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Daniel Ceng Shou-Yi

Tom Clonan A turning point has been reached in the invasion of Ukraine

The security analyst looks at the past few days of activity and peace talks and what that tells us about the future.

THE INVASION OF Ukraine has reached a turning point. In recent days, the Russian general staff announced that they would concentrate their activities in the ‘special military operation’ in the Donbass in Eastern Ukraine.

On Tuesday afternoon in Istanbul, Russia’s Deputy Defence Minister, General Alexander Fomin announced a ‘reduction’ in military activities ‘towards’ Kyiv and Chernihiv. The Ukrainian delegation have confirmed Russian troop withdrawals from positions north of the Capital Kyiv.

Both sides in the peace talks in Istanbul have expressed cautious optimism about the talks, with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevut Cavusoglu stating “we are extremely happy to see an increased rapprochement between both sides at every stage”.

The hope is that the Istanbul talks may lead to a possible meeting between Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Russia’s Sergei Lavrov. Ultimately, the goal would be a face-to-face meeting between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and President Vladimir Putin.

Whilst the diplomatic and political ground appears to be shifting, the military situation on the ground has remained somewhat static. Russia’s advance on Kyiv – and on Zelenskyy and his government – has failed.

Putin’s intelligence assessment presumably led him to believe that his massive armoured column (stretched out over 40 miles) would roll into Kyiv city centre within 24 hours of crossing the start-line. In the early hours of the invasion – in a parallel operation – a ‘kill team’ of Russian special forces was dispatched to Kyiv to capture or kill Zelenskyy and other key members of his cabinet and senior military leadership in order to effect a swift regime change and surrender.

However, Russian forces failed to take the airport at Kyiv and none of the elements of their original plan survived contact with the Ukrainian military. Over a month after the invasion, Kyiv remains intact and Zelenskyy remains at large – leading Ukrainian resistance against Putin’s aggression.

In the east and south of the country, Russian forces have managed to consolidate their grip on the Donbass region. Critically, Russian troops have – slowly but surely – fought their way from the Crimean Peninsula towards Luhansk and Donetsk. If Mariupol falls in the coming days, the Russians will have succeeded in establishing a land corridor from Crimea through Donbass to Russia proper.

Heavy fighting continues around Kharkiv and Sumy to the north and east. The Russians may – in the coming days – seek to bypass Kharkiv and drive a pincer movement south, through Izium towards their forces in Mariupol in order to seize a broader strip of eastern Ukraine.

However, their capacity to do so is constrained by their losses in combat and by the length of time their forces have been deployed in combat. Estimates of Russian combat losses vary wildly. The Russians have stated losses of around 1,300 troops killed in action. US and Ukrainian sources claim Russian combat deaths of between 10,000 and 17,000 respectively.

My estimate is approximately 8,000 Russian troops killed in action – the mid-range value between Russian and Ukrainian claims. If this is the case, it is a shockingly high level of military casualties for Russia. To put the figure in context, the Soviets lost 15,000 troops in nine years of combat in Afghanistan. To lose 8,000 Russian soldiers killed in one month in Ukraine represents a catastrophic attrition rate.

For every Russian soldier killed in action (KIA), there will be approximately three wounded in action (WIA). This would bring the total number of casualties to approximately 8,000 KIA, 24,000 WIA. It is not known how many Ukrainian soldiers have died in the conflict. However, the ceiling figure for Russia – at approximately 32,000 casualties, represents one third of the combat troops committed to the war in Ukraine.

Normally, in conventional combat, such losses are simply unsustainable and represent a definitive tactical defeat. With no key objectives achieved – such as the capture of major cities or regime change – the situation on the ground in Ukraine represents a tactical and strategic defeat for Vladimir Putin.

‘Liberation of Donbass’

shutterstock_2133927693 Shutterstock / Drop of Light Shutterstock / Drop of Light / Drop of Light

In this context, the Head of Russian General Staff’s Operations Directorate, General Sergei Rudskoi has announced that Russian forces will concentrate on the ‘liberation of Donbass’.

In tandem with the operational pause outside Kyiv, this signals a significant recalibration and downsizing of Russian strategic objectives in Ukraine. As the diplomatic and political choreography plays out in Istanbul and on the wider global stage, the Russian military may seek to reinforce what they hold in Donbass whilst securing and consolidating their newly acquired land corridor from the Crimean Peninsula to Russia proper.

For Ukrainian civilians – of whom thousands have been slaughtered in Russia’s targeting of civilian infrastructure – the killing will continue. Russia has continued to target civilian areas in cities such as Mariupol and Kharkiv, in relentless, grid patterned artillery, air and missile strikes.

This represents the deliberate, block-by-block, street-by-street destruction of civilians and civilian objects in order to ‘neutralise’ these targets. Those in the Kremlin who direct such operations ought to be pursued for war crimes in the aftermath of this conflict.

Russia’s immediate intentions are evident in their current re-organisation and re-grouping phase. Russia is reported to have deployed approximately 1,000 mercenaries from the ‘Wagner Group’ to the Donbass region in recent days. These hired soldiers – mostly Russian ex-military – are believed to be financed by Yevgeniy Prigozhin, an associate of Putin.

Organised along lines similar to self-styled ‘security contractors’ in the US, such as Blackwater Security, these mercenaries have been active in Ukraine since the invasion of Donbass in 2014. Their current deployment – many of them are reported to have senior command and control experience – may be designed to reassert coherence and leadership among battle weary and demoralised Russian military units in the Donbass region.

However, their presence may also be designed to further terrorise the remaining civilian population – persuading them to flee Russian-controlled areas in a form of ethnic cleansing similar to that employed during the war in the former Yugoslavia. Members of the Wagner Group have been associated with war crimes and human rights abuses in Ukraine, Libya, Syria, Central African Republic, Sudan and Mozambique.

However worrying the Wagner Group deployment may be, it is unlikely to impact on the overarching strategic military situation in Ukraine. Russia’s capacity to conduct offensive ground operations in the region is seriously compromised.

politics-ukraine PA Images PA Images

Out of a total of 100 or so Battalion Tactical Groups – available to Russian commanders at the outset of the invasion – approximately 20 have been lost or rendered ineffective. Based on western intelligence estimates, the Russians will struggle to replace 10 of these in the coming operational pause. This being the case, the Russians will continue to use air and missile strikes in their war of attrition on Ukrainian population centres – targeting civilians in the absence of a decisive conventional military victory.

The Ukrainian military will be very hard pressed to maintain their operational momentum on the ground also. After one month of sustained combat operations, re-supply and reinforcement of Ukrainian forces will be a vital factor in their continued fighting effectiveness.

To this end, Ukraine’s European partners need to keep supplies of weapons, ammunition, medical supplies and aid to the Ukrainian military at a very high tempo – not as an insurgency, but as a full-scale combat operation.

For its part, the Ukrainian military must keep its western approaches open. It must be wary of any renewed or surprise Russian offensive aimed at cutting off Kyiv. It must also avoid its forces in eastern Ukraine being cut off or surrounded by a north-south pincer movement of Russian troops attempting to connect or seize new territory between Kharkiv and Mariupol.

Whilst all of this plays out on the ground in Ukraine, the Kremlin will be carefully constructing a political narrative to pluck some face-saving victory from its tactical and strategic military defeat in Ukraine.

The peace talks represent a – perhaps brief – moment of opportunity for Ukraine and Russia to bring the current fighting to an end. Any negotiated outcomes may prove highly problematic – as an alternative to escalation to a wider European war.

Whatever the outcomes, they will be temporary. For the medium to long term, the conflict will force Europe to consider its value consensus and its collective resolve to protect those values in the future, on a broad spectrum of existential challenges.

Dr Tom Clonan is a former Captain in the Irish armed forces. He is a security analyst and academic, lecturing in the School of Media in DIT. You can follow him on Twitter.

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    Mute Munster1
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    Mar 29th 2022, 6:14 PM

    Great to see peace talks advancing. We cannot afford the 10 billion a year 200,000 refugees would cost us. And before anyone asks, it was already said today that every 10,000 would cost 500 million.

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    Mute Des Doherty
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    Mar 29th 2022, 6:22 PM

    @Munster1: great to see peace talks so less people will die

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    Mute John Mulligan
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    Mar 29th 2022, 6:23 PM

    @Munster1: the cost to us of refugees is a headline figure that ignores a few details. Firstly, much of the money provided to refugees, along with whatever savings they have managed to bring with them, gets spent locally and also has a multiplier effect. In addition, a lot of refugees will quickly fill job vacancies and become net contributors to society here.
    So 10 billion isn’t the real cost, that would be very much less.

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    Mute Munster1
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    Mar 29th 2022, 6:44 PM

    @Des Doherty: that goes without saying des.

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    Mute Frank Cauldhame
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    Mar 29th 2022, 7:37 PM

    @John Mulligan: You constantly make sweeping generalised scathing derogatory comments about the 10k homeless in Ireland yet ‘state’ that the majority of Ukrainian refugees will become net contributors to Irish society??? How do you know that? By the way I welcome as many Ukrainian refugees as we can take but find your analysis of the situation evidently hypocritical.

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    Mute Quiet Goer
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    Mar 29th 2022, 8:30 PM

    @Munster1: Why does it cost 50,000 per refugee? if you’re not paying Dublin rent you could have a decent life on 50k. Presumably if they’re only housed in tents and given a subsistence allowance, or are living off the generosity of people takin them in it should cost a fraction of that. If we are spending 50,000 per refugee we’re doing it wrong

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    Mute Billybutcher
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    Mar 29th 2022, 8:32 PM

    @Munster1: wow such charity

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    Mute JG
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    Mar 29th 2022, 9:20 PM

    @Munster1: good on ya… Thinking of others grief before yourself..

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    Mute JG
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    Mar 29th 2022, 9:21 PM

    @Munster1: indeed it goes without you saying it. But there ya go.

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    Mute Diarmuid Hunt
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    Mar 29th 2022, 10:02 PM

    @Frank Cauldhame: I don’t know about his comments on homeless but you cannot directly compare refugees to homeless people it just doesnt work. Our homeless need to be reintegrated into soceity and helped oast their problems but it actually may be easier for some of these refugees to become a functional part of soceity as hard as that may seem.

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    Mute Diarmuid Hunt
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    Mar 29th 2022, 10:11 PM

    @Diarmuid Hunt: *doesn’t *society *past *society… I really should take more time typing

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    Mute Michael McGrath
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    Mar 30th 2022, 12:04 AM

    @John Mulligan: That depends on how fact refugees can be turned around after they arrive – and in the case of this government I haven’t much hope. I know one of them, Malcolm Noonan, and he’s dead slow!

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    Mute Michael McGrath
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    Mar 30th 2022, 12:05 AM

    @Michael McGrath: how FAST

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    Mute Michael McGrath
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    Mar 30th 2022, 12:11 AM

    @John Mulligan: It depends on how fast the refugees are turned around! We don’t have any business head even appointed yet to do that, no team, no system installed.

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    Mute Sean
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    Mar 29th 2022, 7:11 PM

    I don’t believe anything Russia says. They have lied all along to their own citizens and to the world. Remember the little green men in Crimea!

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    Mute El Sparko
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    Mar 29th 2022, 7:50 PM

    @Sean: the little green men were the Wagner Group mercenary’s

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    Mute Billybutcher
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    Mar 29th 2022, 8:33 PM

    @Sean: agreed they are lying again

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    Mute Mick Tobin
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    Mar 29th 2022, 6:20 PM

    Looks positive, but I’m cautious – think there is still a grave danger of Russia eventually taking all of Ukraine’s coast (suffocating its economic viability), but there seem to be some positive developments. Apparently life in Odesa is defiantly returning to some sort of normality – in part because the Ukrainian army is holding off the Russian advance in Mykolaiv, and there are even reports that they have taken back parts of Kherson in counterattacks. Kherson sits just north of the Dnieper river.

    If they manage to recapture Kherson and hold on to it, there’s not only three significant port cities in Ukrainian hands, but one of them (Kherson) on the banks of the Dnieper. That would be a major plus for the prospect of its post-war economy – given that it’s still likely that a major part of south eastern and eastern territory – including Mariupol, will end up lost to Russia.

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    Mute Hugh Mc Donnell
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    Mar 29th 2022, 9:31 PM

    Now that the momentum is with the Ukrainian army I hope they have the ability and weapons to push Russia and it mercenaries out of Eastern Ukraine.

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    Mute Gary Dunne
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    Mar 29th 2022, 6:38 PM

    In response to sanctions on its financial institutions and it’s current inability to use the SWIFT payment system to move Euros and/or US Dollars, Russia has informed “unfriendly countries” that it will accept payment for gas in Rubles only. Both the G7 and the EU have said no to this. Russia’s response is that they have until March 31st to make payment in Rubles or else they will find the tap is turned off.
    So… I’m guessing there will be “understanding” reached before the deadline.

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    Mute David cotter
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    Mar 29th 2022, 6:24 PM

    This Wagner group won’t scare the Ukrainians
    Saw a Ukrainian solider on cnn running around like a lunatic being handed RPGS by his friends and talking out Russian armour…absolutely fearless stuff.
    This invasion is a busted flush…..

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    Mute Geoff Bateman
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    Mar 29th 2022, 9:27 PM

    But can we believe the Russians??

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    Mute Mike Walsh
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    Mar 29th 2022, 10:18 PM

    This account by Tom Clonan is riddled with inaccuracies, untruths and bogus reports from the NATO ‘History Book’.
    He doesn’t even mention the reasons for this present conflict and who were responsible for, not only allowing it to occur, but ensuring its inevitability.

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    Mute David Bourke
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    Mar 30th 2022, 11:14 AM

    @Mike Walsh:

    The reason for the present conflict is Russian aggression, and support for Russian separatists.

    Putin is responsible for it.

    Germany allowed it to occur by blocking military support to Ukraine, and financing Russia by building the pipeline.

    Putin made it inevitable by deciding to invade.

    Now p.i.iss off to your hole, trying to spread misinformation and lies about this unprovoked Russian war. Ukraine has the right to join EU, they are a sovereign nation. They have the right to join NATO, as they are a sovereign nation threatened by Russia.

    Putin, and Russia are the villains here, it is as simple as that.

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    Mute Brian Henoll
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    Mar 30th 2022, 2:08 PM

    @David Bourke: this 110%

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    Mute Eoghan Augusta
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    Mar 29th 2022, 10:21 PM

    Devil’s advocate.. we couldnt fix 10k homeless we can now fix 200k but people can’t buy a house. Do our government just posture and if they had the solution why did we listen through successive governments saying this was a huge issue? Maybe it’s like HSE, money and a hope. I welcome Ukranians but I also welcome an answer from government as to the ease in which they are planning to provide housing. Get up on the horse all you want but if people are on housing lists they should go further up and not down!

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    Mute Philip O'Connor
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    Mar 29th 2022, 9:55 PM

    How much do you pay Clonan for this drivel? Why not just download the Pentagon handouts free of charge? You can add local “colour” very cheaply

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    Mute BOT 4d4143204a6f686e446f65
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    Mar 29th 2022, 10:13 PM

    Putins team is very tactical.MAKE NO MISTAKES here…its working in line with his plan-Ukraine won’t join NATO and Russia does look to have ‘influence’ in the West. If he closes off sea access we (EU) are in trouble.

    CONTROL OIL AND YOU CONTROL NATIONS;CONTROL FOOD AND YOU CONTROL THE PEOPLE- henry kissinger

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