When he came to write of 1942-3 in his magisterial, if idiosyncratic, ‘History of the Second World War’, Winston Churchill called that period, ‘The Hinge of Fate’: it was the turning of the tide, when from El Alamein, to Stalingrad, and to Midway in the Pacific, the Axis Alliance ground to a halt. There was much hard fighting to be done and the contours of victory were still unclear but as Churchill declared, in November ’42, “…this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” So too in Ukraine.

Ukrainians have been able to reach-out beyond this extended ‘No-Mans Land’

Ukrainians have been able to reach-out beyond this extended ‘No-Mans Land’

The much vaunted Russian Spring Offensive has achieved nothing except thousands more Russian dead. At the beginning of the year, the Ukrainian Defence Minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, stated that his aim, given him by President Zelensky, was to increase Russian casualties from 35,000 to 50,000 per month, so that, “…the cost of war for Russia [is] one it cannot sustain, thereby forcing peace through strength.”

Instead of the expected ratio of dead to wounded, which Nato used to calculate as ten wounded for every dead enemy, the Ukraine has reversed this so that the majority of Russian casualties are dead. Mostly through First Person View (FPV) drones, there is now a 20-25 mile ‘death zone’ along the frontline, through which it is all but impossible to move, concentrate and overcome the enemy. Ukraine is grimly succeeding.

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