QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – August 24 marks not only six months to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, the day is full of emotions as it marks more instrumentally the independence of the country in 1991 from the predecessor of the Russian Federation; the Soviet Union.
On February 24, the whole world awoke to the invasion of the Russian forces of Ukrainian territories. With the rapid advance – in the early days – of the Russian troops on the ground supported from above by the air force, the Ukrainian collapse was perceived to be a rapid one.
“On February 24, we were told: you have no chance. On August 24, we say: “Happy Independence Day, Ukraine!” President Volodymyr Zelensky declared in an emotional speech to mark 31 years of Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union on Wednesday.
“We will fight until the end,” Zelensky added.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was expecting to take Kyiv in just three days, install a puppet government and return home. However, things took a different way. The war in Ukraine came eight years after the annexation in 2014 of the Crimean peninsula.
After six months of the Kremlin full scale invasion, it turns now to be an attritional and a devastating war. This is echoed in the statement made by Turkey’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Mevlut Cavusoglu when he said “There are some NATO countries in the West that want the war to continue in Ukraine. I mean not only the United States, but also other NATO member countries. There were those who wanted to sabotage the grain agreement.”
Though the main focus of Cavusoglu’s remarks was the grain agreement, this however, shows the dominating trend regarding the war in Ukraine.
Turkey as a NATO ally to Ukraine and a riparian country sharing the Black Sea tries to keep itself at a relative distance. It had hosted both parties to bring the war to an end , however, to no use.
The war on Ukraine seemingly is a conventional one. However, intelligence and technology were for the very first time used so heavily and extensively on the Ukraine soil.
The success of the Ukrainian resistance lies in part in a deal struck with the NATO second largest force, Turkey, in 2019.
Within the rising power of the Turkish drone technology, Ukraine became the first NATO ally to purchase six drones. Since 2019, Kyiv has bought dozens of drones from Ankara.
Just three days after the invasion, the Turkish drones purchased by Ukraine scored its first Russian fatalities. Videos showing targets of Russian army being destroyed went widely viral on the social media outlets. That was just the beginning.
However, the heroism Ukrainians showed cannot be merely attributed to technology. In the face of Putin’s risky invasion, Ukrainians appeared defiant. Men and women were deployed to fronts.
But why the strongman of Russia was out in this awkward situation of the affair?
Some observers say Russia was misled on fake intelligence information. Others say Russian leadership misread the Ukrainian army. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has proved miscalculating.
It was said that the FSB deployed agents and informants to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv no more than anyplace in the world.
Russian agents were not deployed to Ukraine’s official associations, they inserted the community too, with no scores it seems. Ukraine intelligence and security agencies have incurred blows to the Russians.
Russian intelligence informants captured by Ukrainian forces told they were instructed to leave the capital and wait, few days, until Russian enter Kyiv. It was just the matter of days, the Russians were either erroneously told or assumed.
It was widely rumored that Putin after ending so quickly the Ukrainian matter would turn to Syria to finish once for all the Syrian war to the favor of the Syrian government. Russia seems stuck in a quagmire.
With neither part achieving victory over the other six months to the invasion, analysts say Russia lost the war from a strategic point of view.
Six months after the seemingly reckless invasion, battles go on, the humanitarians crisis trails. The decision of Ukraine invasion by Putin seems to be ill-fated.