Page 5 - UKRRptJan22

1.0 Executive summary
In December European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen accidently revealed the cost to Ukraine of the war in a speech.
“It is estimated that more than 20,000 civilians and 100,000 Ukrainian military personnel have died to date,” she said.
The comment drew a sharp rebuke from Kyiv which has made casualty figures a state secret. The EC quickly deleted the comments from video recordings of the address and reissued the press release of von der Leyen’s comments with the numbers expunged.
But Leyen’s comment tallies with other estimates and shows just how much Ukraine is paying for Russia’s invasion. Prior to the war in the eight years of fighting in Donbas against separatists, Ukraine had lost a total of some 14,000 people.
It is widely reported that “Ukraine is winning the war with Russia” but a more accurate description is that against all expectations it is not losing. The West has supplied Ukraine with powerful, but largely defensive weapons that have been enough to prevent Russia from rolling over the Ukrainian army. However, the West has balked at providing powerful offensive weapons, afraid that it would escalate the war and pull Nato forces into a direct confrontation with Russia.
After the spectacular successes of Ukraine’s September counteroffensive by December the frontline had stabilised as Russia’s new top General Sergey Surovikin withdrew from Kherson and redeployed his forces in a new multi-layered defensive positions. Some 180,000 of the 300,000 fresh troops mobilised in September have been deployed to firm up the Russian frontline and the remaining 120,000 are held in reserves in the rear allowing the Russian troops to rotate and recover from the fierce fighting.
At the time of writing the main military clash was around the town of Bakhmut where neither side is able to gain an advantage. Russia has made some incremental advances but increasingly the war is being compared to WWI trench warfare fought with infantry and artillery. Few smart weapons have been deployed in this fight as both sides are running low. In parallel Russia continues to bombard Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, including two very large barrages over the New Year’s Eve holidays in an effort to demoralise Ukrainian civilians. That strategy is not working.
Analysts are widely predicting a big Russian counteroffensive in the coming months once the ground freezes and Russia has had time to train and equip its new forces. Ukraine intelligence are also predicting that Russia will close its borders in January, declare martial law and launch a mass mobilisation. Clearly the war will continue much longer than anticipated.
From September the Kremlin began to signal that it was ready for peace talks, but those are unlikely as the positions of the two sides remain so far apart. The Kremlin is insisting that Kyiv concede the four regions annexed by
5 UKRAINE Country Report January 2023 www.intellinews.com