Russian troops are consolidating their positions in key spots and resisting Ukrainian attempts to break their grip, while focusing fully on seizing Mariupol. 

 

As the war in Ukraine moves into its second month, fears grow of Mariupol’s fall to Russia.

KYIV, Ukraine — Russian forces redoubled attacks on strategic targets across Ukraine on Sunday, with fierce fighting reported around the capital, Kyiv, amid signs that the besieged city of Mariupol was close to falling.

As the conflict moved into its second month, Russian forces have largely failed in their first aim to take the largest cities and have narrowed immediate targets to the sieges of the southern port city of Mariupol and the strategically placed city of Chernihiv in the north.

Air raid sirens rang out in Kyiv during the day, but otherwise the city remained calm, lending some credence to the Russian Defense Ministry’s recent assertion that it was turning its focus away from Kyiv to concentrate on the eastern front.

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Fighting across the country showed Russian forces were working to consolidate their positions in key spots north of Kyiv and resisting Ukrainian attempts to break their grip there while focusing fully on seizing control of Mariupol.

There is danger here: An entrenched enemy is extraordinarily difficult to dislodge even in the victim country. The Confederates States of America avoided frontal assaults on fortified United States positions. Like in Ukraine there were few hostile entrenchments since  the Civil War was fought almost entirely on CSA soil. The CSA had fewer troops and less materiel; it would have been folly to ram there heads into a stone wall in their own territory. Ukraine's military must needs be very disciplined here to avoid this trap. It is just throwing lives away. Imo, Ukraine should do to the immobile, entrenched Russian troops around Kyiv what Russia is doing in Mariupol: siege them. They have Kyiv nearly encircled but they're not moving which means Ukraine has them surrounded. Prevent resupply and starve and thirst them.

...Ukrainian forces, despite their successes in ambushing and stalling Russian units around the country, have not been able to reverse Russian gains in any significant way. [said Jack Watling, research fellow and specialist in land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute in Britain.]

 Watling said he did not expect Ukrainian forces to hold Mariupol any longer than a few days more.

“They ran out of water, they ran out of food a while ago. Exhausted troops on sewage water — you cannot fight long on that.”

That describes the Russian troops around Kyiv, too!

After a month of intense fighting near Kyiv, some Russian military units were withdrawing to Belarus... "to rotate units that have suffered significant losses, strengthen existing groups, replenish food, fuel and ammunition and evacuate wounded and sick soldiers,” the military said in a statement.

Look, Ukraine: if you can't push the invader out, see above, and they are able to resupply-replenish, you're DOOMED. You can't attack these Ukraine-Belarus round-trip columns?  Clearly, you know Russia is doing, are you afraid to widen the war by attacking Belarus? I don't know, I'm asking sincerely.