapo
rizhia, 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).The envelopment, please
Before the war thejfoconsisted of ten par
ticularly well equipped and trained bri
gades, all of them battle hardened. Some of
those troops were redeployed to fight in
vaders elsewhere. How many of them re
main in the area, and what condition they
are in, is very hard to gauge. But one credi
ble estimate has twofifths of Ukraine’s ar
my still in the area. Were the Russians tocut those forces off and, thanks to numeri
cal advantage and the tactical edge provid
ed by encirclement, defeat them, it would
be a huge blow to Ukraine. It would provide
Mr Putin’s army with a solid base for fur
ther gains along the coast in the south, pro
viding a continuous connection from Don
bas to Crimea and maybe more. It might
even lead the Russians to look again at Kyiv
and the regime change they claim not to
have wanted.
So far Russia’s advance through Kharkiv
has been slow, grinding and, again, costly.
Its forces have struggled to cross rivers—
here, it is Ukraine that has blown up bridg
es—and to travel offroad. As to the north
ward advance, it has yet to get past Huliai
pole, a city more or less midway between
Mariupol and Zaporizhia. This means that
the jaws of the trap, if such they are, are a
good 250km apart. “It's an easy thing to
draw some arrows on a map and write the
word ‘envelop’ on it,” says one Western of
ficial. “It's a fundamentally different thing
to try and achieve that on the ground.”
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 defi
cits, 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. Encir
cling thejfowill require much longer sup
ply lines than any Russia has made use of
so far in its campaign.One of the last independent media
outlets still operating in Russia, Novaya
Gazeta, said it would close for the
remainder of the war, after receiving
several warnings from regulators
regarding its coverage.Buoyed by reports that peace talks
between Russia and Ukraine were
making progress, stockmarkets
around the world have risen. Hope of a
negotiated settlement weighed on the
price of oil.Repression in Russia Market optimismNumber of people arrested in Russia for
anti-war protests. Source: OVD-info15,