“Substantial peace and security talks for Ukraine are Russia’s only chance to lessen the damage caused by its mistakes. time for a meeting. time for talks. Generations will lack time to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video posted on social media. After 24 days of war, Kyiv is ready to withstand the siege. Mariupol in the south on the Sea of Azov is about to fall. For the Ukrainian General Staff, however, Moscow’s forces are still being hampered in all major wartime objectives.
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Will Putin Quit After Conquering Southern Ukraine?
The “best” hypothesis, the least gory but perhaps not the most likely according to many observers and military experts, is that Russia will stop conquering Ukraine’s southern belt, perhaps in exchange for lifting sanctions, gaining recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk, Crimea’s amnesty and Ukraine’s neutrality. But this last point is the most critical: what armaments and defenses will Kyiv have at its disposal in these hours.
In the war in Ukraine, “we will implement all our plans,” Vladimir Putin said yesterday at the disturbing gathering at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium, a traditional event marking the anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. On the ground, Moscow’s strategy is unclear. In the last few hours, Russian forces have launched a new deep attack that hit a target in far western Ukraine. After the attack on the Yavoriv base, a few kilometers from the border with Poland, Lviv airport was attacked yesterday, targeting some of the airport’s facilities used for the maintenance and repair of Ukraine’s Mig-29 Air Force are responsible. The battle for Izium (approx. 45,000 inhabitants) in the Kharkiv Oblast developed into a key battle. Furious fighting has been reported for days, and Russian forces would have arrived in the city center: if the Russian army manages to consolidate control of the Zoma and advance south, it could achieve what analyst Andrea Margelletti calls “the tactical.” goal” defined. to get behind the Ukrainian troops fighting on the borders with the self-proclaimed separatist republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, encircle them in a pocket and block all communication and supply routes with the rest of the country”.
How is the strategy changing and all the mistakes made by Moscow?
How is Moscow’s strategy in Ukraine changing after more than three weeks of war? According to Colonel John “Buss” Barranco, senior US Marine and adviser to the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center, “The Russians were thinking of blitzkrieg and using a puppet government. But now that the project is finished, they are preparing for “guerrilla warfare and the siege of cities”. It would mean a war on the ground of indefinable duration, with an ever-increasing number of casualties among both Ukrainians (military and civilians) and among Russian soldiers, since “air support is almost nil” during battles in cities, between houses.
Barranco has no doubts about the strategic mistakes of Putin and the leaders of the Russian army in Ukraine: “The Russians deployed 150,000 to 190,000 men, they are few, to destroy the Ukrainian armed forces, which have 250,000 active and 200,000 reserves and stuff for eight more years they trained to defend the territory”. The line-up was also unbalanced: Moscow lost the potential between Crimea and Belarus, choosing to strike along four axes, and this without using all available forces.
Three military options in Putin’s hands
Sadly, aside from tremendous progress in the peace negotiations that don’t seem to be around the corner, there are three military options in Putin’s hands, all of which are obviously very dramatic: The first, Barranco explains, is to increase the number of men place to increase; the second is accelerating the siege of cities by cutting off supplies to the Ukrainians; and finally, the most dramatic, “the destruction of entire cities, as in Aleppo and Grozny.” However, Ukraine can count on NATO’s most advanced weapons, and for Barranco this means – in summary – that a kind of “no-fly zone” is in force in Ukraine. “The S-300 systems can hit aircraft flying at high altitudes. Then 56 Ukrainian Mig-29s are deployed. In short, a no-fly zone means that if enemy aircraft are flying, they can be shot down. with fighters , Stingers or S-300s does not change.”
The invasion slows down, Russia suffers very heavy losses (at least 7,000 soldiers died in less than a month of war, the USSR had counted 14,000 dead in ten years of war in Afghanistan), but it does not stop. A war with “the old ways”. The Russians advance more slowly and level everything with artillery. The symbol of this military tactic is the “Stalin hammer”, that is, 203-mm self-propelled batteries, which are now firing at Kharkiv and Sumy. As in the Soviet offensives and as in the Chechen campaign, the armored vehicles only enter the streets after a rain of rockets and cannon fire. Behind them, the infantry entering houses in search of the enemy: in Mariupol, Chechen militiamen are shelling every window a sniper can hide. Phase two of the invasion could last for weeks.
In the background always the same nightmare that would bring death and destruction on a different scale. The most disturbing prediction comes from General Scott Berrier, head of the US military intelligence agency DIA: “As this war and its aftermath slowly diminishes conventional strength, Moscow will gradually rely on nuclear deterrence to show itself strong at home and abroad “. Translated: the use of a tactical nuclear warhead.