As the war in Ukraine soon enters its second year, Ukrainian troops will find it much more challenging to reclaim territory from Russian forces who are focused on defending their remaining land gains rather than making a deeper push into the country, American officials say.
Over the course of the first 10 months of the war, the Ukrainian military has — with significant American support — outmaneuvered an incompetent Russian military, fought it to a standstill and then retaken hundreds of square miles and the only regional capital that Russia had captured.
Despite relentless Russian attacks on civilian power supplies, Ukraine has still kept up the momentum on the front lines since September. But the tide of the war is likely to change in the coming months, as Russia improves its defenses and pushes more soldiers to the front lines, making it more difficult for Ukraine to retake the huge swaths of territory it lost this year, according to U.S. government assessments.
All of these factors make the most likely scenario going into the second year of the war a stalemate in which neither army can take much land despite intense fighting.
As Ukraine Prepares for a Second Year at War, the Prospect of a Stalemate Looms https://t.co/VfOBYpVi7f
— Jose Manuel Paredes (@JMParedesC) December 22, 2022