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俄烏戰爭現況：開欄文
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瀏覽5,045 ｜回應34｜推薦2 |
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烏克蘭的「春季攻勢」蛻化為「夏季攻勢」後，明顯地陷入膠著；沒有什麼值得寫封家書來匯報的進展。以下轉載兩篇「戰況評估」。我存檔備查；看官們請自行參考。
第一篇號稱是：分別從普丁和澤倫斯基兩位的角度，就(佔有)領土、心理、以及軍事三個層面所做的分析。
第二篇是布林肯國務卿的評估。我相信政治作用含量應該超標，可信度自然必須打個折扣。何況，自鮑爾之後，「美國國務卿會說謊」是討論政治的人不得不常記於心的教訓。
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澤倫斯基陣前換將 -- Andrew E. Kramer
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Zelensky Removes His Top General, in Major Shake-Up of Ukraine Military
Gen. Valery Zaluzhny led the effort that thwarted Russia’s initial assault on Kyiv. But his troops have struggled to make progress recently, and tensions have mounted with the civilian leadership.
Andrew E. Kramer, Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine, 02/08/24
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on Thursday he had removed his top general in the most significant leadership shake-up since Russia invaded Ukraine almost two years ago.
While praising Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, the commander who has led the nation’s war effort for two years, Mr. Zelensky said “urgent changes” were needed to ensure victory.
“Starting today, a new management team will take over the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” Mr. Zelensky said in an evening address to the nation, adding the he had met with General Zaluzhny and thanked him for his service.
General Zaluzhny will be replaced by Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, the head of Ukraine’s ground forces, the president said.
The upheaval comes at a precarious moment for Ukraine in the war, amid intensified Russian attacks, skepticism in the United States over providing aid to Kyiv and the tensions between Ukraine’s civilian and military leadership. It remained unclear whether General Zaluzhny, who is widely popular in Ukraine’s military and society, had resigned or been fired from the position.
Gen. Zaluzhny led Ukraine’s war effort from the initial, successful defense against Russia’s attack through the past year of bloody, inconclusive fighting along a front that has barely shifted but where Ukrainian soldiers once again find themselves outmanned and outgunned.
Rumors began circulating online in Ukraine last week that General Zaluzhny, 50, had been dismissed, prompting the president’s office to issue a denial. A Ukrainian member of Parliament said the two men met on Jan. 29 but the fate of the country’s top military commander was not decided.
Two Ukrainian officials said Mr. Zelensky’s government had been planning on dismissing the general all along, and only backed off briefly after the news was leaked and generated backlash from some Ukrainian political leaders and soldiers.
Friction between the president and general had simmered since early in the war in a rivalry mostly hidden from public view amid military successes. The schism deepened last fall, when General Zaluzhny published an essay declaring the fighting a deadlock, contradicting Mr. Zelensky’s continual, hopeful assertions of progress.
That breach followed a Ukrainian counteroffensive backed by billions of dollars in Western weapons donations that failed to achieve a breakthrough, despite costing thousands of Ukrainian casualties.
More recently, the two had publicly disagreed over a Ukrainian plan to draft as many as half a million men to replenish the army as a counter to Russia’s renewed ground attacks in the eastern Donbas region. Though Ukrainians still overwhelmingly support the fight against Russia’s full-scale invasion, the mobilization is expected to be unpopular. Many men who intended to volunteer already have.
Ukrainian forces have in recent weeks been on the defensive as Russia launches fierce assaults along the front line. Kyiv did receive a boost to its war effort last week when the European Union approved a $54 billion aid package that will help avert a near-term Ukrainian financial crisis.
But lawmakers in Washington this week have been unable to forge an agreement that would provide another $60 billion in aid to Ukraine, assistance that Ukrainian officials and military analysts deem as critical to Kyiv’s war effort. Republicans in the Senate blocked a measure on Wednesday that would have provided funding, leading Democrats to propose an alternate bill that was being debated Thursday.
As speculation about the military commander’s fate reached a fever pitch, General Zaluzhny maintained his usual low public profile. He paid tribute to a touchstone in Ukrainian military history, praising a small band of Ukrainian soldiers who repelled a much larger Russian invasion force marching on Kyiv, the capital, in 1918. The battle, he said, “became a symbol of heroism and self-sacrifice of the young generation in the fight against the aggressor.”
“We thank everyone who is currently defending the state, its independence and future,” he said. Throughout the past two weeks, he offered no public comments.
When the war with Russia began in 2014, General Zaluzhny, who was educated in a Soviet cadet school in Odesa but served most of his career in the Ukrainian army after independence, was appointed deputy commander of forces fighting along a violent section of frontline near the eastern cities of Debaltseve and Bakhmut, where he gained experience commanding troops in combat.
Mr. Zelensky appointed General Zaluzhny commander of the military’s general staff in 2021, before Russia’s invasion. Military analysts have credited the general with preparing the army in the weeks and days before the attack by flying jets to reserve airfields and moving troops from barracks that were subsequently bombed.
Mr. Zelensky’s frustration with his top general burst into the public eye in early November, after General Zaluzhny published his essay calling the war a “stalemate.” The Ukrainian president suggested the comment was helpful to the Russians, a striking rebuke.
Around the same time, the president’s office replaced one of General Zaluzhny’s deputies, the head of special operations forces, without providing any explanation. It also dismissed the head of Ukraine’s medical forces.
Criticism against General Zaluzhny reached a new level in late November, when Mariana Bezuhla, a lawmaker and former member of Mr. Zelensky’s political party, appeared to call for the commander’s departure, accusing him of failing to plan carefully for the next stage of the war.
“If the military leadership cannot provide any plan for 2024, and all their proposals for mobilization boil down to the fact that more people are needed,” Ms. Bezuhla wrote on Facebook, “then such leadership should leave.”
Opinion polls had consistently ranked the president and general as the most trusted figures in Ukraine during the war. Through the fall, Mr. Zelensky’s ratings had fallen while General Zaluzhny had retained consistently high levels of support.
General Zaluzhny’s high standing with the Ukrainian public led to speculation that he could be a prospective challenger to Mr. Zelensky in future elections, prompting some in the country to regard them as political rivals.
The military leader earned the nicknamed the “Iron General” for his decisive leadership of the army when Russian forces swept en masse across the border last year and toward Ukraine’s major cities. Under his command, Ukrainian troops stopped Russian forces at the door of the capital and drove them into retreat.
A few months later, Ukrainian troops crashed through Russian positions in a counteroffensive that retook thousands of square miles of northeastern territory, including dozens of towns.
But the general was also saddled with the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south this summer — a push that many in Ukraine and the West had hoped could split Russian troops and show that Ukraine was making steady gains in the war. The operation has failed to break through formidable Russian defensive lines, with Ukrainian troops advancing by just a few miles at a bloody cost for both sides.
In his November essay, General Zaluzhny said that unless Ukraine received more advanced weapons and technology, the country would be mired in a long war in which Russia would have the upper hand.
Constant Méheut , Marc Santora and Maria Varenikova contributed reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine.
Andrew E. Kramer is the Kyiv bureau chief for The Times, who has been covering the war in Ukraine since 2014. More about Andrew E. Kramer
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俄、烏戰爭最新戰況 ---- The Financial Times
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布林肯宣稱烏克蘭收復2022後50%的失土 – 路透社
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Ukraine has recaptured 50% of the territory that Russia seized, Blinken says
Kanishka Singh and Raphael Satter, 07/24/23
WASHINGTON, July 23 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that while Ukraine has recaptured half the territory that Russia initially seized in its invasion, Kyiv faced "a very hard fight" to win back more.
"It's already taken back about 50% of what was initially seized," Blinken said in an interview with CNN on Sunday.
"These are still relatively early days of the counteroffensive. It is tough," he said, adding: "It will not play out over the next week or two. We're still looking I think at several months."
Late last month, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was quoted as saying that the counteroffensive's progress against Russian forces was "slower than desired."
Ukraine has recaptured some villages in the south and territory around the ruined city of Bakhmut in the east, but has not had a major breakthrough against heavily defended Russian lines.
When asked if Ukraine will get U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets, Blinken said he believed it would. "And the important focus is on making sure that when they do, they’re properly trained, they’re able to maintain the planes, and use them in a smart way."
A coalition of 11 nations will start training Ukrainian pilots to fly the F-16 fighter jets in August in Denmark, and a training center will be set up in Romania.
Ukraine has long appealed for the Lockheed Martin-made (LMT.N) F-16s, but U.S. National Security adviser Jake Sullivan, said last month there was no final decision on Washington sending the aircraft. U.S. officials have estimated it would take at least 18 months for training and delivery of the planes.
The United States has given Ukraine more than $41 billion in military aid since Russia invaded in February 2022.
Reporting by Kanishka Singh and Raphael Satter in Washington; Editing by Cynthia Osterman
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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俄烏戰爭現況分析 -- Sophia Ankel
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Who is winning the war in Ukraine? Experts break down the territorial, psychological, and military gains made by Putin and Zelenskyy.
Sophia Ankel, the Business Insider, 07/24/23
* Ukraine's future continues to hang in the balance as Kyiv launches its long-awaited counteroffensive.
* Insider spoke to four experts about who they think is currently winning the war in Ukraine.
* While Ukraine has high morale and Western support, Russia is holding on to territory, they said.
It has been more than 16 months since Russia launched a full-scale attack on Ukraine — but who is winning the war?
The answer is certainly not straightforward, according to four experts who spoke to Insider.
It is also heavily dependent on the outcome of Ukraine's counteroffensive and the political situation in Russia, they added. Progress, so far, has been slower than expected, according to some Western officials, although Ukraine has insisted this is deliberate.
While it is still too soon to predict the result with any certainty, there are some areas of the war in which Russia or Ukraine are currently leading. We break them down here:
Territory
At the time of writing, neither Russia nor Ukraine have achieved the stated objectives they set out at the beginning of the war.
Just before Russia first launched its invasion of Kyiv in February last year, President Vladimir Putin outlined the objectives of what he called a "special military operation."
They were to "denazify" and "demilitarize" Kyiv, and to defend Donetsk and Luhansk, the two separatist regions in eastern Ukraine that Russia recognized as independent states.
But Russian officials have repeatedly shifted their goalposts, stating last summer that they also want to capture other regions beyond the Donbas, including Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. (Russia had occupied Kherson for many months, but the city was liberated by Ukraine in November last year).
Marina Miron, a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of War Studies at King's College London, told Insider that because of its ever-changing war aims, Russia is in the strongest position in terms of holding on to territory.
"From the Russian perspective, I think they're a little bit closer to achieving their objectives because of the territory currently under their control," she said.
"Even if they hold onto it and don't go any further, it will be very difficult for Ukraine to retake that land," she added.
At the time of writing, Russia occupies a significant portion of southeast Ukraine, according to an updated map published by the Institute for the Study of War.
On the other hand, one of Ukraine's main objectives — stated in President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's 10-step plan — is to liberate all of the occupied territories, including Crimea, which Russia invaded and annexed in 2014.
But two experts told Insider this appears to be unattainable.
"So territory-wise, I don't think Zelenskyy has budged on his objective of liberating all of the occupied territories," Miron told Insider. "And I don't actually think that that's ever going to be possible."
David Lewis, a Senior Associate Fellow at the think-tank Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told Insider that Zelenskyy's 10-step plan is "very narrow and "very difficult" to achieve.
"It's very hard to see how that could be achieved in the near term because it relies on a change of policy for Russia, and that essentially means at least a change of regime in Russia, which seems very unlikely at the moment," he said.
Morale
If you were to judge who is winning the war based on morale, Ukraine would emerge as the victor, according to all four experts.
Ukraine's morale has been high ever since Russia failed to take Kyiv in the first few days of the war, the University of Birmingham's Jaroslava Barbieri, an expert on Russia and post-Soviet states, told Insider.
Ukraine's high morale and stark resistance have forced Russia to make some "huge adjustments" to its military and political leadership, she added.
"There is this sense that Russia is in a weaker position because they appear to be panicking and need to keep adjusting their expectations vis-a-vis the Ukrainian army," Barbieri said.
Lewis told Insider that the Russians have made their war aims very unclear from the start, which has made it more difficult for them to win support for the war, and regime, at home.
"There is a rising number of people, including among the Russia nationalist community, who are starting to express serious doubts about the progress that is being made," Lewis said.
"Whether that means there will be any kind of threat to the regime, I think is a different question, but clearly there's quite widespread discontent with the way the war has been run at least," he added.
Morale has also been weakened by infighting among Russia's military leaders and Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the paramilitary group Wagner, which has assisted Putin's troops in Ukraine.
Their feud escalated on June 24 after Wagner mercenaries tried, and failed, to march to Moscow in an armed rebellion. The group aborted its march after 36 hours after a supposed deal was struck that would see Prigozhin go into supposed exile in Belarus.
But it left Putin's regime looking weak.
"Prigozhin's armed rebellion indicates a political crisis within Russia and shatters the myth of Russia's invincibility and overwhelming power," Hanna Liubakova, a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center, said, according to CNBC.
Military victory
It is difficult to analyze who is currently winning from a military standpoint because a lot of hinges on Ukraine's counteroffensive, all experts told Insider.
And even with the counteroffensive, it is still unclear how effective Ukraine's training and new Western equipment will be as well as how resilient Russian forces will be, Lewis told Insider.
"I think the two sides are relatively balanced," he said. "We haven't seen big shifts in the frontline for a long time now."
"Obviously, the Ukrainian counteroffensive is trying to change that, but Russia is quite dug in, and so even some localized victories for Ukraine don't necessarily mean a big strategic victory at the moment," he added.
Herbst told Insider that he believes that right now, the advantage lies with Ukraine.
"Their counteroffensive last year was successful. Moscow's offensive, which ended in Bakhmut a few weeks ago, was at best a pyrrhic victory," he said. "I mean, the Russians grabbed the city of Bakhmut, and that position is now under threat, but they took massive casualties."
The battle for Bakhmut has been the longest and deadliest in the war in Ukraine so far. Fighting between December and May claimed an estimated 20,000 Russian lives, Prigozhin said in June.
Negotiations
At this stage, it is difficult to pinpoint what a victory for Ukraine, or Russia, would even look like and all four experts told Insider they believe the war will drag on for many years.
Barbieri said negotiations also depend on how the counteroffensive pans out, saying that if Ukraine does not achieve significant victories, "there's a high danger that there will be more calls from Western governments to pressurize Ukraine to sit at the table of negotiations, based on the acknowledgment that this war cannot be won through military means."
If Ukraine does make some military advances and takes back some territory, "then the political equation in Ukraine might change a little bit," Lewis said.
"But I really can't see public opinion or the political leadership in Ukraine changing anytime soon, so I'm not very optimistic that we'll see negotiations anytime soon, let alone see successful negotiations that actually bring an end to the conflict," he added.
John E. Herbst, who was the US ambassador to Ukraine from 2003 to 2006, told Insider: "If Putin realized that there's really no way in the world to achieve his objective, then perhaps we could sit down and see what's possible to negotiate."
"Whether that will happen, remains to be seen," Herbst, who has personally dealt with Putin, added.
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