We are talking about peace but what is the situation on the front in Ukraine?

With the yardstick of a Russian-American diplomatic rapprochement on the conflict resolution front in Ukraine, future negotiations between kyiv and Moscow are on everyone’s lips of Western states. However, as the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz recalled, the war continues and the horizon of a peace seems very nebulous.

On the front, “the fighting continues and will continue to a ceasefire and it may last a long time,” confirms Michel Goya, former colonel of naval troops, historian, strategist and author of The bear and the fox – Interviews on the war in Ukraine (Perrin).

Where are we fighting on the Ukrainian front?

After months of minor but real advances, the Russian army “knows a certain slowdown on the ground, which almost marks a blockage on the front,” notes Michel Goya. “Russia is always attacking, but less than before, pressure is weakening,” he continues, observing “a tendency to freeze”.

Four zones concentrate the main efforts of Moscow: the first, priority is the Russian region of Koursk where the Ukrainian army made a surprise breakthrough last August, managing to occupy an enemy territory. Russia “intends to chase the Ukrainian forces but it tramples in front of the contracts of its opponents”, underlines the former colonel of the naval troops.

The second front is the city of Pokrovsk, in Donbass. There too, the Russian army faces Ukrainian contracts. The army of kyiv also announced that it had taken over the mining locality of Pichtchané around the key city. Still in Donbass, the city of Totretsk was claimed “after months of fighting” while in the Louhansk region, the Russian army “nibbles but does not move much,” notes Michel Goya. In other words, Moscow is satisfied with meager victories and “tiny” territorial advances, adds the specialist.

What does this trampling of operations in the field translate?

The first and more obvious explanation is winter. The cold and the freezing of the soil complicate military advances. The Russian army could thus take advantage of this period to “an operational break while reconstituting forces after having accused heavy losses”, analyzes Michel Goya. This is his first hypothesis.

The second would be more structural translating “a balance of power which is being balanced between Ukraine and Russia”, he supposes. When, in early 2024, the great strength of the Russian army was its firepower and its ability to launch planing bombs, particularly destructive, by the hundred, this is no longer the case today. At the time, American aid was also frozen by a blockage at the level of the congress, deeply weakening the Ukrainian capacities on the ground. “We were ten against one on the Russian side, today, it’s two against one,” sums up Michel Goya.

Thanks to the delivery of F-16 and Mirage 2000-5, defense planes, and the missiles provided by Westerners, Ukraine protects its sky better and can carry out strike campaigns on “the second step”, C ‘ That is to say “logistical deposits, command posts and even more in depth by targeting refineries”, explains Michel Goya.

Is the balance of power changing in favor of kyiv?

The front freezes, the Russians trample. However, we do not yet observe a real inversely of the balance of power in the field. “Ukraine still has a lot of problems and in particular lacking in infantrymen but it tries to reorganize itself to gain strength,” analyzes Michel Goya.

Our file on the war in Ukraine

On the Russian side, “there is the exhaustion of stocks and the hypothesis that they have more and more difficult to compensate for their losses” with the hope that their provisions arrive dry “faster than the Ukrainians”. In this case, “we could attend the end of the balance of power at the end of 2025, added the historian.

But these elements are those that can be observed. To be able to really measure the powers on both sides of the front line, it lacks parameters as important as the morale of the population and troops as well as economic health in Russia, as in Ukraine.