The frontline may be frozen but the battle rages on in Ukraine. In Bakhmut, a town which Moscow views as key to gain control of the entire Eastern Donbas area, the past weeks have seen military stock shrink fast, and hundreds of troops killed and injured a day, according to U.S analysts.
All, so far, for a stalemate.
This is Ukraine, almost a year on after Russia invaded it on 24 February 2022. Many seasoned “Russia watchers” failed to foresee the conflict, believing Vladimir Putin was merely parking his troops on its border with Ukraine to deter from EU and NATO expansion in its sphere of influence, in a show of “heavy metal diplomacy”. Given the failure to predict the war, is there any chance we could do a better a job of assessing how it might develop?
