Russia changed its war strategy in Ukraine

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Acc to the Institute for the Study of War, Russia changed its goals from a bigger encirclement of forces to the pursuit of small, conservative gains in key areas. The emphasis is now on taking small villages one by one as active frontlines are overall shrinking. The situation is basically resembling more and more a stalemate with minor localized daily changes.

First they wanted to take everything in between Kharkiv and Mariupol, then everything in between Izyum and Donetsk city, now the battles are being fought for 3 key settlements, which are Lyman, Severodonetsk and Lysychansk which are by all accounts in a pretty small area and in close distance. The more the war drags on, the more this idea of slow advancements in conservative directions emerges as opposed to the surprise assault of the first weeks.

 

After Russia's spectacular failure to take Kyiv and its retreat from Jîtomîr, Sumy and Chernihiv and after Ukraine's succesful counter-offensives in Kharkiv, Russia apparently has learned the lesson that it doesn't have the force to fight in too many directions all at once. We will be soon be in the 4 month of the war (the invasion already exceeed the medium span for armed conflicts) and the Battle for Donbas still didn't come in full force.

Extract from the Institute of War assessment of today - Russian forces are making greater advances in the past week than throughout the rest of May—but these advances remain slow, confined to smaller objectives than the Kremlin intended, and face continued Ukrainian defenses; they do not constitute a major breakthrough. Senior Kremlin officials are increasingly openly admitting that the Russian offensive in Ukraine is moving slower than anticipated and are grasping for explanations to justify the slow pace. 

Thesituation of the war as of today is telling in terms of Russia's emerging war strategy of slow, localized advancements:

 

[PartySick 172,547]

So how much longer until this is over? It seems like Russia is really spinning the wheels here but not getting very far

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8 hours ago, PartySick said:

So how much longer until this is over? It seems like Russia is really spinning the wheels here but not getting very far

This will almost certainly continue durning the entire summer and probably after that too.. There is also the chance of a renewed full scale attack at one point (2014 - Crimea/Donbas; 2022 - Kyiv/'Novorossiya'; 2030 -??). Russia still wants Odesa, and the only question is if or when it will have the capabilities to attack it. 

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Just as I thought  the head of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic pledged for the ''liberation'' of all Russian cities, including Odesa. He talked about the year 2023.