During World War II, many commanders discovered that a simple station could completely alter the rhythm of a military campaign: on the eastern front, the arrival of spring turned roads and fields into seas of mud capable of immobilizing tanks for weeks, while summer suddenly reopened enormous corridors of advance for both armies.
The war that no longer advances as before. I counted the weekend the new york times that for months, the Kremlin has tried to sell the idea that a Russian victory in Ukraine is only a matter of time, pressuring even Trump and Western negotiators with the argument that kyiv Donbas will end up losing inevitably. However, on the ground the reality is much less spectacular.
Russia has been advancing at a snail’s pace practically all year, to the point that, maintaining the current pace, it would take decades to completely occupy the region whose surrender it demands to negotiate peace. The problem is that this apparent paralysis can be misleading. Both Ukrainian commanders and military analysts carry weeks warning that summer is slowly changing the conditions of the front: the dry terrain allows the use of motorcycles and light vehicles to recover, the vegetation offers coverage against drones and Russian infiltrations are beginning to gain effectiveness after extremely difficult months for Moscow.
The front is a drone war. The great transformation of this phase of the war is that Russia can no longer advance as in previous conflicts. Massive assaults with armored columns have become too vulnerable in a field of battle saturated by dronessensors and constant surveillance. Every movement is exposed from the air and any concentration of troops can be quickly destroyed. That has forced Moscow to completely modify its tactics.
Now small groups of soldiers predominate slowly infiltratingon foot or on motorcycles, trying to open gradual gaps within a huge “gray zone” where control of the territory is no longer clear for either side. In other words, the conflict is looking less and less like a conventional war and more like a technological competition permanent between drones, electronic warfare and improvised survival systems.
Russia makes little progress, but continues to push. The big problem for Ukraine is that even these minimal advances remain generating constant wear. Russia has suffered huge human lossesrecruitment problems and technological difficulties, including communications restrictions and obstacles to coordinate your drones. However, the Kremlin appears to have accepted that a slow and costly war remains preferable to launching large, risky offensives that could end in failure.
In places like Pokrovsk or Chasiv YarMoscow has been fighting for years without managing to definitively break the front, but it has not retreated decisively either. Their troops infiltrate little by little, occupy temporary positions and turn huge areas of Donbas into spaces impossible for either army to completely control. The sensation is that of heavy, slow and damaged machinery that still continues advancing meter by meter.
Summer is coming. That’s where it comes into play the seasonal factor which worries kyiv so much. During the mud and cold, Ukrainian drones have been especially effective at detecting Russian movements over open terrain. But the arrival of summer changes part of those dynamics. Trees and vegetation make aerial surveillance difficult, dry routes allow faster movement, and small Russian units find more opportunities to infiltrate without being immediately detected.
In fact, Ukrainian officials recognize that Russian operations are already showing signs of improvement and that offensive activity is intensifying along the front. This is not yet a large mechanized offensive like those at the beginning of the war, but something much more disturbing: a constant pressure and diffuse design designed to exploit any weakness accumulated after years of wear.
Between wear and tear and negotiation. All this greatly complicates international negotiations. Putin needs keep the image of a Russia advancing towards victory to pressure Ukraine and convince the United States that time is on the Kremlin’s side. But the real data show an exhausted army, enormous human losses and a front that barely moves.
At the same time, Ukraine also does not have a comfortable situation: suffers from personnel shortages, desertions and difficulties in sustaining such a technological and costly war indefinitely. That’s why summer worries so much on both sides. Not because it will produce an immediate definitive rupture, but because it may slightly alter the balance of a war that has been trapped for months in a kind of lethal stalemate. And in a conflict where every kilometer costs thousands of lives, even small changes in the terrain, vegetation or climate They can end up having enormous strategic consequences.
Image | Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, 7th Army Training Command
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