New Delhi: When United States President Joe Biden met Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Kyiv’s Mariinsky Palace Monday, he labelled the occasion as “evidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “plain wrong” about the fact that Ukraine would not receive significant support from a united NATO and the international community.
This occasion had taken place to mark the one-year anniversary since Russia invaded neighbour Ukraine. Both Zelenskyy and Biden stressed the gravity of the anniversary by reiterating the military support provided by the US and its allies to Ukraine.
Biden went into further detail over the “unprecedented” level of assistance his country has provided to Ukraine by mentioning the numbers of tanks and armoured vehicles as well as those of artillery ammunitions and air defence systems.
Zelenskyy had kicked off his part of this joint statement by expressing hope that the protracted war would reach its end this year with the complete “liberation” of Ukraine’s territory from Russia.
However, developments and realities surrounding the one-year anniversary of the war continue to complicate these publicly expressed sentiments. These include the UN General Assembly’s latest resolution condemning Russia and calling for an immediate end to the war — India was one of 32 countries to abstain from voting, while 141 countries voted in favour and seven voted against.
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Russia’s anniversary attack on Kherson
The buildup to the anniversary featured public anxiety on the Ukrainian side over the possibility of Russia commemorating the occasion with a new wave of attacks, and the early hours of 24 February featured reports of exactly that.
The key battlefront — the eastern Ukrainian city of Kherson, which had been recaptured by Ukraine from Russia last November — has not only continued to face regular attacks from Russia, but its main gas pipeline (for providing heating to residents) was also struck early Friday, according to Zelenskyy.
“Another Russian strike damaged the main pipeline that provided heating to about six hundred houses — more than forty thousand people! Repair work will continue without pause until the heating supply is restored,” Zelenskyy said in his video address.
Zelenskyy’s claim comes days after six people were reportedly killed in shelling at a Kherson bus stop, indicative of both the frequent onslaughts inflicted on the city and the seeming stalemate scenario damaging hopes of normalcy in the foreseeable future.
Moreover, the city’s (Kherson’s) population has been cut down by over 80 per cent due to evacuations and refugees internally displaced by the invasion — down from 2.79 lakh before 24 February 2022, to approximately 50,000 now, news agency Reuters cited local officials as saying. The region’s chief of Regional Military Administration, Oleksandr Prokudin, further told Reuters that his newly-set-up team aids the evacuation of hundred-odd civilians on a daily basis.
Resurgence of Zelenskyy’s political challenges
In the months prior to the invasion, Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s political career and tenure as Ukraine’s head of state were on thin ice. The former comedian and film and television star had built his campaigning on anti-corruption, populism and a stated objective to resolve the 2014 Eastern Ukraine conflict. But corruption scandals and other controversies (like conflicts within his inner circle) saw his approval rating sink to under 25 per cent just two years after he replaced Petro Poroshenko as President.
Zelenskyy’s conduct in the weeks following the start of Russia’s invasion meant a flipping of the popular narrative around his presidency as he re-established himself as a leader for Ukraine and its allies to rally around. However, as the war lurches on with no end in sight, many of these same challenges seem to have emerged once again for Zelenskyy, alongside the existing pressures caused by the war.
In late January, several international media outlets reported that Zelenskky sacked numerous senior officials across various national and regional government ministries, as well as law enforcement agencies, amid allegations of institutionalised corruption.
Zelenskyy’s public addresses at the time, however, were consistently nebulous on the details of any of the sackings. “Any internal issues that hinder the state are being removed and will continue to be removed. It is fair, it is necessary for our defense, and it helps our rapprochement with European institutions,” Zelenskyy said in his 24 January address, for instance.
Amid these corruption allegations, Zelenskyy had a day earlier also banned government officials at all levels from travelling abroad for any purpose other than work for advancement of Ukrainian causes.
“If they want to rest now, they will rest outside the civil service. Officials will no longer be able to travel abroad for vacation or for any other non-governmental purpose…only a real working trip can be the reason for border crossing,” Zelenskyy had said in his 23 January address.
Moreover, Zelenskyy has at times fallen foul of key NATO allies owing to his conduct when seeking additional military aid in Ukraine’s defensive war efforts.
In October 2022, NBC News had reported that Biden “lost his temper” with Zelenskyy during a phone call earlier that June. “Biden had barely finished telling Zelenskyy he’d just greenlighted another $1 billion in U.S. military assistance for Ukraine when Zelenskyy started listing all the additional help he needed and wasn’t getting,” the report said, adding that Biden apparently implied that Zelenskyy should show “more gratitude” to the US.
More recently, the Wall Street Journal Wednesday cited two unnamed German officials who were concerned that Zelenskyy is trying to “drag” the US and other Western allies deeper and deeper into the war. Their reasons range from Zelenskyy “seeking offensive weapons systems that could be used on Russian territory” to his seemingly unsubstantiated “claims that Russia had fired missiles into or over NATO territory”.
Vuhledar leaves doubts on Russia’s spring offensive
Meanwhile, on the Russian side, the past few weeks building up to the anniversary have been dominated by talk of Russia’s spring offensive, with NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg stating on 13 February that the offensive had commenced with heavy firing on the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
“What Russia does now — President Putin does now — is to send thousands and thousands more troops, accepting a very high rate of casualty…We see no sign whatsoever that President Putin is preparing for peace,” The Independent had quoted Stoltenberg as saying at the time.
Despite Stoltenberg’s warnings, several reports from international media outlets have cast doubts over the predicted effectiveness of the spring offensive in obtaining any significant territorial gains over Ukraine, due to an apparently disastrous attempt by Russia at capturing a frontline town in Donetsk Oblast known as Vuhledar.
Meaning “gift of coal” in Ukrainian, Vuhledar was historically a mining town with a population of 15,000, but has become one of many “wasteland” urban areas due to the invasion, according to a BBC explainer.
“The town sits on high ground in the heavily contested Donbas region in the east. From here Ukraine can target rail lines used by the Russians for resupply. It needs to hold this bastion. Moscow needs to take it. Some of the fiercest fighting of recent months has been here,” the BBC added.
Earlier this month, Russia had mounted a series of renewed assaults on the town and despite doing some damage to the Ukrainians, had experienced significant losses on their own, such as losing a reported three dozen armoured vehicles and tanks.
Citing footage shared by Russian bloggers, the US-based think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) on 10 February blamed some of these losses on “highly dysfunctional tactics” by Russian forces made up of “poorly trained mobilised personnel”. Two weeks later, the purported spring offensive appears to have continued albeit on a smaller scale, with the ISW tracking Russian “ground assaults” particularly in Donetsk Oblast.
The think tank further claimed Thursday that Russia is leading a “false flag” operation by accusing Ukraine of preparing an “armed provocation” on Transnistria, the pro-Russia breakaway state located in Moldova near its border with Ukraine. Moldova has since contradicted Russia’s claims, and issued warnings that they are Russian “psy-op” tactics common in war.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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