In Hostomel losses, a microcosm of Russia’s growing Ukraine crisis

“…Desperate to secure the Hostomel airport less than 20 miles northwest of Kyiv’s center, Russian forces are launching attacks into Hostomel and surrounding settlements. The Russians need the airport to serve as a logistics hub for follow-on operations against Kyiv.

The attacks aren’t going well.

Video posted online on Friday, supported by Ukrainian reporting, indicates that Russian mechanized infantry formations are being destroyed as they move against Hostomel objectives. Graphic video shows a Hostomel road littered with Russian armored troop transport and infantry fighting vehicles. Dead soldiers lie around them. The damage to the vehicles and the injuries to the soldiers suggest they were ambushed under heavy fire, including from antitank weapons. The video shows that some Russian soldiers were unable even to dismount their personnel carriers before being killed.

The video is just one testament to a tragic war. For the Russian military and Vladimir Putin, however, this situation encapsulates an escalating crisis.

It is now clear that the Russian military lacks the troop capacity, combined arms coordination, logistics trains, and morale to sustain a high-tempo war throughout Ukraine. But the more Russian units that are taken off the battlefield, the more limited the means of Russian commanders to pursue their objectives. This will exacerbate tension with higher commanders back in Belarus and Russia who are under pressure from Putin to deliver results. This is to say nothing of the impact on morale for those soldiers who will now be ordered to follow their fallen comrades into what they will assume are prospectively doomed battles. In contrast, the Ukrainian military morale is soaring.

The annihilation of Russian platoons, and thus the shared suffering of families who know each other, poses additional problems on the home front. The personal association of tragedy will fuel anger and make it far harder for Putin’s propagandists to present this war as a limited security operation. Certainly, Putin is not going to be able to keep arguing, as he did on Thursday, that his operation is “going to plan.” As the body count mounts and the obvious failure to make strategic progress becomes clearer, Putin will face escalating protests. The harsh response of Russian police forces against the limited protests that have occurred thus far underlines the Kremlin’s fear in this regard.

At a strategic level, the present dynamic will force Putin to choose massive escalation via artillery and missile supplies (stocks of the most capable missiles being limited in number) or compromise. While Russia’s targeting of civilian infrastructure has escalated this week, it has not been overwhelming, even if it has entailed serious war crimes. Because Putin has emphasized this action as one to unite Ukrainians under a greater, brotherly Russian orbit, his ability to use massive firepower to coerce surrender is more restricted than for Russian forces in Chechnya and Syria. A Russian nuclear strike on Ukraine, for example, continues to be highly unlikely.

In short, what’s happening in Hostomel is a microcosm of the growing crisis facing Putin and the Russian military…”