Institute for the Study of War
understandingwar.org
Five hundred days ago Russia launched an unprovoked war of conquest against Ukraine. The Russian military intended to take Kyiv within three days but failed to accomplish any of its intended objectives in Ukraine. Determined and skillful Ukrainian

I rarely read this sort of thing. It’s honestly just very dense and I can’t motivate myself to read it every day. That said, with the new cluster bombs getting shipped to Ukraine and some Western pundits accusing the Counteroffensive of stagnation I kind of just wanted to know, “What the actual F is going on in Ukraine right now?”

So my partial TLDR is:

  • It’s very early in the counteroffensive to say who is “winning”.
  • The source publication believes that the Ukrainian Army is focusing on inflicting disproportionate casualties onto the Russian Military in lieu of focusing on taking back land as quickly as possible.
  • There’s a lot of uncertainty inside the Russian political sphere and the upper echelons of the Ministry of Defense.