One of the big mysteries in the war in Ukraine, besides why the Russians invaded at all, is why there is no fighting to speak of in western Ukraine. Here is a series of maps that help explain what is going on, and may even provide clues about Russian strategy and war aims–if there is a strategy.
No one has a crystal ball, and really no one has much insight into the mind of Vladimir Putin. I do think he is insane, but to what degree–i.e., how much can he distinguish fantasy from reality–I have no idea.
To the maps: the first one is old, of course, and I put it up just to show Ukraine’s western borders. There is Poland, a small area of Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova. The vast majority of Ukrainian refugees have gone to Poland, partly because connections between the western Ukrainian city of Lviv and Poland are good.
One irony of that exodus into Poland is that between the world wars, Poland was located about 150 miles east of where it is today. That’s a long story, but Lviv (Lwów in Polish) was in Poland 1918-39. Ukrainian nationalism was honed in that period against Polish nationalism and anti-Ukrainianism. Lviv became and has remained the center of Ukrainian nationalism. Well, borders do change, but that doesn’t automatically change everything else, or sometimes even much else..
This map shows where fighting has taken place in Ukraine. As we all know, the Russians have been trying to encircle Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Mariupol. They will undoubtedly try to capture Odesa, too.
Just to make the location within Ukraine of these cities clearer, here is an old map of the country. Lviv is in the far west. Its population in 2017 was just over 721,000, making it the sixth largest city (behind Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Dnipro, Donetsk, and Zaporizhzhia) in Ukraine at that time. Of course, Lviv is now swollen with refugees, most of whom appear to be trying to move on out of the country.
Above is a map of voting in the 2010 election. Janukovich=Yanukovich, the guy who was driven out of the country in early 2014 after the Euromaidan demonstrations. Compare the voting patterns to the next map.
Languages in Ukraine.
And now a map of religions in Ukraine. Most important for our purposes are the crosses against blue backgrounds. The “Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church,” as the map puts it, is more commonly called the Uniate Church. Created by Poland in 1596, this faith follows Eastern Orthodox liturgy but is under the pope in Rome and is therefore part of the Catholic religion. Clear, right? No? Don’t worry about it.
Once more, Lviv is important in this sense; the mother church of the Uniate religion is St. George’s, in Lviv.
So if we consider these maps together, it is evident that the Russians are concentrating on the east and south of Ukraine, while largely leaving the west alone.
This would seem to be quite stupid, as all the weapons that other countries have promised to ship to Ukraine will come across the western borders. Why didn’t Russia try to seal off those borders right away?
Again, no crystal ball for me, and maybe precious little understanding of what’s going on. But here are some possibilities for Russian inaction in western Ukraine.
- The Russians just may not have the capability to stretch their forces that far. Since they haven’t been able to capture Kyiv or Kharkiv, that seems like a plausible guess.
- The Russian air force in particular seems inept in the war. Other than some bombing and missile attacks in western Ukraine on the first day of the invasion, Russian warplanes and missiles have not been active around Lviv. I’ve read a fair amount about the poor or non-performance of the Russian air force, and no one knows why it has done so badly.
- The Russians may not want to mess with the heartland of Ukrainian nationalism. Perhaps, as various commentators have said, the Russians expected a warmer (not in terms of bullets or guns) reception in the east. Whatever they thought, trying to take Lviv would be even harder than to capture Kyiv et al. Besides the strong nationalism in the west, the terrain is hilly, which would facilitate partisan activity more than the flat ground in the east would.
- Lviv and the surrounding area are too close for comfort or maybe for action to Poland, only some 70 kilometers (43.5 miles) away. Planes flying around Lviv could stray in a few seconds into Polish air space, where they would have a good change of being shot down.
- So maybe–please, all we have is maybes–the Russians want to make a rump country that they would call something out of the east, south, and central regions, including Kyiv and Odesa, while leaving the rest of the country to call itself Ukraine. At least in the east etc. the Russians would have less nationalism and slightly more linguistic heritage to try to draw from.
Hell, I have no idea what the Russians want, except victory in some sense. Which makes no sense.
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