A year of military aggression – five moments that defined Vladimir Putin’s disastrous year during his war in Ukraine

Russian troops reportedly brought parade uniforms at the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine – expecting victory within days.

But a year later, thanks to Ukraine’s resilience, Western aid and Russian failure on the battlefield, no such uniform was worn, the Telegrafi reports.

In fact, Putin’s army encountered several obstacles during this war, some of which we present below:

Failure to take Kiev

Russian troops advanced quickly when they launched their aggression on February 24, 2022, including in the south around Kherson and in the northeast near Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city.

Fears grew that the capital would soon be captured and that Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky might be caught or killed, leading to a quick surrender by Ukraine.

“I think if you look back in the first 30 days, if the Russians could have tactically taken Kiev and killed or caught Zelensky, we could have been in a very, very different position,” Dale Buckner told Newsweek reports the international security firm Global Guardian, Telegrafi reports.

“I think people vastly underestimate his significance. I think they’ve underestimated his symbolic power, his themes and messages and the importance of being a link to the West, to NATO and to the U.S.”

As Russian troops formed a 40-mile (about 65 kilometer) column along highways north of Kiev, Ukrainian National Guard troops took defensive positions on bridges leading into the city, anti-tank barricades were erected, and residents gathered, armed with Molotov cocktails . . .

Russian troops have reached the towns of Irpin and Bucha northwest of the capital, where investigators have gathered extensive evidence of atrocities against civilians that Moscow denies.

Fighting also took place around Browary, east of Kiev.

But the convoy stalled and the capital never fell as Ukrainian forces cut Russian supply lines, prevented troop planes from landing and destroyed Russian armored vehicles.

It was a resistance to Putin’s aggression that continues to this day.

The Sinking of the Moskva

The price tag for the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet was about $750 million, but its sinking on April 14 undoubtedly dealt an even more costly blow to Russia’s reputation as a naval power.

The pride of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet was found underwater, and Ukraine said it hit the ship with Neptune missiles.

Moscow denied this and said the munitions on board exploded in an unexplained fire and the ship sank while being towed into port.

Russia said one sailor was killed and 27 were missing, but unconfirmed reports point to hundreds of victims and relatives searching for answers about what happened.

What was clear was footage of the ship billowing black smoke and the resulting humiliation for Putin.

Explosion on the Kerch bridge

The explosion at the bridge over the Kerch Strait, symbolizing Russia’s occupation of the Crimean Peninsula, which it occupied in 2014, was surprising.

It followed a summer of attacks on Russian sites in Crimea, including the Saki military base on Aug. 9.

On Oct. 8, the day after Putin’s 70th birthday and days after he called for the annexation of four regions of Ukraine, part of the bridge was in flames with dramatic images of smoke billowing from a train and collapsed sections of road.

No one took responsibility, and Zelensky said Kiev “did not order” the explosion. Russia’s FSB security service said eight people, including five Russians, had been detained in connection with the blast, the Telegrafi reports.

The strikes on the Kerch bridgehead and Moskva were significant even if they did not provide an immediate strategic advantage.

Heavy losses

Kiev’s estimates of Russian casualties indicate that Putin has lost more troops this month than at any time during the invasion. In fact, Kiev has claimed more than 1,000 Russian casualties in a single day three times this month.

Putin has also lost many senior commanders, with Japanese intelligence estimating that 20 Russian generals have been killed in the war – twice as many as previously reported.

The Russian president has reshuffled his leadership four times so far during the war, appointing Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov in January to replace Sergey Surovikin, who had only been in command since October.

And retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Robert Murrett, deputy director of the Syracuse University Institute for Security Policy and Law, said the biggest obstacle Putin faces at the strategic level is “the enormous losses the Russians have suffered.”

He told Newsweek that Russian forces have been affected by “the weakness they have shown in their command structure and the lack of training and effectiveness of their ground forces in particular, but to some extent their air and naval forces as well.”

Russia’s shaky performance in the war also brings relief to the Kiev forces.

“The leadership within the Ukrainian army and also at the civilian level with the defense minister and their president is much more effective,” he assessed.

Withdrawal from Kherson

As Russian forces faced a Ukrainian counteroffensive that had gained momentum, Putin’s forces withdrew from the only regional capital they had taken since the aggression began.

Russia’s commander-in-chief in Ukraine at the time, General Sergei Surovikin, said in November that further resupply of the city was no longer possible and that the withdrawal meant the withdrawal of his forces from the west bank of the Dnieper River.

This showed the difficulty Putin’s forces had in holding the territory they had seized at the beginning of the war.

“If they had been able to provide themselves with food, water, ammunition, fuel, and most importantly bring back the wounded and dead and replace them efficiently with fresh troops, they could hold that ground,” Buckner says.

“Because they didn’t win, then they lost all the parts they won in the first three months.”

As the war entered its winter months, Putin’s hopes for an easy victory had long since vanished, given the shortcomings of his own forces, Ukrainian resilience and his own arrogance.

Konstantin Sonin, a Russian-born political economist at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, said Putin launched the war on the basis of a “major miscalculation” and that setbacks over the past 12 months showed he was not adjusted to reality further the ground.

Putin acted after “a great underestimation of the stability of the Ukrainian army, the Ukrainian political system, the Ukrainian nation, and Western reaction,” Sonin said, among other things./Telegrafi/