Russians have a word for the period between winter and spring when the snow melts and everything turns to mud. “Rasputitsa” is derived from rasputye, a crossroads, and has been translated as “when roads stop existing”. The Ukrainians call it “bezdorizhzhya” and this year it coincided with the Russian invasion.
The muddy conditions, which make travel difficult or impossible on unpaved roads, are caused by heavy clay soil and poor drainage, and are a fact of life in Ukraine, Belarus and parts of Russia. A second muddy season arrives later with the heavy autumn rains.
The mud season has had a significant effect on the Russian invasion, causing columns of trucks and armoured vehicles to stick to paved roads. Those that have ventured offroad frequently got stuck, in extreme cases tanks sinking up to their turrets in mud. These problems forced the Russian army to abandon many vehicles, later to be recovered by Ukrainian farmers with tractors. Ukraine now claims to have more tanks than it did before the invasion.
The Russians know all about the mud season, which slowed down the German invasion during the second world war, and planned a lightning strike down main highways to Kyiv to avoid its effects. However, determined Ukrainian resistance forced the Russian assault offroad and into a quagmire.
• The picture caption was amended on 12 April 2022 because an earlier version misidentified the military vehicle as a tank, when it is a self-propelled gun.
