War in Ukraine: how has the front line evolved in 2023?

850 square kilometers. The “second phase” of the Russian offensive in Ukraine has borne moderate fruit. It is equivalent to eight times the area of ​​Paris. Ukraine, however, fares no better: 372 square kilometers, three times Paris. Russia has conquered around 18% of Ukrainian territory (603,550 km2) since the start of the war in 2014. Its large-scale invasion, launched on February 24, 2022, injured or killed 315,000 of its soldiers, according to an American document declassified on December 12. On average, there is 1 killed for every 3 injured. Nearly 100,000 Russian soldiers would therefore have been killed, according to this estimate. On the Ukrainian side, American officials cited by the New York Times in August cited the figure of some 70,000 deaths.

However, Vladimir Putin's objectives, the “denazification” and “demilitarization” of Ukraine, repeated in December during his annual conference, do not seem to be achieved. The front line has not been fundamentally modified during 2023.

2023 was to be the year of reconquest for Ukraine. Victorious in kyiv, then in Kharkiv (north-east) and Kherson (south) in 2022, the army was preparing to launch a counter-offensive towards the Sea of ​​Azov. Objective: free a strip of land large enough to cut through the Russian device. To do this, the Ukrainian army had to penetrate 150 kilometers deep inside the Russian system. The most optimistic even imagined being able to reach Crimea, occupied since 2014. Alas, despite an influx of Western equipment (tanks, long-range ATACMS missiles, and planes), the offensive did not bear the expected results. After four months of fighting, Valery Zalouzhny, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, frankly admitted, at the beginning of November, to being “at an impasse”.

She came up against a major obstacle: the Sourovikine line. It was fortified and mined by the eponymous general, then in charge of Russian military operations in Ukraine. This runs along approximately 1000 kilometers of frontage and is spread over nearly 30 kilometers in depth, sometimes with up to five lines of defense. On the ground, the soldiers on the front line had to escape mines, artillery fire and drones, then clear the enemy trenches before destroying a similar device a few kilometers further away. No less than 174,000 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory, twice the size of Portugal, would have been trapped by the Russians.

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Ukraine only managed to penetrate the Russian system in two places: Velyka Novoslilska, in Donbass, in June and Robotyne, south of Zaporizhia, at the end of August. This latest breakthrough has raised many international hopes. The Ukrainian army, after destroying the first line of defense, was unable to annihilate the second, and open a road towards Tokmak, the first city before Melitopol.

The Kremlin has annexed five Ukrainian oblasts (administrative regions, editor's note) since the start of the war in 2014. The last four, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, were annexed in September 2022. Their definitive conquest is a short-term objective. term. 98% of the first is under Russian control, 26% of the second, 75% of the third and 65% of the last. The Russian army has, throughout 2023, launched assaults to “round” these borders, and completely conquer what it has annexed.

Russian mercenaries, especially from Wagner, managed to conquer Bakhmout at the end of May 2023, a town in Donbass, after almost a year of fighting, at the cost of 20,000 killed, according to their leader, Evgeni Prigozhin. The latter did not accept the supervision of the Ministry of Defense and led a rebellion against the Kremlin in June. He finally died in a timely plane crash on August 23. Since then, the front line of almost 1000 kilometers seems almost frozen. The regular Russian army launches assaults around Avdiivka, a town not far from Donetsk (Donbass), capital of the annexed oblast of the same name. A few square kilometers were painfully conquered around this city, and Marinka, a suburb of Donetsk was conquered at Christmas.

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Ukraine is preparing to spend its ninth winter of war against Russia as foreign support appears to be failing. In the United States, Democrats and Republicans noted their disagreement on December 20 over financial aid of $61 billion to Ukraine. The heads of parliamentary groups said they hoped to be able to vote on it “early next year”. The European Union opened its door to Ukraine, but did not grant the aid of 50 billion euros planned because of the Hungarian veto of December 15. “We will return to the subject at the beginning of January,” assured Charles Michel, President of the European Council. “We cannot win without help,” exclaimed Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukrainian president.