Wall Street Journal: Winter’s Onset Will Change Russia’s War in Ukraine
KYIV, Ukraine—Winter is approaching on the Ukrainian steppe. As temperatures fall, waves of chilling rain follow, dissolving roads and fields, turning them to mud that mires men and equipment. Then comes the deep freeze and snow, hardening the ground but making it tougher to fight.
Bad weather will affect both sides and is likely to slow the tempo of fighting, said Ben Barry, a land-warfare specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “But if either side wants to fight, it can keep fighting.”
Western officials said Ukraine will likely be better equipped than the Russians, thanks to Western supplies, and its soldiers are better motivated. But any Ukrainian advances are likely to be slowed by winter conditions. Russia, which Western analysts say has little chance of advancing, has the easier job of defending territory.
On the battlefield, the commander of a Ukrainian unit in the country’s east said winter will make it much harder for his soldiers to conceal themselves.
The war in eastern Ukraine is in large part an artillery war. Ukrainian troops fire then move quickly to another location, knowing that Russia is likely to strike at the location the shells were fired from. On snow, the tracks of the Ukrainians’ vehicles will be visible to Russian drones and can be used to pinpoint the place the soldiers moved to. If the soldiers light a fire to warm themselves, they will be even more visible and the lack of leaves on trees will expose them further.
“We can’t fight the way we used to in the spring and summer. It’s much harder to hide,” Mr. Bielieskov said. “New strategies and methods will be devised, and we will fight in new realities.”
The toughest conditions will be in November and early December—part of a period the Russians call “rasputitsa,” the time when the roads dissolve—after which the mud will turn into hard ground and it will be easier to move around until the next rasputitsa as winter gives way to spring.
“Whoever prepares better and is able to use this situation to his advantage will be able to move forward,” Mr. Bielieskov said.
Pro-Kremlin bloggers have launched crowdfunding campaigns to gather donations toward warm clothes for Russian men mobilized for the war in Ukraine.
“Our guys shouldn’t be in need of such things, and should understand that the whole Motherland is behind them,” blogger Yury Podolyaka said in a video address on Sept. 29. Two weeks later, Mr. Podolyaka said he had gathered 400 million rubles ($6.5 million).
“Our warehouses turned out to be empty,” he said.
One military blogger who goes by the nickname Kotenok Z and often reflects the Kremlin line said Russia’s military operations will soon be significantly hampered by the weather.
“Soon we’ll enter a period of rasputitsa, frost, and a transition from the fall to winter period of resistance. That means the front line will stabilize in most places, and trench warfare will continue” he said this month.
“We’re entering a period of attenuation. Winter is coming. The days are shorter, there are rains and clouds,” Aleksandr Khodakovsky, a commander of Russian proxy forces in eastern Ukraine, told the news outlet Komsomolskaya Pravda on Oct. 14. “The enemy understands this too and it seems it’s trying to break through in places in these last warm and dry days.”
