Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty
After Russian forces took key eastern portions of Ukraine’s Donbas region last week, questions began bubbling up over whether Russian forces were up to the task of going after their next kill in the neighboring region of Donetsk.
And the first inkling that Russian forces might be taking a step back came from President Vladimir Putin himself. The units that were involved in taking Lysychansk and Luhansk should take a brief respite, Putin said—to recoup, regroup, and prepare for more combat in the future, according to TASS.
For a war of attrition—in which both sides are duking it out with the goal of tiring the enemy out to the point of exhaustion and defeat—the pause might not bode well for Russia. Russian forces have struggled to keep up from the beginning. Despite their main objective to take Kyiv, they faltered outside the Ukrainian capital in the early days of the war due to logistical and planning failures. And by the count of Ukraine’s General Staff of the Armed Forces, Russian forces have sustained massive losses, tallying up nearly 40,000 dead troops. Russian soldiers have been complaining for months about their lack of preparedness and low morale.