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By Tom Squitieri
Red Snow News
WASHINGTON — It took about a month for stalement to be achieved on the Western Front during World War One. We may look back at today and see as four weeks of the Russian-Ukraine war has ended, a similar stalemate has ensued.
Then the new advances in technology — the machine gun and artillery — led to the stalemate. Today in Ukraine, the new technology includes, Javelins, Stingers, and Switchblade drones — all the while the technology of the Great War — such as artillery – continued to pound in tune with its disruptive history.
And there are trenches once again.
“Stalemate will likely be very violent and bloody, especially if it protracts,” the Institute for the Study of War said Saturday. “Stalemate is not armistice or ceasefire. It is a condition in war in which each side conducts offensive operations that do not fundamentally alter the situation. Those operations can be very damaging and cause enormous casualties.”
A senior defense official, speaking late Friday, gave an assessment that sounded similar to the one given on previous days: “The Russians remain largely stalled across the country.” New airstrikes in the western part of Ukraine were the only new variable.
Just as in World War One, wars, once begun, rarely follow a script.
Military doctrine would call for the Russians to end this campaign, reshuffle with an operational pause, develop a new campaign plan, build up resources and back supplies, and launch it when the resources and other conditions are ready.
That remains to be seen. Russian logistics have been grotesque at best and on the ground reshuffling has failed, and includes the loss of at least four generals in four weeks of war.
“(The Russian military) is instead continuing to feed small collections of reinforcements into an ongoing effort to keep the current campaign alive. We assess that that effort will fail,” the Institute said Saturday.
The stalemate will likely mean Russian forces will continue to increase the use of long-range fire to bombard Ukrainian cities, reducing them to rubble, and killing civilians. Ukrainian forces will check and slice Russian attackers when they can and conduct counter-attacks of their own.
The short-term outlook: Russia would count on breaking Ukraine’s ability to fight by draining its resources and hoping Ukrainian morale plummets by demonstrating Kyiv’s inability to expel Russian forces or stop their attacks. “Continued and expanded Western support to Ukraine will be vital to seeing Ukraine through that new period,” the Institute said.