The Washington Post - USA (2022-04-03)

A20 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, APRIL 3 , 2022

war in ukraine

The extent of the failure was

evident as Russian troops began

abandoning their positions in

northern Ukraine over the past

few days, leaving behind a trail of

destroyed armor, littered belong-

ings and charred, disfigured bod-

ies, according to videos posted

online by advancing Ukrainian

SEE STRATEGY ON A

search Institute. But the with-

drawal from the Kyiv area sug-

gests a recognition on the part of

Russia’s military command that

its army isn’t up to the challenge

of the war it set out to fight.

“It’s an acknowledgment that

their first efforts failed, that they

don’t have the forces to encircle

Kyiv,” he said.

capturing enough of eastern

Ukraine to exact concessions

from the Ukrainian government

at the negotiating table, he said.

Whether the Russian leader-

ship has g iven up its strategic goal

of ultimately subjugating U kraine

isn’t clear, said Rob Lee, a former

U.S. Marine who is now a senior

fellow with the Foreign Policy Re-

to reassemble a force capable of

seizing the capital any time soon,

given the failures of the initial

invasion, O’Brien said.

The scale of the losses inflicted

on the Russian military so far

leaves Moscow with few options

other t han to try to concentrate its

forces on a smaller area, O’Brien

said. R ussia’s best hope now lies i n

waiting to enter the suburb of

Bilohorodka, west of Kyiv. “Soon,

it will be like it was before the

war.”

Gone, at least for now, is the

threat of a blood-drenched assault

on Kyiv, along with Russian hopes

of installing a puppet govern-

ment, a nalysts say. I t is now highly

unlikely the Russians will be able

The pullback has provided a
clearer picture of the human suf-
fering the Russians are leaving in
their wake in areas near Kyiv.
Video posted to social media Sat-
urday and verified by The Wash-
ington Post showed at least nine
people, including a child, laying in
the street of a single neighbor-
hood in the town of Bucha, north-
west of the capital. Some of the
dead were huddled together on
the side of the road.
Kyiv’s s uburbs bore the brunt of
the Russian onslaught, weather-
ing the storm that was intended
for the capital. In those small
towns t o Kyiv’s n orth and e ast, the
Russian pullback was most visi-
ble.
In Irpin, a suburb once known
for its riverside picnics and quick
commute into the city, Ukrainian
fighters had fought the Russians
back block by block for weeks.
At night, mortars and artillery
shells rained down on the rows of
quaint homes, some of which had
been occupied by soldiers on both
sides. Nearly every resident had
fled. O n Saturday, t he few that had
remained shoveled and swept de-
bris from their yards and contem-
plated their first nights in their
beds after relocating their lives to
basements.
It was too early for most of the
town’s former residents to con-
template returning, and officials
— both local and military — have
cautioned against it until thor-
ough demining operations have
taken place.
“A fter 25 days of nonstop shell-
ing, the silence makes you uncom-
fortable,” said Ruslan Stepura, 44,
a soldier in a volunteer battalion
that defended Irpin. “But when
it’s silent, it’s like a miracle.”
Now that the adrenaline had
worn off, it was hard for him and
others who had fought for the
town to believe what they were
seeing: a hellscape of shattered
glass, burned-out c ars and obliter-
ated public infrastructure.
But there were also signs of a
return to some sliver of a past life.
“Traffic jams are coming back,”
Stepura said, gesturing at a line of
vehicles, some carrying civilians,

STRATEGY FROM A

Russia curbs ambitions to capture Kyiv, heads toward east

FADEL SENNA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

A Ukrainian serviceman l ooks at a Russian drone in a trench at the front line east of Kharkiv on Thursday. Russian forces are repositioning in Ukraine to strengthen their

offensive on the Donbass, an official said. Russia is also expected to sustain pressure on the other parts of eastern and southern Ukraine that it captured early in the war.

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