The past week has seen ever stronger indications that Russia has recognised it cannot achieve its aim of conquering Ukraine by military force. Suggestions tied to peace talks in Ukraine that Russia was pulling back from its attempt to encircle Kyiv tie in with the earlier declaration that its war aims were limited to conquering the eastern part of the country. And even before that, both Russia and Ukraine had stated that peace negotiations were moving into a phase of substantive discussions instead of Russia simply presenting ultimatums.
Russia’s claim that it is scaling back operations around Kyiv and focusing its offensive on the east of the country is one of those rare occasions when a statement from the Russian Ministry of Defence actually aligns recognisably with the truth. The reality gap arises not in what Russia is doing, but why it is claiming it is doing it. Russia has presented this withdrawal of units from around Kyiv as some kind of concession – to “boost mutual trust” around the peace talks. But it was already clear that its offensive there had stalled, and in some case been reversed, by dogged Ukrainian resistance. The pivot to operations in the east and the rotation out of battered Russian units from Ukraine’s northern flank is a recognition by Moscow that – as many military analysts had predicted before the current conflict – it simply does not have the deployable forces it would need to conquer all of Ukraine along multiple axes of advance.
