One month of Russian offensive yields only one captured city

One month of offensive: only one city under Russian control

Russia has been at war for a month, and its effective control of Ukrainian territory is reduced, at best, to a single city. This is an uncomfortable headline for both sides, explaining why the conversation has shifted from amazement at a supposed lightning advance to cold calculation regarding how long the Russian military machine can endure. The trap lies in the verb to conquer: it does not miccionan the same thing to someone looking at a map from a satellite as it does to someone looking from a trench.

The state of the front illustrates this. The Kherson airport in the south remains under Russian control, but its infrastructure is accumulating hits trinc a Ukrainian attack in which artillery was directed by an observation drone. In that same city, guerrillas reportedly ended the life of Pavel Slobodchikov, a member of the occupation administration, inside his own car. It does not look like consolidated control, precisely.

Mariupol and the uncomfortable reality of urban siege

The case that best measures the distance between the narrative and reality is a city that has not yet fully fallen. Mariupol had 450,000 inhabitants spread across about 240 square kilometers, with part of the population living in high-rise buildings and fortifications that have proven to be solid. Defenders are estimated to be between 7,000 and 15,000 troops; the Russian or pro-Russian forces attacking it, around 10,000-15,000 combatants. The city has been under land attack for 23 days and total siege for 14.

The comparison circulating to understand why this is not fast is that of Falujah, a smaller city with fewer than 300,000 inhabitants in 200 square kilometers and mostly two-story housing, defended by between 3,000 and 5,000 combatants. Taking it already took weeks. Mariupol is larger, more vertical, and better defended. Whoever promised a lightning operation will have to explain why the timeline is measured in months.

Why aren't cities taken on the first attempt?

The answer given by the coldest military analyses is that there are no shortcuts. You cannot occupy a city without first leveling it with artillery or bombers, and that decision is not wanted while there is still a population inside. The manual consists of encircling, cutting off supply lines, and besieging for as long as necessary, even if it means months of mutual attrition.

That leaves a fact that is more surprising than urban stagnation: in the open field, Russian forces have also not managed to fully close the pockets around the Ukrainian army. The conclusion that prevails, and which dismantles any epic of total superiority, is that on the other side there is a regular army, with abundant ammunition and advanced weaponry supplied from abroad, not a disorganized band. Every day that passes without closing a pocket is a day that Moscow's political calendar cannot recover.

Kherson: the battle is also orthographic

There is a side controversy that says a lot about the atmosphere. The occupied southern city is written Jersón in Spanish, and the KH digraph used to transcribe it is merely the English way of resolving the Cyrillic letter Х, which sounds exactly like our 'jota'. In Russian it is written Херсон; in Ukrainian, the same. The onomastics are not neutral: they come from Chersonesus, the Greek colony, and from the project that Potemkin and Catherine II promoted in the area. Choosing a spelling is, for some, choosing a side.

What Moscow claims to pursue

The most repeated defense of the Russian front maintains that the goal was never to occupy the entire country. The list would be limited: demilitarize Ukraine so it does not join NATO, end the Azov battalion in the version of denazification handled by Moscow, achieve the independence of the Donbass republics, and the recognition of the annexation of Crimea. Once that is achieved, they claim, there is nothing more to do there.

The objection comes from the other side: even accepting those ends, the price to achieve them is unsustainable, because a population that rejects the occupying power turns any territorial control into a permanent problem. And on the Russian side, the collateral cost appears: in Iraq, with massive bombings, nearly one million civilian deaths were estimated. Anyone invoking that figure as a shield is not defending anything, just changing the subject.

The balance after the first month

One month later, the big map still looks ugly on the other side: no capital taken, no real control of the southern city, no closed pockets. What there is is a war of attrition in which each side counts the other's casualties and edits its own. If the pattern holds, the east of the country could fall under Russian control in a matter of weeks. The problem is that this same prediction has been repeated since day one, and Mariupol has still not fully fallen. The most honest prediction today is the one that admits it does not know.