The Next Phase in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine appears to be on the cusp of a new phase.

Russia has intensified its missile attacks in recent days and called up about 300,000 new troops this winter. Many of them have gathered in eastern Ukraine, apparently preparing for an assault.

Russia’s goal seems to be the seizure of the entire Donbas region, in eastern Ukraine, by overwhelming Ukrainian forces with troops. “This is what has the Ukrainians beside themselves with worry,” said my colleague Michael Schwirtz, who has been reporting from Donbas. As a wounded Ukrainian soldier named Pavlo told Michael, “It’s particularly difficult when you have 50 guys and they have 300.”

Today’s newsletter offers one of our occasional updates on the state of the war, with Times reporters around the world helping to answer two basic questions: What is Russia’s latest strategy? And what is Ukraine’s?

“There are signs that both sides are going to do something in the weeks and months to come,” Julian Barnes, a Times correspondent in Washington, told me.

Russia’s strategy

The war is almost a year old, and it has clearly gone much worse than Vladimir Putin expected. Russia has gained control of Ukrainian territory in the east and south but has been rebuffed elsewhere. U.S. officials estimate that about 200,000 Russian troops have been wounded or killed.

Still, even with all his failures, Putin has reason to believe Russia’s position might improve this year. He is relying on two dynamics. First, Russia is a much larger country, with many more resources, than Ukraine. Second, the war’s outcome matters more to Ukraine and Russia than to Ukraine’s foreign allies. That gap could ultimately cause Ukraine’s allies to slow their supply of crucial weapons and equipment.

“The strategy of Putin is to wait out the West,” Julian said, “then push again to seize so much land and kill so many Ukrainians that they negotiate an end to the war from a position of weakness and Volodymyr Zelensky’s government falls.”

So far, the West has remained largely united behind Ukraine. The latest sign of support: modern tanks that the U.S., Britain and Germany agreed to supply. But there are reasons to wonder how long the support will last. Germany seems conflicted about how strongly to confront Russia, and Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has refused to say that Ukraine must win the war. In the U.S., some Republicans have criticized the military aid and argued that Ukraine is not America’s problem.

Russia is hoping to claim a new victory this week by seizing control of Bakhmut, a city in Donbas. (On Sunday, Russian fighters claimed to have captured a village just outside the city.) From there, they hope to take over more of the region. “Russia is going to try to surround Donbas and cut it off and wrest it away fully from Ukraine,” Michael told my colleague Claire Moses.

U.S. officials remain skeptical that Russia’s larger campaign to overrun eastern Ukraine will succeed, given the state of the Russian military. The troops called up in recent months are mostly inexperienced, and the war has already used up a lot of munitions and equipment.

“The Russians may have the desire for a major operation,” Julian said. “They lack the means.”

Ukraine’s strategy

Many analysts believe that a stalemate remains the most likely scenario for the rest of 2023. But both Ukraine’s leaders and the Biden administration believe a better outcome is plausible. The coming infusion of new military equipment, like the tanks, is a sign of this optimism.

The tanks have the potential to help Ukraine achieve its biggest medium-term objective: breaking the so-called land bridge that Russia has established between the territory it controls in the east, including in Donbas, and in the south, on the Crimean Peninsula. Doing so would be symbolically important for Ukraine and would make it costlier for Russia to supply troops in both regions.

One initial aim for Ukraine may be recapturing the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, inside the land bridge. “The plant provides an enormous amount of electricity,” Julian said. “Taking it back would be the biggest gain of the counteroffensive to date.”

To prepare for its coming push, Ukraine has pulled some troops from the front lines and sent them to Germany, Britain and Poland. There, they are being trained in new units and learning how to use the tanks, artillery tubes and other equipment the West has recently supplied.

What’s next

Some observers think Russia has already begun its latest push, with the missile attacks signaling the start. Others think that the war’s next phase is still at least several weeks away; they argue that the more likely time for either side to launch a full offensive is this spring, after the weather warms and mud season has ended.

The next big diplomatic question is whether Ukraine’s allies will send fighter jets, like the American F-16. To date, President Biden and Scholz have said no. Even if they change their minds, as seems plausible, the jets will not be helpful to Ukraine anytime soon.

“To train someone on an F-16 is even harder than training them on a tank,” said Steven Erlanger, The Times’s chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe. “It would make a difference, presuming it’s a long war. Which it may be.”

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