Ukraine's advance may have opened a window for peace

Rather than a fight to the finish, the incursion into Russian territory could lead to compromise, writes Mark Almond

- Mark Almond

Throughout its war with Russia, Ukraine has shown a remarkable capacity to take its much bigger invader by surprise. Since its repulse of Russia’s onslaught in February 2022, the Ukrainians have scored morale-boosting hits on their enemy.

This week’s sudden incursion into Russian territory is, however, much more dramatic than previous Ukrainian coups. It came as Western military commentators seemed to agree that Putin was winning a brutal war of attrition against his smaller neighbour, maybe forcing Ukraine to accept his demands in the coming months. So, the West was as surprised as the Kremlin by recent events.

Sceptics of the strategic wisdom of Kyiv’s dramatic advance tend to see it less as a game-changer than as a battlefield blip – like Hitler’s Battle of the Bulge, which knocked the Allies sideways for 10 days over Christmas 1944 but actually drained away what was left of his army’s reserves.