According to retired Army major general Mike Repass, the Russian invasion in Ukraine has peaked:
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The Russians culminated about 5 days ago. In the military vernacular, "culmination" means you no longer have sufficient combat power to continue to advance in the offense. I believe that the Ukrainians sensed that and started conducting local counterattacks, particularly to the north and west of Kyiv. They also started counterattacks in the east recently. The Ukrainians went on the counteroffensive, but in a limited way. They took the town of Irpin to the west of Kyiv and some other towns, but the news coverage of the counterattacks has, I think, surpassed the actual effects of those operations on the ground.
I'm concerned that it's not a large counterattack because perhaps the Ukrainians don't have enough forces to launch one. So, if they can't muster a larger counterattack around Kyiv, they may have a hard time gathering enough forces to push the Russians back in the east near Donbas.
BERGEN: What's the Russian game plan now?
REPASS: Their initial theory of victory was to decapitate the Ukrainian government, secure a land bridge to Crimea and then seize as much land as possible. He also said he was going to secure the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts (regions). The additional land seizure was going to be things that they were willing to bargain away. They have no intention of bargaining away the land bridge to Crimea.
The Russian expedition to Kyiv from the north was well anticipated and superbly defended against by the Ukrainians, and the Russians realized after substantial casualties that they didn't need that. The seizure of Kyiv was (and is) not essential to Russia's success, and was a want-to-have as opposed to a must-have. The land bridge to Crimea is a Russian must-have.
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