Ukraine: Words that “marked” the second year of the war

From the town of Avdiyivka in eastern Ukraine, which came under Russian control after months of fighting, to Zaluzny, the popular ousted head of the armed forces, AFP picks some words that marked the second year of the war in Ukraine, where Russia invaded on February 24, 2022.

Battle of Abdiivka

After four months of Russian attacks, the Ukrainian army, faced with a growing shortage of soldiers and equipment, announced on the night of February 16-17 its withdrawal from Avdiivka, an industrial city in eastern Ukraine – in the Donetsk Oblast of the Donbas region – which has been largely destroyed and abandoned by the vast majority of its 34,000 inhabitants.

The fall of Abdiivka constitutes important symbolic victory for Russia despite the increased losses. This city, which neighbors the separatist “capital” of Donetsk, briefly fell in July 2014 to Moscow-led pro-Russian separatists before returning to control of Ukraine where it had remained until recently, embodying resistance to Russian invasion.

Counterattack

Kiev’s long-awaited counteroffensive began in early June 2023 with the aim of recapturing territory seized from Moscow. But despite billions in Western military aid, it ran up against solid Russian defenses.

Ukraine, on the other hand, can be proud of its successes in the Black Sea. In recent months, he has dealt significant blows to the powerful Russian fleet, managing to push back its warships and reopen a sea lane to export grain.

Drones

Drones fly by the thousands over the front. Moscow is flooding Ukrainian rearguards and all the way to the capital with Iranian Shahed kamikaze drones, nicknamed by residents “machines” because of the noise they make. Kiev is also sending similar mechanisms deep into Russian territory, in annexed Crimea or the Belgorod region (west), even against Moscow.

“I am russian!”

Title of honor for the pop singer Shaman, star of the big “patriotic” concerts: “I’m lucky, I’m Russian, against the whole world,” says the chorus.

The singer appeared in early 2023 before Russian soldiers in Mariupol, a few months after he sang alongside Vladimir Putin at a concert marking the anniversary of Moscow’s annexation of occupied Ukrainian territories.

Mobilization

A public debate about conscription has been going on for weeks in Ukraine, as the army is finding it harder today than it was at the start of the war to find volunteers for the front. President Volodymyr Zelensky had said in December that his army had proposed conscripting up to 500,000 people to replenish army ranks decimated by the counteroffensive and to furlough exhausted veterans.

In Russia, hundreds of thousands of young people fled their homelands after the conscription was announced in September 2022. The army was nevertheless able to contract almost half a million men in addition to the 300,000 already conscripted.

Patriot

The first American Patriot air defense system was delivered in April 2022 to Ukraine. These complex surface-to-air missile systems, which are provided by the United States and Germany, now play a key role in its defense, with a range far greater than that of the defense systems used until then.

They notably enabled the downing of many Russian hypersonic Kinjal missiles, which the Kremlin had presented as “invincible”. In late January, Vladimir Putin said that a Russian Ilyushin Il-76 military transport plane that crashed in the Belgorod region with 74 people on board was downed by a Patriot missile.

Wagner

The Wagner paramilitary group claimed in May 2023, after almost a year of bloody fighting, the capture of the city of Bahmut (east).

Then the head of Yevgeny Prigozhin provoked a bloody 24-hour armed rebellion in order to demand the resignation of the chief of the general staff and the minister of defense. Two months later, he was killed in a mysterious plane crash.

Since then Wagner has been de facto sidelined and many of its missions are outsourced to other paramilitary groups.

Blinds

After weeks of rumors, the popular head of the Ukrainian army, Valery Zaluzny, was replaced on February 8 by a lesser-known general, Oleksandr Shirsky.

According to senior Ukrainian sources, Volodymyr Zelensky blamed him for the lack of progress on the front. Zaluzny is admired in Ukraine for thwarting an offensive launched two years ago by Vladimir Putin, who believed he could take Kiev and control the country within hours.