Ukraine War: The “Rasputitsa” could shake up Russia’s plans. A weather expert is now forecasting the phenomenon for the coming days.
USA/Ukraine – “The beginning of spring is a bad time to invade Ukraine,” wrote political scientist Spencer Meredith a few days before the bloody escalation of the Ukraine conflict. That the factor climate US political scientist Jason Lyall from Dartmouth University is also convinced that “one of Ukraine’s greatest trump cards over Russia’s military superiority.”
Because the beginning of spring is called “Rasputitsa” in Ukrainian and Russian and means “time of the roadlessness” and means those weeks when the weather goes crazy and heavy rains in autumn or the thaw in spring turn the earth into deep mud.
War in Ukraine: Rasputitsa weather phenomenon could make it more difficult for troops to advance
According to ntv weather expert Björn Alexander, this is exactly what is now possible for the coming days: “The temperatures in Kyiv, for example, will almost consistently reach well over 10 degrees in the next few days,” he says. The rising temperatures would bring heavy rain showers with 30 to 50 liters of precipitation per square meter, in addition to the onset of thaw.
Particularly heavy precipitation is expected in northern Ukraine in particular, and only in the south in mid-April, which then coincides with the thaw. “This should also soften the soil and make the terrain even more difficult to pass,” he says.
Due to the special geography, the rasputitsa is a well-known phenomenon in the fertile black earth areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. It could play a decisive role in the further course of the Russian war of aggression.
As rising temperatures and rain make the ground muddy, “operations must be shifted to the asphalt of the roads and paths,” writes military historian Michel Goya in the French journal Le Grand Continent. The troops would then have to advance in columns along the thoroughfares where they could be more easily attacked.
Ukraine war: “There have already been situations where Russian tanks got stuck”
“There have already been many situations where Russian tanks and other vehicles drove across the fields and got stuck. The soldiers were forced to leave them and continue on foot,” says Ukrainian military analyst Mykola Beleskov. “This problem will only get worse.”
Military experts agree that the invasion of Russian President Vladimir Putin will be stalled by the Rasputitsa. “The weather is not working for Putin,” writes military historian Cédric Mas on Twitter. And the Ukrainian Beleskov prophesies: the Russian troops “will be glued to the ground”. You can read more about the events of the Ukraine war in our news ticker. (dpa/kat)
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