Russian forces faces stiff Ukrainian resistance

NY Times reporting that “most” of the 150,000 Russian forces massed against Ukraine are now fighting in the country. Pentagon source tells Times on Saturday that “one third of Russia’s combat power was fighting in Ukraine.”

Here is what those two statements mean: If “most” of Russian forces that were outside Ukraine’s borders last week have now entered the country, that means that a portion of them haven’t. I don’t think those troops are being held in reserve. I think they haven’t been moved into Ukraine because the forces that are already in there are having a tough time. The Times ran this picture on the front page this morning, taken by its crack war photographer Tyler Hicks.

This is why all of Russia’s forces are not yet in the country. That armored vehicle was probably hit with an American Javelin anti-tank missile fired by a Ukrainian soldier. There are numerous other photographs online of destroyed Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers. When you’re getting hit hard enough by Ukrainian resistance that destroyed Russian tanks are along the roads of Ukraine, you do one of two things: you throw everything you’ve got at them, or you hold some back so you don’t lose too much of your armor.

I think it’s a little bit of both. Russia has held back some of its armored and infantry forces because they don’t want them to end up like the armored personnel carrier in the photograph. But if they’ve got fully one-third of their total combat forces in Ukraine, they’re throwing a hell of a lot of their military power at them. But to what end? Here is a map published by the NY Times they pulled off the website of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington D.C. think tank:

The map is dated yesterday. We don’t know how accurate it is, or what sources the ISW used in drawing the map. But look not at what Russian forces are shown as occupying, but at what they aren’t. I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. Ukraine is a huge country, much bigger than Iraq, with a population that’s at least 20 million larger. But Russia is using the same number of troops to invade this vast nation that we used to invade Iraq in 2003. How’d that work out for us?

Of course the map doesn’t show the damage Russia is doing to Ukraine using its air force, but images being shown right now on MSNBC and CNN do not show devastating damage done to either Kyiv or Kharkiv or Kherson, where most of the fighting is going on. MSNBC this morning was showing footage of firefighters in Kyiv fighting fires in apartment buildings in the city that had been hit by Russian rockets. But there isn’t evidence of the kind of widespread destruction we saw in Syria when Russian and Syrian forces were bombing and shelling Aleppo.

It may be that Russia has a strategy that we’re not aware of not to do too much damage to the main cities of Ukraine because they have plans to take over the government and install a puppet president and parliament and rule from Moscow. In fact, according to many experts, that is exactly what Putin’s plans are.

The war in Ukraine is still in its early days. But one thing I think we can say is that Ukraine and its army and its people are not folding up the way Afghanistan did when the Taliban started to move on Kabul and its provincial capitals last year. Ukraine and its army and its people are standing and fighting. President Zelensky stood on the streets of Kyiv and addressed his people via the social media platform Telegram and told them that he is not leaving the capital and neither is his government.

There are signs that the invasion of Ukraine is going to be a longer and harder slog than Russia counted on, and they haven’t even gotten to the point of occupying the country yet. The rest of the world is isolating Putin and Russia. Some countries have banned flights by the Russian airline Aeroflot and I think this is going to spread. Putin thought he was going to have a quick and easy victory over Ukraine. He isn’t.