I've mentioned the problem for Ukraine's Mariupol. Russia continues to squeeze Ukraine there:
After more than four years of constant combat, the artillery still thunders daily in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region along the 250-mile-long, entrenched front lines of Europe’s only ongoing land war. There, Ukraine’s military remains locked in combat against a combined force of pro-Russian separatists, foreign mercenaries, and Russian regulars.
For years, the physical effects of the war have remained more or less geographically quarantined to the Donbas battlefield. This summer, however, Russian naval forces have stepped up their harassment of Ukrainian merchant vessels in the Sea of Azov, effectively blockading the body of water through which roughly 80 percent of Ukraine’s exports pass.
The article says that a thousand Russian marines at the Sea of Azov are too few for an amphibious invasion, but that is nonsense. A thousand marines landing just behind Ukrainian lines on the coast in conjunction with a major Russian offensive from the land is fully consistent with Soviet amphibious operations in support of army operations during World War II. The Russians don't need marines capable of achieving on their own operational or strategic objectives.
But basically, I don't understand how the war is one of Russian initiative and Ukrainian passive endurance.
Russia seizes Ukraine's territory illegally. But Ukraine isn't attacking the Russian troops holding the neck of Crimea. Ukraine isn't mining the ports of Crimea or firing missiles at Russian facilities and ships in Crimea. Ukraine isn't trying to destroy the bridge that links Russia with Crimea. Russia simply owns Crimea and that, apparently, is that.
Russia grabs parts of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, and there is no Ukrainian effort to attack the Russians in the Donbas and drive them back. Russia initiates attacks routinely despite the "ceasefire" and Ukraine simply responds. The fighting is purely at the option of Russia, apparently.
And now Russia is imposing a blockade on Ukraine's Sea of Azov coast and that, apparently, is that. Russia escalates the war at will and Ukraine is only able to endure as best they can.
I can understand why Ukraine might not want to escalate by directly striking Russian targets in and around Crimea. In an open war Russia could easily blockade all of Ukraine's Black Sea coast.
But Russia denies even being in the Donbas. Why can't Ukraine make Russia pay for that transparent lie by simply agreeing that Ukraine is fighting separatists and mercenaries which Russia of course isn't associated with?
For all the talk of new and novel "hybrid war" (and you know my feelings about that nonsense), increasingly it seems to rely on having an enemy who does not fight back. Ukraine couldn't fight back in early 2014. Now the Ukrainian military, although weaker than Russia, isn't allowed to make Russia pay a price for their conquest.
Why would Russia negotiate actual peace with terms of conflict so tilted to Russia?
