Putin is looking for an easy win in the Donbas. He won't get one.

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Two weeks after the Russian army withdrew from Kyiv and northeastern Ukraine, Russia announced that it was launching a “new phase” of what it calls its “special operation” in Ukraine.

When announcing this “new phase”, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, once again repeated what has been the official goal of the “operation” since it started in February: To “liberate” the two separatist republics in the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Of course, the reality is different from the Russian narrative. The truth is that, although Russia claims it only sought to capture the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, it did initially launch an all-out attack against Ukraine, with the goal of seizing much if not all of the country. This was supposed to be a “decapitation” strike, a modern-day Blitzkrieg to overrun a country President Putin said didn’t exist in the first place and one for which he expressed contempt.

In a way, the Russian military paid the price for such contempt, as it appears to have badly underestimated the Ukrainian military. Nearly two months after the launch of what was planned to be a two-week-long campaign (according to some Russian documents found by Ukrainian soldiers), this “new phase” is effectively a climb down from Moscow’s grandiose objectives.

The problem Moscow faces is that even this allegedly more limited operation comes with significant difficulties. Attacking the Donbas is no easy task, and there are several reasons why the region has yet to be fully controlled by Russia almost two months into the invasion. One of those reasons is that the Ukrainian units