Ukraine scores sudden breakthrough that should energize Western support

An elderly Ukrainian village woman comes to her garden gate and freezes as she watches a soldier approach. Then she puts her hand to her mouth, and begins to sob. As the soldier embraces her, she hugs him back, intensely.

He is Ukrainian, part of a force that has liberated numerous villages and the key city of Izium from Russian occupation over the weekend. The meeting between the soldier and the villager was captured in a video that went viral during the lightning counteroffensive in northeast Ukraine that drove Russian forces back from much of the Kharkiv region. The Ukrainian military plans were kept so secret, and the advance was so speedy, that it stunned most foreign observers (myself included) and most Ukrainians I’ve spoken to since then.

This is the biggest military victory for Ukraine since its forces drove the Russians back from Kyiv in March, when it blocked Vladimir Putin’s plans to kill or capture President Volodymyr Zelensky. “The strategic initiative is ours for the first time since the war started,” former parliament member Yehor Soboliev, who now serves in the army, told me via WhatsApp on Sunday morning.

» READ MORE: Ukrainian volunteers with a Philly connection start rebuilding without waiting for the war to end.

The counteroffensive has propelled the war into a new phase in which Ukraine is regaining territory, instead of being stuck in a drawn-out war of attrition. This blitz happened even though Ukraine is still short of all the vital long-range weapons it needs to counter the rockets and missiles that destroy its cities and soldiers.

“The stalemate phase of the war is over,” said retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of the United States Army Europe, speaking by phone from Germany. “We are in a different phase of the conflict now.”

So how did this turnaround happen, and what does it mean for the future of the war?

Two main factors appear to be key: First, Russian occupation forces collapsed across the front lines in the northeast. Hodges told me he was sure that Russian foot soldiers “would crack because they are exhausted, and are not being resupplied, and their officers are being killed. They don’t have cohesion in the ranks or the will to fight.”

Russian logistics supplies have been disrupted by the fairly recent delivery of advanced mobile rocket launchers from the United States, Britain, and Germany. (While very grateful for the weapons, many Ukrainians believe if they had had them sooner, the war might be almost over by now.)

So the Russian lines broke, while their troops fled or were captured, leaving behind enormous amounts of equipment, fuel, and ammunition. (This matches the stories I heard on my recent trip to Ukraine, where Ukrainian troops poured scorn on Russia’s unprofessional soldiers, who, they told me, often leave their dead behind.)

Even so, the scope of the rout was a shocker. “I am surprised at how the Russia army failed and is running away,” Odesa’s war-savvy member of parliament, Oleksiy Goncharenko, told me via WhatsApp on Sunday.

But equally key was the strategy and professionalism of Ukrainian military planners (helped greatly by shared U.S. intelligence information). They duped Russian generals into sending tens of thousands of their best forces south by heavily publicizing a planned counteroffensive to retake the strategic port of Kherson. That left northern Russian defense lines undermanned.

Meantime, the Ukrainians maintained operational silence about their plans for the north, an astonishing feat while moving masses of equipment without detection. Their blitz appeared to take Russian forces completely by surprise.

Ukrainians have no illusions that the war is over. Putin still seems ready to absorb limitless military casualties and still has huge supplies of artillery and ammunition. Putin’s forces still occupy roughly one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, along with most of its coastline. Russia continues to pound Ukrainian cities and troops with rockets and missiles that have caused tens of thousands of casualties. Putin will look for more ways to inflict pain.

“But such successes [as this past weekend] show us the way,” said Soboliev, whose WhatsApp line kept dying because he was speaking from a forest while serving with his unit.

Ukrainian forces, he says, have demonstrated that they can carry out fast, well-planned operations during which innovative junior officers think on their feet. The Russian military still suffers from a top-down system where lower cadres are afraid to act without orders. This cumbersome structure doomed Russian efforts to take Kyiv — and helped Ukrainians achieve their weekend triumph.

» READ MORE: How the great city of Kharkiv stands up to the Russians, and how you can help.

In this new phase of the war, Hodges says it is critical for the West to stick together in aiding Kyiv. Western leaders, he adds, should speed up delivery of the long-range precision systems that Ukraine needs to target Russian logistics and destroy their artillery. “This is what enables Ukraine to do damage behind the lines,” he said. “We could double what we have sent, if you look at how successful [these weapons] have been already.”

If the Ukrainians get the weapons they need from America and Europe, and get them fast, Hodges believes “the Russians could be pushed back to the Feb. 23 lines by the end of the year.”

(Moscow occupied Crimea and part of the Donbas region after a 2014 invasion, before Putin’s second invasion started on Feb. 24.)

But, Hodges added, if Ukraine retakes more of its land in the south, “Crimea is feasible by early next year, although it could go faster. In warfare there is a psychological aspect. There is panic as a cascading effect sets in.”

This may be vastly over-optimistic, but the drama of the past weekend indicates it is not beyond imagination. The Biden team and its European allies should do their best to help make Hodges’ prediction come true.