Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has now lasted for two weeks, and Lieutenant General Arne Bård Dalhaug believes the last week has been marked by the Russians’ lack of military progress.
– If you look at the last week from a bird’s perspective, there have generally been no dramatic changes in the troops’ deployment. There has not been much movement on them, says Dalhaug.
The lieutenant general is a former head of department for defense policy and long-term planning, chief of the Defense Staff, and Norway’s representative in NATO’s military committee.
Dagbladet has now mapped the Russians’ attacks day by day. Tap the arrows on the map to follow the invasion!
The situation around Kyiv today is not very different than a week ago, according to Dalhaug.
– What has characterized the news picture in the last week is that the Russians have been held in the areas around Kyiv. The column is still fixed north of Hostomel Airport, and is currently some distance from the capital.
He explains that the Russians are interested in entering western Kyiv, where, among other things, the parliament and the government quarter are located. Here, too, they have not had much progress, according to Dalhaug.
– Panic
There are many theories about the Russian column, which has moved from Belarus to the north, and which remains fixed northwest of Kyiv.
– The road system is very bad, and they most likely can not move off the road because then they get stuck. They have had great difficulty getting off the roads.
Ukraine has both used aircraft against the column, and forces have moved into the depths and attacked the Russians in weak parties.
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– The Ukrainians have not only stopped them, but also attacked them up north. When they are on a road for 60-70 kilometers, it is clear that you can not protect the entire column, he says.
He thinks first and foremost this is because the Russians started with quite light forces.
– I think that when they started, they started with fairly light forces, and then this stopped. It was done in panic, as has been done before in previous wars. So many vehicles were sent in that the road network could not handle it. It is in panic sent in too heavy departments that are dependent on being on the road, Dalhaug explains.
– Professional talking logistics
The American defense expert John W. Spencer also believes that Russia has missed out on its attack.
– We have an expression called that amateurs talk tactics, and professionals talk logistics. You do not attack such a large country without having a logistics plan, Spencer told Dagbladet on Wednesday.
He is a former major in the US military and an expert on civil war.
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Spencer believes that Russia has completely missed the intelligence, and says that they have read the situation completely wrong.
– A military plan needs an estimate of what can happen, and the Russians have made a complete mistake of what they thought the Ukrainians would do and what they were capable of.
He believes that the Russians were simply not ready for war.
– The training, the preparations and not least the leadership – all the strategic from top to bottom is catastrophically wrong. Russia is losing out on this, and is showing the rest of the world that they are not big and strong, says the major.
– Difficult to evacuate
The second week of the Ukraine war has also been marked by civilian casualties. At least 71 children have been killed and more than 100 injured since the war began, Ukrainian authorities claimed on Thursday.
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“In the last week, a number of ugly things have happened in terms of what the civilian population has been exposed to, and then I think especially of what happened in Irpin, the protection of Kharkiv, and the maternity hospital in Mariupol,” says Dalhaug.
According to local authorities in Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine, at least three people were killed and 17 people injured in a Russian attack that hit a hospital with a maternity ward on Wednesday.
The maternity ward in Mariupol is the third to be destroyed in Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion, according to the UN. The same type of hospital was completely destroyed in the cities of Zhytomyr and Saltivsky, says Jaime Nadal, head of the UN Population Fund’s work in Ukraine in a video conference on Thursday.
– It has also been difficult to evacuate civilians – especially from Mariupol. It has turned out that the humanitarian corridors have worked poorly. The ceasefire was broken by the Russians, and they have not got the civilian population out in the way they have imagined. There were mines in some places, and the Russians have shot at those who try to flee in the corridors, says Dalhaug.
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Ukrainian authorities report that civilians trying to evacuate from the southeastern city of Mariupol are coming under Russian fire.
On Thursday night, Ukrainian authorities announced that Russian bombings prevented civilians from evacuating from Kyiv, Mariupol, Sumy, Kharkiv, Volnovakha and Mykolaiv. In the town of Okhtyrka south of Sumy, at least three civilians have been confirmed killed – a 13-year-old boy and two women.
– Not accurate enough
Dalhaug believes the civilian destruction is due to the Russians simply not being careful enough.
– I do not think it is because they have specifically pointed out civilian targets. I think it’s because they are not careful enough. It has also been shown to apply in previous military operations when Russian wars have been involved. Both in the first and second Chechnya war and in Syria, says the lieutenant general.
He points out that one has a responsibility to prevent civilian targets from being met, but that he does not believe that this is something the Russians prioritize.
