Military situation in Ukraine – “For Russia, war is better than peace now.”

There has been little news in recent days, but a street on the outskirts of the Ukrainian city of Odessa has been named after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. In Ukraine he is considered a hero because his government provided military, financial and intelligence assistance without much discussion in the war against Russia.

It was only on Tuesday that Johnson spoke again by remote control in front of the Ukrainian parliament and announced additional support such as radar systems for artillery and night vision equipment. This was important for the war because the Russian military seemed to be lacking in the latter. Experts from the British newspaper “The Telegraph” say that Russian troops do not want to attack at night due to lack of appropriate equipment.

In Kharkiv, the Ukrainians are said to have pushed the Russians 40 kilometers behind.

In that sense, night vision goggles are another tactical advantage for Ukrainian defenders. But they are already reporting victories in the east of the country, and many of the weapons most eagerly demanded from the West have not even come to the fore. According to the consensus report, the Ukrainians repulsed the Russian attackers 40 kilometers northeast of Kharkiv.

Russia, on the other hand, is neither small nor profitable in its entirety. According to Ukrainian civil servants, the Russian Armed Forces in the region are a Modley group. Today, Wednesday, came the report that the Russian army was withdrawing troops from Mariupol, although it is still fighting over the Azovstel Steelworks. (Also read the article on this topic “It was clear to us that the bunker would become a mass grave.”.)

There were repeated rocket attacks across the country at night, including in Kiev and Lviv in the west. President Volodymyr Zelensky described this in a televised speech as an act of desperation by Russian troops.

Recovering territories is harder than defending them

So does this really look bad to Moscow’s armed forces? Claudia Major is an expert on security and security policy at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin, and warns against optimism in the face of these success stories: “Preventing a Russian attack is different than recapturing these large areas. This is a completely different challenge. We can not conclude from the victories of the Ukrainians. “

This is especially true when the promised weapons do not arrive in Ukraine for a few weeks because they still need to be modified, ammunition purchased and Ukrainian soldiers trained.