The premise of what we are about to write is that if you look at this map, you will be misled into thinking that since February 24, Ukrainians have lost almost a fifth of their territory, despite exceptional resistance to the Russian invasion .
You are wrong, Putin, who keeps repeating that Russians and Ukrainians have lived together like brothers for centuries. Not as brothers, we prefer to say, but as comrades! Yes, because Ukrainians grew up militarily in the old Russian school, the one that teaches not to waste scarce resources to keep territories objectively untenable, the one that invites the external aggressor to advance so that its supply lines become untenable, and finally the one , which allows you to lose cities, which are symbols to a westerner, but to a military strategist of Tsarist Russia or the Soviet Union just tools to wear down the enemy’s forces as they advance. However, the Kiev troops have added what Moscow lacks:
available and rapidly available external partners with technologically advanced ammunition, equipment and weapon systems,
a railway network built in Soviet times to withstand a siege (albeit from the West and not the East),
a reformed military organization to be efficient, if not necessarily lean,
of the armed forces military and paramilitary in plentiful and welltrained numbers, often by NATO standards.
To this we must add that Moscow suffers from the handicap of a centralized and authoritarian leadership that often holds grudges, does not admit its mistakes and constantly looks for culprits to punish. In short, the Russians have a gearupandgostyle boss, the Ukrainians have a team to lead them.
The mad general
We have said that Putin never stops seeking responsibility for his failures. It will be a coincidence that the “loyal” Shoigu has not appeared in public for almost two weeks, rumors are circulating about his heart disease and, when he appears on a conference call with the Kremlin, in a video several weeks are old . Above all, he leads Westerners to believe that the Pentagon knows everything in detail and in advance about Russian operations thanks to the FSB’s leaks, while those who had a direct link to Washington until last February were he and his associates. Along with joint chief of staff Gerazimov, the defense minister seems more interested in associating his image with the failure of a raid on Kyiv and the cities of eastern Ukraine than with the work of butchers his subordinates perform imagine, in this one last period under Putin’s direct orders.
Ethnic cleansing underway?
One hundred thousand in Mariupol, two hundred thousand in Kherson. Ukrainian civilians find themselves between the feet of the Kremlin’s “butchers,” helping defend the “City of Mary,” and protesting every day in the city north of Crimea. There are rumors of an impending deportation of both populations across the Russian border to punish the Russianspeaking population’s persistent resistance to the “liberation campaign” led by Moscow’s older brother. Recall that less than two months ago, Russia passed rather worrying laws on mass burials and relocation of populations from one territory to another. Below is the guise of the law and a childish but effective description of how up to 800,000 bodies can be buried.
Mariupol: the occupation of the besieged in a city destined to fall
It erases the graffiti on the walls of Moscow’s fifth column in recent months: they are not signs of rocket attacks or artillery attacks, but they do indicate easy ways to penetrate the heart of the city. Make use of any rubble: a standing building is useless and, with the surrounding roads, facilitates the passage of tanks and their cannonades; A collapsed building with streets strewn with debris remains an impassable barrier for railroad cars in the 21st century, especially when the war is reminiscent of that of the early 20th century. Spend the months leading up to the conflict training your troops and volunteers, collecting supplies of water and food not in large storage sites but in a thousand different locations, collecting ammunition and weapons for a long siege and for modern urban warfare. After that, wait for the enemy to advance. Keep him busy for weeks, if possible months. Distract him with token targets that won’t do you any good but could cost him a battalion in a matter of hours. Take advantage of the fact that the enemy often does not follow the basic rules of war, but is arranged in a column, perhaps behind a menacing TOS1, and forget that a deadly weapon that only fires in one direction and has three unguarded flanks has, this is not crucial. . Don’t waste shots: sinking a ship with clues or destroying a groundbased helicopter squad counts as taking down a general. If not more. Train dozens of snipers, because even on the day the last fighter is eliminated, they will continue to bleed the invader dry. Don’t even think about whether you’re Chechens or Russians: billionaire Kadyrov makes more noise in the newspapers than on the square. Repeat all this every day and, like the divisions that covered the Dunkirk retreat, don’t even think about the possibility of being saved: your enemies’ goal is to take your country, you just have to take their lives.
Kyiv: lost one offensive, made another
We are under no illusions: the cost of human life for the armed forces of all former Soviet states is less than the cost of bullets. That goes for the Russian attackers and, albeit with limitations, for the Ukrainian defenders. Troops and officers are cannon fodder and they know it well: they’ve been trained not to care. For this reason, the Russian General Staff, as is increasingly reflected in the media, traditionally does not invest in nutrition, quality of life, security of resources or even in improving the medical care of its fighters. So, as soon as a strength of constancy on 6070 km of vehicles and men in a column has been reduced to a flicker, they are preparing to launch another one on Kyiv. It will come from Belarus again, and maybe it will also be soldiers from Minsk, led by Russian officers and noncommissioned officers, because you never know that once they enter Ukrainian territory, they will surrender to the enemy to avoid fighting. The offensive will be preceded by bombings comparable to those on Mariupol, because the Kremlin certainly does not care about the architectural and artistic masterpieces kept in the Ukrainian capital. If Washington can timely deliver effective missile defense systems to Kyiv, the story of Mariupol, which was effectively reduced to rubble, will not repeat itself. As for the overland advance, the wide ravine south of the Antonov airport, the city of Chernihiv and the Brovary region are still waiting to be stormed. Perhaps the Russians will succeed this time. Or maybe not. As for the missiles, between 50 and 60% of Russian missiles seem to miss the target: under these conditions they will fill the streets with debris, as the Ukrainian defenders cynically (but realistically) wish.
attack on the west
And if the troops of Minsk integrated by Russian men and means and those of Transnistria were fired in a pincer maneuver across western Ukraine from the north (southeast) and south (northwest), for cut off supplies from the Polish border to Kyiv? If Guderian drove them and the distance between the two extremes was no more than 700km, all within the most hostile and densely populated area of Ukraine, it might as well work. However, in order to descend from Brest, where the southern army of Belarus is located, to the Lusk Oblast, you can only cross two or three gorges, where the orography does not play in the attackers’ favor. The case of the northnorthwest incursion from Transnistria is different: it could advance far enough to create an obstacle even if it risked being sacked and faced with unsustainable supply lines. Moldova’s Russian separatists could also be directed southeast toward Odessa. However, the city has excellent artillery to defend it.
Attack on Poland
When we get to the period between May 1st and May 9th, the Labor Day and the anniversary of the Victory in World War II, when the Russians have not permanently occupied Kyiv, the Ukrainians will still have sufficient combat capabilities to defeat the armed forces Inflicting significant damage on Moscow, the Kremlin could decide to extend the war to Poland and hit bases on the PolandUkraine border with conventional missiles or tactical nuclear warheads. Yes, this would escalate the conflict and lead to a NATO reaction. However, Putin is likely to believe that this reaction would not be directed against Russia, so as not to trigger a nuclear war, but would only affect the territory of Ukraine and possibly Belarus. Domestically, an escalation of the conflict could justify the deadly measures and the continued existence of censorship and the continued use of tactical nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory in order to persuade the Kyiv government to surrender.
Before we conclude, let’s not forget that regardless of sanctions, Russia also has borders associated with the country’s economy. A comparative analysis speaks volumes about the Eurasian giant’s weaknesses:
the federal budget is as large as that of Spain, i.e. a fifteenth of the United States, a ninth of the People’s Republic of China and a quarter of Germany,
military spending is thirteen and four times lower than in Washington and Beijing,
Russia’s GDP is lower than Italy, Canada and South Korea: although less than a third of Russia’s population lives there, Spain’s GDP is only 10% lower,
Russia’s GDP per capita is lower than that of mainland China, Romania and Iran, more or less like that of Bulgaria, i.e. the poorest country in the European Union: Referring only to Russia’s “showcase”, i.e. Moscow, the Per capita GDP The GDP of Russia’s capital oblast is comparable to that of Montenegro, while many provinces do not reach the “wealth” of Djibouti and Bhutan,
the life expectancy of an adult male in Russia is lower than in Moldova, Guatemala and Nepal, almost 14 years lower than in Italy,
the Russian government’s per capita health expenditure is lower than in Bulgaria, Montenegro and Romania,
The Russian government provides these services and investments to a population of 145 million, the ninth largest in the world.
The conclusion of our reasoning is that in the next 56 weeks the war should shift from the southeast quadrant to the north and west, given Moscow’s dual mission to capture the Ukrainian capital and halt supplies. Unless major goals are achieved and Putin’s leadership survives, the escalation of the war will be inevitable.