Ukraine transferred the bodies of dead Russian soldiers onto a train consisting of many refrigerated cars and were returned to their homeland (Illustration: Skynews).
The US Senate has passed a $61 billion aid package and President Joe Biden will sign it into law today, April 24, to open up the flow of weapons to Ukraine, which has been stalled since October last year, ending the conflict. The deadlock has lasted for the past 7 months.
The quick passage of the US aid bill by both chambers helped Ukraine and its allies breathe a sigh of relief.
However, frustration over the delay caused by political infighting in the US Congress has not completely subsided, as Kiev still faces several weeks of uncertainty as it waits for weapons and ammunition. Extremely needed delivered.
Speaking in an interview with MSNBC On April 21, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the delay “has had real consequences” for Ukraine.
“For many months, Ukraine was outnumbered in weapons, about 1:5 or 1:10, depending on each front,” Mr. Stoltenberg said.
“We noticed that few Russian missiles and UAVs were shot down simply because they lacked air defense systems and ammunition,” he added.
While it is difficult to directly attribute Ukraine’s failures to aid delays, what is certain is that the situation has deteriorated significantly on a number of fronts during this time.
Western and Ukrainian officials, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his American counterpart, Joe Biden, are not shy about blaming it.
Risk of losing more territory
Although the front lines in Ukraine have changed only incrementally from previous periods, the progress made has been beneficial to Russia.
The delay in US aid forced Ukraine to switch to a defensive position, giving the initiative across the battlefield to Moscow forces.
Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russian analyst at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), told Reuters on April 22: “Aid came too late, due to equipment shortages that caused Ukraine to lose the initiative in October/ 2023”.
Expert Stepanenko added that Ukraine has lost 583 square kilometers of territory to Russian forces since then, largely due to a lack of artillery shells.
The most significant defeat for Ukraine was the city of Avdiivka in Donetsk, which collapsed on February 17 after months of continuous Russian attack.
Previously, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby warned that a shortage of artillery shells could lead to the loss of the city. After Avdiivka fell, Mr. Biden bluntly blamed the delay in US aid.
“This morning, the Ukrainian army was forced to withdraw from Avdiivka because Ukrainian soldiers were short of ammunition due to dwindling supplies due to parliamentary inaction, leading to Russia’s first notable victories in months,” Mr. Biden announced on February 17, after a phone call with his counterpart Zelensky.
Despite Russia’s advances, the Avdiivka campaign also caused Russia heavy losses in manpower and equipment. Moscow reportedly lost more than 20,000 troops, 199 tanks and 481 armored fighting vehicles in that region in January and February alone.
Russia’s efforts to control Ukrainian territory continue as it tries to take advantage of the delay between the passage of an aid bill and actual aid arriving on the battlefield.
Ukraine’s military said on April 22 that about 20,000 to 25,000 Russian soldiers were trying to attack Chasov Yar and settlements on the city’s outskirts.
Russian T-90M tank was destroyed by Ukraine (Photo: Wikimedia).
Damage to energy infrastructure
During the fall-winter season of 2022-2023, Russia almost achieved its goal of destroying energy infrastructure in Ukrainian cities, including the capital Kiev.
This campaign was one of the main factors leading to the increase in Western-supplied air defense systems, including the US-made Patriot missile system.
For much of the remainder of 2023, multiple Russian air raids on Kiev were successfully prevented.
The large concentration of UAVs and missiles gave people sleepless nights, but the explosions that kept them awake were the sounds of targets being intercepted and destroyed by new air defense complexes.
As of early 2024, it’s a very different story. Russia’s mass UAV and missile attacks, while less frequent, are much more destructive as Ukraine runs out of ammunition needed for its air defense systems.
Nowhere was this more clearly illustrated than on April 11, when the Trypillia thermal power plant in Kiev was completely destroyed.
In an interview on April 16, Mr. Zelensky clarified why 4 out of 11 missiles fired at the factory successfully hit their targets.
The President said: “Why? Because there are no missiles. We have used up all the missiles protecting Trypillia.”
Other Ukrainian cities with thinner air defenses than Kiev are in even worse shape. Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on April 17 that he believes his city is at risk of becoming “the second Aleppo” if it is not supported with additional air defense systems.
Russia recently stepped up attacks on Kharkiv, which had a population of 1.4 million in 2021, using missiles, hover bombs and drones, destroying energy infrastructure .
In March, attacks reportedly damaged or completely destroyed 80% of the thermal power generation capacity of DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company.
On April 23, Ukraine’s state-owned energy operator Ukrenergo said the country faced electricity shortages due to Russia’s attack on the energy system, forcing Kiev to temporarily limit electricity supply to businesses. industry and industrial establishments.
Human loss
While it is difficult to directly attribute the civilian deaths to delays in US aid, data from the United Nations Human Rights Office shows that the number of deaths and injuries increased again in December. and January, coinciding with increasingly effective Russian missile and UAV attacks.
UN figures do not include the number of deaths and injuries in areas controlled by Russia, and the real toll is almost certainly much higher throughout the conflict.
The United Nations also reported that at least 604 Ukrainian civilians were killed or injured in March, a 20% increase from the previous month.
As for the death toll on the battlefield, there is no public data on the number of Ukrainian troops killed while the US aid bill was being debated, but Mr. Zelensky said in February that the total number of deaths since at the beginning of the full-scale conflict with Russia were about 31,000 people.
There have been no official figures since then, but one thing is certain: the more Ukrainian soldiers are killed on the battlefield, the longer the war lasts.
