The Russian army is running out of momentum

As the Russian invasion enters its fourth week it is clear that its forces are running out of momentum, although they continue to make limited territorial gains in the south and east of Ukraine.

Having been denied a quick victory over Ukraine itself, Putin now needs to force the Ukrainian government to accept a ceasefire agreement that largely freezes the frontlines and allows him to claim a victory domestically. His strategy now appears to be to cut off the Ukrainian forces fighting a desperate battle to hold the line in Donbas in the east against combined Russian and separatist Donetsk and Luhansk forces from the rest of Ukraine, and to concentrate more firepower on the besieged cities of Mariupol in the south and Kharkiv, Sumy and Chernihiv in the north. If Russian forces can achieve the isolation and potential destruction of what was the Ukrainian Joint Forces Operation (JFO) in Donbas, Putin could claim that the Russian invasion had ‘saved’ separatist Donetsk and Luhansk.