Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

As I said earlier this month, Putin is profiting tremendously off of Russian sanctions. Oil, food, and commodity prices are up sharply because of the war, and as long as Putin can keep fighting it, American energy companies and OPEC will go along with him with oil at $120 barrel. Oil has dropped to $105 or so in the last week, but there's no reason to think it won't be at this price for a long time.

I also said that from a military standpoint that if nothing changed, Russia would take the Donbass this summer. Having said that, the key things here that have changed is that the US and EU have gotten more and better equipment into the theater, and that the concept of  "as long as Putin can continue the war" means there's evidence now that this will not be "forever".

The Russian military will soon exhaust its combat capabilities and be forced to bring its offensive in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region to a grinding halt, according to Western intelligence predictions and military experts.

“There will come a time when the tiny advances Russia is making become unsustainable in light of the costs and they will need a significant pause to regenerate capability,” said a senior Western official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.

The assessments come despite continued Russian advances against outgunned Ukrainian forces, including the capture on Friday of the town of Severodonetsk, the biggest urban center taken by Russia in the east since launching the latest Donbas offensive nearly three months ago.

The Russians are now closing in on the adjacent city of Lysychansk, on the opposite bank of the Donetsk river. The town’s capture would give Russia almost complete control of the Luhansk oblast, one of two oblasts, or provinces, comprising the Donbas region. Control of Donbas is the publicly declared goal of Russia’s “special military operation,” although the multi-front invasion launched in February made it clear that Moscow’s original ambitions were far broader.

Capturing Lysychansk presents a challenge because it stands on higher ground and the Donetsk river impedes Russian advances from the east. So instead, Russian troops appear intent on encircling the city from the west, pressing southeast from Izyum and northeast from Popasna on the western bank of the river.

According to chatter on Russian Telegram channels and Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Anna Malyar, the Russian military is under pressure to bring all of Luhansk under Russian control by Sunday, perhaps explaining the heightened momentum of the past week.

But the “creeping” advances are dependent almost entirely on the expenditure of vast quantities of ammunition, notably artillery shells, which are being fired at a rate almost no military in the world would be able to sustain for long, said the senior Western official.

Russia, meanwhile, is continuing to suffer heavy losses of equipment and men, calling into question how much longer it can remain on the attack, the official said.

Officials refuse to offer a time frame, but British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, citing intelligence assessments, indicated this week that Russia would be able to continue to fight on only for the “next few months.” After that, “Russia could come to a point when there is no longer any forward momentum because it has exhausted its resources,” he told the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung in an interview.

 

So the good news is Russia's attacks have been scaled down dramatically from "taking multiple former Soviet countries back" to "Taking Ukraine" to "Taking Kyiv' to "taking the Donbass" to now, "still trying to take the Donbass while using everything we have left".

 

Putin is definitely scoring damage on the US and EU economically, but militarily he has accomplished zero of his "special operation goals" so far. Ukraine is holding the line.

Things are looking much less dicey than just two weeks ago.