WASHINGTON — Ukraine’s soldiers have blown up bridges to halt advancing Russian ground troops. Its pilots and air defenses have prevented Russian fighter jets from conquering the skies. And a band of savvy Ukrainian cyberwarriors are so far beating Moscow in an information war, inspiring support at home and abroad.To the surprise of many military analysts, Ukrainian troops are mounting a stiffer-than-expected resistance to Russian forces up and down battle lines across a country the size of Texas, fighting with a resourcefulness and creativity that U.S. analysts said could trip up Russian troops for weeks or months to come.The Ukrainians are also exploiting a bungled beginning to Russia’s all-out assault. Armed with shoulder-fired anti-tank weapons, they have attacked a mileslong Russian armored convoy bearing down on Kyiv, the capital, helping stall an advance plagued by fuel and food shortages, and stretching a march that was expected to take a handful of days into possibly weeks.To be sure, Russia’s invasion is only a week old. The strategic southern city of Kherson fell on Wednesday; the Kremlin’s army has intensified its bombardment of Kyiv and other cities; and, despite a flow of fresh arms pouring in from the West, Ukrainian leaders say they desperately need more weapons to destroy Russian tanks and down Russian warplanes.But the Ukrainian military is conducting a hugely effective and mobile defense, using their knowledge of their home turf to stymie Russian forces on multiple fronts, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Thursday.General Milley said some of the tactics employed by Ukrainian troops included using mobile weapons systems to bedevil the Russians wherever they could. Ukraine’s forces, he told reporters traveling with him in Europe, are “fighting with extraordinary skill and courage against Russian forces.”U.S. officials have been impressed with the fighting prowess of the Ukrainians, but their assessment that Russia has the superior military has not changed.Ukraine has succeeded in slowing the Russian advance, but has not been able to stop it, nor is the resistance strong enough to shift Mr. Putin’s war aims. But over the long term, U.S. officials said, it will be difficult for Ukraine to continue to frustrate the Russian advance.In the meantime, though, Ukrainians are turning into a nation at arms. “In combat, it’s always different than what you thought it’d be, and the side that learns faster and adapts faster will win out,” said Frederick B. Hodges, the former top U.S. Army commander in Europe who is now with the Center for European Policy Analysis. “So far, Ukraine is learning and adapting faster.”Ukraine has one of Europe’s largest militaries, with 170,000 active-duty troops, 100,000 reservists and territorial defense forces that include at least 100,000 veterans. Thousands of civilians are also now enlisting.The Ukrainian army has been training for further Russian encroachment ever since Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and began supporting separatists in the Donbas region, in eastern Ukraine. Many of Ukraine’s veterans fought in those battles, so there is a subset of the population that is trained and knows how to fight Russians.U.S. Special Operations Forces have also trained Ukrainian military forces. Leaders in Kyiv then assigned those soldiers to conventional units, allowing them in turn to train a larger portion of the army. American analysts say that training has made a difference on the battlefield.The United States has provided more than $3 billion in weapons, equipment and other supplies to Ukraine’s armed forces since 2014. In those eight years, U.S. military advisers, including Army Green Berets and National Guard troops, have trained more than 27,000 Ukrainian soldiers at the Yavoriv Combat Training Center near Lviv in western Ukraine.In Brussels on Thursday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the Ukrainian military was “performing better and putting up more resistance than most experts expected, and surely more than Russia expected.”“They’re there to defend their own land,” Mr. Stoltenberg told reporters traveling with General Milley.ImageVolunteer fighters preparing weapons in Kyiv last week.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York TimesIndeed, Michael R. Carpenter, the U.S. representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, hailed a Ukrainian marine, Vitaliy Skakun, in remarks in Vienna on Thursday. The marine had blown himself up on a bridge in the southern Kherson region to prevent a line of Russian tanks from crossing, the Ukrainian military said.From the invasion’s opening hours, Ukraine’s underdog military has sought to flip the script on the more than 150,000By: Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper and Julian E. Barnes
Title: How Ukraine’s Military Has Resisted Russia So Far
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/us/politics/russia-ukraine-military.html
Published Date: Thu, 03 Mar 2022 23:57:25 +0000
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