In the war the West sees on TikTok and Twitter, Vladimir Putin’s forces have already lost to Ukraine’s defenders. There is an avalanche of videos showing evidence of the heavy losses inflicted on the Russian invaders, not to mention manicured examples of the bravery of Kiev’s soldiers.
Reality, however, has several shades. The war that Putin has already lost is that of communication, as his aggression has few supporters outside of ultraconservative European circles or in niches of the Brazilian left who live in the 1970s and believe in the fight against Yankee imperialism.
The Kremlin chose to try to win by force not only Kiev, but also domestic public opinion. It lowered a harsh wartime censorship, promising up to 15 years in prison for anyone spreading what it considers fake news about the conflict — the so-called special military operation, in permissible jargon.
There are even channels, mainly on Telegram, with some information about Russian stocks. But there is really little data, which makes sense if the invading force wants to hide both its tactics and its casualties. Meticulously edited videos pop up here and there on Defense Ministry networks.
As they are, of course, propagandists, they end up being discarded. The result, amplified by mainstream Western media coverage with a strong anti-Kremlin bias, and the communicative talent of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is the idea that the Russians are losing ground battles.
Not quite. At this point, it is clear that the resistance of the Ukrainians is fierce and, fueled by a so far uninterrupted flow of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles from the West, manages to hold back the outskirts of major cities, particularly Kiev.
The capital is the focal point of the campaign, and the Russian advance has never directly threatened it. The plan appears to be encirclement from the northwest and northeast, with a threat of hard shelling, similar to what happened in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv.
But it comes at an enormous human cost, and perhaps Putin is letting the pressure build up waiting for Zelensky to surrender. Or not, and he’ll be willing to shrug his shoulders when the carnage comes — a time-consuming operation that involves employing about half the Russian force in the neighbourhood.
Two advances in secondary theaters of war are often less explored. In Donbass, eastern Ukraine at the heart of the dispute since 2014, Russian-backed separatist forces have gained a lot of ground since the initial February 24 attack.
And in the south, the battle to seize the port city of Mariupol appears to be tilting towards the Russian side. Of course, it’s one thing to conquer, another to maintain, as the daily protests at the Kherson outlet already show.
But from a military point of view, if they take Mariupol, the corridor between Russia’s Rostov region and Crimea by land will be established, likely to be extended with an eventual siege to Odessa, Ukraine’s largest port, further east.
Experts say resistance in the south is weaker due to the concentration of Ukrainian troops in Kiev, the biggest prize of the military campaign. It’s a hypothesis that helps to weaken the narrative of relentless resistance: it exists, but every Ukrainian killed or plane in the country shot down is not replaced.
Obviously, none of this diminishes the critical assessment to be made of Russian performance, which in the first week of the war experienced many casualties, and the analysis of tactical issues. But its reserves of personnel and equipment are greater.
This is visible in the action of Moscow’s tactical aviation, which was very discreet until the weekend, when suddenly the networks were flooded with videos of advanced models like the Su-34 tactical bomber being shot down by portable missiles or old Ukrainian Soviet batteries. .
Video of a Russian Mi-24 attack helicopter being shot down also helped cement the idea that the air war is lost for Putin. Before the conflict, however, the Kremlin had ten times as many fighter jets and attack planes as Kiev.
Zelensky’s insistence that NATO risk World War III by trying to create a no-fly zone over his country, and calls for Poland to urgently hand over MiG-29 fighter jets, suggest that reality weighs against Kiev.
Turkey is also being urged to supply more Bayraktar-TB2 attack drones, which have wreaked havoc on Russian armored columns but have the eyes of mixed ally and rival Moscow on them.
No one knows what Putin’s plan was, but Western and Russian analysts assume he predicted a quick surrender by Kiev. Thus, tactics need to be readjusted throughout the campaign, which, added to the reported problems with supplies, slows down the advance of the invaders.
The point is that it continues to advance, despite the repeated images here and there of Ukrainian farmer’s tractors pulling Russian tanks out of gas — a brilliant propaganda ploy, by the way.
None of this, of course, has anything to do with the future of the conflict, should Putin win it militarily. Even because an eventual defeat or withdrawal could mean the end of his government. This is a very different line of evaluation, which goes through the current difficulty in measuring the degree of Russian support for the president.
Two surveys by the state institutes VTsiOM and FOM indicate that the action was correct for 60% of the ears. “Many Russians must not be interested in whether the law [da censura] applies to responses to a researcher,” noted on Twitter Sam Greene, director of the Russia Institute at King’s College London.
There are still no surveys of the independent Centro Levada, which is considered a “foreign agent” by the Kremlin. Anecdotal observation, with reports of people leaving the country and the more than 10,000 anti-war protesters detained by police, paints a more complex picture.
But there are also countless stories of ongoing generational cleavage, with young people criticizing the support given to parents, consumers of Russian state TVs, where the “special military operation to protect the Donbass, demilitarize and denazify Ukraine” is in full swing.
