War in Ukraine (2024)

Kyiv

Kyiv is them most important city in Ukraine because it is the largest and most politically powerful city. And this was also the capital city of Ukraine and still is to this day as of writing this. However it wasnt always this way and the city was quite close to being captured by Russian forces near the start of the invasion.

On the 24th of February when the full scale invasion was launched, the battle of Kyiv had begun by launching a full scale attack towards the Northern area of Kyiv and they kept pushing until they were able to be in thr outskirts or the suburbs of the city. However the Russian battle for the capital was intense and both sides had deployed massive amounts of men for both the attack and defense. The Russians were able to attack from that Northern area because Belarus, Russia's neighbour and closest ally, allowed the movement of troops through the country and this caught the Ukrainian command off guard because even though they expected a Russian attack towards their capital they were not expecting the Russians to use Belarus for its troop movements. And the Russians got the closest around late March of 2022 and they were held to a stalemate for a month before Ukrainian reinforcements had arrived and Russian troops were now outnumbered and outgunned by their enemy. And they would have to make a painful stage by stage conducted retreat where they slowly withdrew from their operation and extracted their left over units. And by April 2022 Russia had completely withdrawn from the North of Ukraine.

Ukraine was victorious because of this defeat, it would also cause the Russians to divert men from the Kharkiv front to Kyiv and this would also cause the Russian defeat at Kharkiv on May 14th of 2022. The Russians had sent massive numbers to Kyiv around 30,000 to 40,000 men were sent to Kyiv while Ukraine had around 20,000 to 30,000 men on the front and despite the Russians having the numerical advantage they did not have excellent knowledge of the terrain as it had likely changed since the time of the Soviet union until 1991. And Ukraine had also a large superiority of trained men and also had tough fortifications and positions against the Russians who suffered the bulk of the casualties. And the main objective of capturing the city and overthrowing the government. And there was now no main goal anymore. And to this day the war has been locked in stalemate and in a war of attrition for nearly 2 years.