Russian paratroopers’ helicopter-led assault on the Hostomel airfield north of Kyiv on Thursday began a daring operation whose success might have considerably boosted Moscow’s hope of seizing management of Kyiv in a lightning assault.
However the recapture of the closely strategic runway by Ukrainian particular forces after greater than 10 hours of intense combating underscored each the extent of Ukraine’s resistance and the high-risk nature of Russia’s invasion technique that has to date introduced blended outcomes, intelligence officers and defence analysts stated.
“What’s clear is that if Moscow had hopes of fast and straightforward positive aspects, they have been terribly optimistic,” stated Michael Kofman, a senior analysis scientist at CNA, a Washington-based think-tank. “A few of the huge dangers taken by the Russian army . . . don’t seem pushed by wise operational necessities . . . Moscow’s considering on this battle appears to have been colored by battle optimism.”
These early disappointments have been nonetheless solely more likely to delay, relatively than change, Russia’s final aim of capturing Kyiv and unseating the administration of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, western officers stated.
Russian forces finally recaptured and held Hostomel, in Kyiv’s north-west suburbs, on Friday however solely after vital injury to the airstrip. Moscow had focused the airfield with the intention of utilizing it to fly in massive numbers of assault troops aimed toward a swift seize of the capital. These airborne deployments have been as a substitute diverted to an airfield in Belarus, 250km away, and compelled to journey south by land.
The preliminary failure to seize and maintain Hostomel has performed a serious position in Russia’s slower than hoped advance on Kyiv, western officers stated, including that Russia has additionally made much less progress within the first two days of the battle than Moscow had anticipated within the east of the nation.
“The Putin plan was a brief, decisive victory. Quite a lot of guys have been saying it’ll take 5 minutes, or two hours, and Ukraine will collapse. Properly, they’re not. The approaching week goes to be actually decisive,” stated Pavel Felgenhauer, a Russian army skilled.
The early levels of Russia’s invasion had a heavy give attention to airborne troops. The assault started with intense cruise missile strikes on key Ukrainian defence belongings, together with greater than a dozen airfields, adopted by assaults by particular forces and paratroopers on key touchdown websites, equivalent to Hostomel, that might have facilitated speedy deployment of extra troops.
Western officers cautioned that Russian army commanders could now shift from that focused method to a broader floor assault, noting that the Kremlin has to date deployed lower than half of the near 200,000 troops that it had assembled on the borders of Ukraine in preparation for the invasion.
“Within the Kremlin they are going to now be reflecting on the plan not going because it was thought, and there will likely be all kinds of challenges round how the logistics of supporting sustained fight they weren’t anticipating,” James Heappey, UK armed forces minister, stated on Saturday.
Heappey advised the BBC that in response to the setbacks Russia might ramp up the usage of heavy artillery bombardment. “What lies forward for Ukraine are days of utter brutality,” he stated.
On Saturday afternoon, Ukraine nonetheless managed a lot of the capital, regardless of some Russian incursions to the north and west of town and heavy combating in a single day, together with some artillery strikes on residential buildings.
“Ukrainians have been defending extraordinarily bravely and with huge braveness,” stated one western official, however cautioned that Russia’s considerably bigger army capabilities meant that Ukraine’s resistance couldn’t final indefinitely.
“We held agency . . . We’ve withstood and efficiently repelled enemy assaults,” Zelensky stated on Saturday afternoon in a televised deal with to the nation. “We broke their plan.”
Ukraine has claimed it has destroyed greater than 100 Russian tanks and killed 3,500 Russian troops. Army claims of losses on each side can’t be independently verified.
Felgenhauer stated one key victory that the Kremlin hoped for — a heat welcome from Ukrainians who see Russia as their historic brothers — had dramatically did not materialise.
“Possibly they consider their very own propaganda that the Ukrainians will meet the Russian liberators with flowers, that the Ukrainian army will lay down their arms and every little thing will likely be properly all wrapped up in a number of days, which is seemingly not occurring,” he stated.
“And that’s the primary downside . . . The Ukrainian individuals see that they will combat again,” he added. “This battle might grow to be a really major problem for Russia.”
Further reporting by Roman Olearchyk in Kyiv
