Two months into the war in Ukraine, Russia is still struggling to achieve its goals. Its attempts to take or even surround Kyiv and Odessa have failed. Now it is refocusing its efforts on encircling Ukrainian forces around the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. But mounting attrition is threatening its ability to achieve even this secondary aim. As the war enters its next stage, who has the upper hand?

One of the surprising aspects of this war has been the extent to which Russia’s strategy exacerbated the weaknesses of its armed forces while failing to maximise their strengths. Russia chose to pursue too many objectives from too many axes of advance. That worsened its logistics problems and meant that Russia could not mass sufficient combat power to achieve many of its initial objectives, including the encirclement of the Ukrainian capital. Had Russia chosen to focus its efforts on Ukrainian forces in Donbas at the outset, the war could well have gone differently.

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