The Russian front as Zeno's tortoise. A cross-section of the history of the last European war

The ancient Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea defined a bizarre thought experiment in the 5th century BC. If the hero of the Trojan War, Achilles, were to give a tortoise a head start, he would never catch up with it. The tortoise, though slower, keeps moving from one point to the next — and to catch it, Achilles must first reach the point from which the tortoise began.

Although the leading representative of the Eleatic school sought to prove that motion is illusory, this aporia (from the Greek: “impasse” or “dead end”) has become a parable that can aptly be applied to the ongoing war at our eastern neighbor.

In recent months, Russian forces have advanced only very slowly and at a high cost. Yet — despite the massive support of the collective West for the Ukrainian army — they are like the tortoise that the “Western Achilles” can never overtake.

In recent weeks, “narrative shapers” have emerged, attempting to draw the European Union deeper into the Russian–Ukrainian conflict. In the coming weeks, elected representatives will likely begin to echo this narrative.

The war began with a blitzkrieg

As late as 16 February 2022, Western intelligence agencies recorded troop movements along the Ukrainian border, including in the disputed areas of Luhansk and Donetsk. Moscow dismissed the fears as unfounded, attributing the movements to routine military exercises.

Meanwhile, reports emerged from the Russian side claiming that certain Ukrainian army units were definitively violating the Minsk Agreements and attacking the self-proclaimed “people’s republics” in the Donbas.

President Vladimir Putin therefore recognized the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic on 21 February, and two days later, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament approved the “use of military force abroad.”

In the memorable first months of the war following the initial invasion on 24 February, Russian forces advanced with extraordinary speed, primarily targeting the capital, Kyiv. However, Moscow’s troops advanced from multiple directions — most notably from the annexed Crimean Peninsula and the contested border areas of Luhansk and Kharkiv regions.

Ukrainian defenders managed to hold the capital — their resistance, combined with the poor logistics and allegedly low morale of Russian troops, led to a Russian withdrawal into Belarus by late March or early April that year.

Kyiv’s defense surprised Western observers — a reaction later clarified by the former German chancellor who had originally been responsible for implementing the agreements between Russia, Ukraine, and the separatists in the Donbas.

Former Chancellor Angela Merkel, who took part in the Minsk negotiations in September 2014 as part of the Normandy Quartet (France, Germany, Russia, Ukraine), indirectly admitted in an interview with Czech Television in June 2025 that these agreements — intended to grant Ukraine a kind of federalization and more rights for the Russian-speaking population in the east — were essentially designed to buy Kyiv time.

Merkel had said the same thing back in December 2022, which the then Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described as disappointing. Equally disappointing for the Russians were their losses of territory north of Kyiv, parts of the Kharkiv region (from which they withdrew in June 2022), and the right bank of the Dnipro in the Zaporizhzhia region in late October.

By May 2022, Russian forces had linked up their southern and eastern fronts, following the surrender of the defenders of Mariupol — mostly members of the “formerly extremist” Azov Regiment of Ukraine’s National Guard. The city of Kherson, with its ancient ties to Russian history, was taken as early as March during the initial blitz offensive but abandoned in November under Ukrainian pressure.

By summer, Moscow had shifted its focus mainly to the eastern part — the Donbas — whose “suppression” served as the pretext for invading Ukraine. The front line stabilized in the south along the Dnipro, even though Russian troops occupied Mykolaiv for several weeks in March.

In the Luhansk region, toward Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, Russian forces advanced during the summer of the first war year, with the latter city falling in early July.

On the northern front, the Russians abandoned their advance on Sumy soon after the invasion, holding only part of the Kharkiv region. In mid-September, however, the Ukrainians launched a surprise counteroffensive along the Kupiansk–Lyman line, breaking through to Izium — which the Russians recaptured in April the following year.

The West enters the war

The Biden administration intervened massively on Ukraine’s side. It pressured the Belgian-based SWIFT banking system to exclude Russian banks, froze Russia’s dollar reserves, and imposed drastic sanctions on Moscow.

As a result, many analysts at the start of the war claimed that the Russian army would “collapse within weeks,” that the front would disintegrate, and that Ukraine would push them back. Moscow, however, soon realized that its blitzkrieg attempt had failed due to the massive resistance of Kyiv’s forces.

And while sanctions began impoverishing Europe — cutting it off from cheap fossil fuels and driving Russia into the arms of China and India — the “bear” changed its strategy.

The new method was a war of attrition, in which the Russians have fought for months over small patches of land, a single village, or a city — aiming to exhaust the Ukrainian army and “weaken it in manpower.” In simpler terms: to kill as many soldiers as possible.

By early 2023, critical voices had begun calling for a ceasefire at any cost. It must be acknowledged, however, that in every real war, there is an information front on both sides — one fought with propaganda.

The authors of the Western narrative therefore began labeling these voices as “pro-Russian,” even though, in truth, they were the ones advocating for saving as many Ukrainian lives as possible.

Marking the first anniversary of the war, President Joe Biden declared that the West would support Ukraine “for as long as it takes.” Organizations that political scientist John Mearsheimer calls the “foreign policy establishment” subsequently intensified their efforts in the information war.

Yet this strategy, even when combined with massive military and financial aid to Ukraine, was not particularly effective. It was the Russian strategy that ultimately proved effective — albeit at a high cost.

Since summer 2022, the Russians had fought for several cities in the Donbas, notably Soledar and Bakhmut. The former fell to the Russians in January 2023, the latter in May. These examples show that even a slight advantage in infantry numbers is a prerequisite for success.

In June 2023, the Ukrainian army launched a large-scale counteroffensive, which President Volodymyr Zelensky and then–Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi hoped would halt the Russian advance. However, the general disagreed with the plans discussed at the briefings and called for the mobilization of half a million Ukrainians.

That would have severely damaged Zelensky’s popularity — so he dismissed Zaluzhnyi and sent him to London as ambassador. He was replaced by loyalist Oleksandr Syrskyi, who has since avoided launching any strategically decisive counteroffensives.

On the war’s second anniversary, another Ukrainian stronghold fell — the city of Avdiivka. The battle for it lasted five months, prompting Western observers once again to question the effectiveness of the Russian army.

The statement about Syrskyi was not entirely fair, as the Ukrainians launched a surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region on 6 August. They held the territory until April 2025, and although they failed to achieve any tactical objectives (the original goal was to force Russia to withdraw troops from the Donbas), it was nonetheless a major symbolic victory.

In January 2025, the city of Kurakhove fell, followed six months later by Chasiv Yar. In August, the Russians captured Toretsk, and fighting continues for the now well-known cities of Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka.

The slow advance has apparently paid off for the Russians. On 1 July, the “head” of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic, Leonid Pasechnik, declared that the territory of Ukraine’s easternmost region was “fully liberated — one hundred percent.”

Although this claim has not been confirmed by the defense ministry or major media in the involved countries, analytical maps — such as those from the DeepState project, which cooperates with Ukraine’s defense ministry — suggest there are no remaining settlements in the unoccupied area.

Russia considers Luhansk, along with Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia, as part of its territory and claims they fall under its nuclear protection umbrella. The four regions along the northwest coast of the Sea of Azov were unilaterally annexed on 30 September 2022, with the aim of strategically securing the waterway and potential trade routes.

The Americans want to pull Europe into the war — some have accepted the challenge

The war cycle would likely soon grind to a halt — in Russia’s favor — were it not for the massive support from the West. Although Kyiv still has not received German Taurus long-range missiles and Biden only days before leaving office authorized limited strikes on Russia using American weapons, the U.S. and EU have long been funneling billions of dollars and euros into Ukraine.

It is questionable whether Ukraine’s defense could hold without this support — although it must be noted that Ukraine’s drone technology saw its greatest technological advancement during the war, particularly in later phases.

The old-new U.S. president, Donald Trump, referred to Zelensky during his campaign as a “businessman,” later even as a “dictator without elections.” By early summer, however, the foreign policy establishment once again asserted itself, and the Republican White House reversed course.

So far, Trump has overturned every decision that would have delivered Ukraine into Russia’s hands — within days or weeks. Even the Oval Office quarrel between presidents in February had no real impact on concluding the agreement on joint mineral extraction in the east.

Recently, one of America’s former top diplomats, Ivo Daalder, used the pages of a weekly tied to that same foreign policy establishment — the joint Euro-American magazine Politico.

Are we at war with Russia?

The former U.S. ambassador to NATO published an article in late September titled “Europe Is at War with Russia, Whether It Likes It or Not.” The extensive European support — overall greater than America’s — was mentioned only briefly, while Daalder interpreted alleged Russian drones over Poland and Romania as “signs of Europe’s involvement in the war.”

Similarly, former MI5 director Eliza Manningham-Buller described “Russian cyberattacks” on domestic infrastructure as a European–Russian front. “The United Kingdom could already be at war with Russia,” she said.

It is highly suspicious that these statements come from veterans of institutions typically labeled the “Deep State” or part of the mentioned establishment. At the same time, one wonders how long it will take before certain politicians adopt this new narrative of a “European war with Russia.”

Indeed, there is no war — but also no peace — between Europe and Russia, as Friedrich Merz, a long-time lawyer for investment firm BlackRock, promptly stated. The chancellor, whose past work consisted of enforcing liberal orthodoxy through ESG scoring, quickly embraced the new narrative crafted by “career diplomats” and intelligence agencies.

This new narrative, however, says nothing about the United States’ involvement in the war with Russia. If we see it as part of efforts to reduce the U.S. military presence on the continent, it likely represents Trump’s Pilate-like washing of hands regarding the Russian–Ukrainian war.

That would hardly be surprising, since the Republican views the war in Eastern Europe — one of the most destructive since World War II — as a “problem of his predecessors,” Barack Obama and Joe Biden. For Europe, however, such “involvement” could indeed lead to open hostile actions from Moscow.

It is, however, unlikely that Russian infantry would take part in these potential anti-European operations. Their advance has been characterized by an almost negligible pace, and they are far from the only component of the armed forces — air, drone, cyber, and space warfare are all 21st-century realities.

After subtracting Ukrainian counterattacks, the average territorial gains have varied year by year and month by month. While by December 2022 the Russians had occupied or “liberated” 67,000 to 77,000 square kilometers, by March they controlled as much as 163,000 square kilometers (about 27 percent of Ukraine’s territory). Following counteroffensives and the loss of several regions, Russia’s annual gains dropped to 2,575 square kilometers.

Monthly gains thus fell from around 5,000 square kilometers per month in 2022 to 40–50 during the counteroffensive year, and around 347 per year to 368 per month by July 2025.

Admittedly, this is an analysis from the Gemini model based on data from the neoconservative Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Similar figures — citing the CIA World Factbook database — were also produced by ChatGPT.

A recent report from The New York Times, also published by Štandard and citing Ukraine’s DeepState, claims that Russians have been advancing in recent months at a rate of 440 to 560 square kilometers per month. Yet all analyses agree that the Russians now occupy about one-fifth of Ukrainian territory.

By August, they had finally advanced into another region — Dnipropetrovsk — and, according to Ukrainian intelligence, were preparing for another assault on the Kharkiv region. In the north, around Sumy, the Russians have held their front since the war’s beginning.

Just as Zeno’s tortoise, despite its slowness, ultimately won the race against Achilles, the Russian army will likely win this war — even if the form of that victory has yet to be determined.

Author: Samuel Burda