A Russian tank near Bakhmout in Donetsk region, Ukraine, November 30, 2022 – Anatolii STEPANOV / AFP
Are we seeing a comeback from Russia almost a month before the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine? Moscow claims it won a victory last week by claiming the capture of the eastern Ukraine town of Soledar, located near Bakhmout, which the Russians have been trying to capture for months. A possible take that led Vladimir Putin on Sunday to say his country was in “a positive momentum” on the front lines.
While Moscow has been suffering from military failures like the Kherson withdrawal for several months, “it would be very dangerous to underestimate Russia,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday.
“Vladimir Putin is planning new offensives and is ready to sacrifice his youth. It has mobilized more than 200,000 fighters and is in the process of acquiring arms from authoritarian regimes like Iran,” he warned.
“Time is running out,” stressed the head of the military alliance and called for more support from Western countries for Ukraine.
A new strategic action awaits
Several observers are expecting a new strong power in Russia, without being able to date him exactly. For the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), an American think tank, “The Kremlin is likely preparing to carry out decisive strategic action over the next six months aimed at regaining the initiative and addressing the current tension in Ukraine to put an end to the operational successes”.
In a Jan. 15 memo, the ISW reports “emerging evidence” showing that the Russian president is “changing fundamental aspects of Russia’s approach to warfare by undertaking several new efforts.”
For example, the think tank reports that “Russia’s military is keeping personnel mobilized for future deployment — a departure from the Kremlin’s initial approach of sending untrained soldiers to the front lines in the fall of 2022.”
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The French Minister for the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, also planned for early January on LCI a “rather grounded counterattack” on the “February-March” horizon, based on the forces mobilized in September.
“It is clear that we will enter a moment of mass formation, when the Russians will throw all their forces into battle,” the minister affirmed, adding that “the first quarter of 2023 will be quite crucial.”
Towards a second mobilization?
For the Ukrainian authorities, this “massification” could be based on a new wave of mobilization in Russia, as the deputy head of the Ukrainian intelligence service Vadym Skibitsky explained in the Guardian last week. The first “partial mobilization” was announced by Vladimir Putin in September and resulted in the enrollment of 300,000 people, according to Russia.
This thesis is also taken into account by the British Ministry of Defence. On January 15, in his daily bulletin on the situation in Ukraine, he considered “it is quite possible that the Russian leadership hopes that changing the age criteria for compulsory military service could strengthen the manpower available for combat in Ukraine, while providing it for the population seems less worrying than the announcement of a new round of the unpopular ‘partial mobilization’ process”.
According to the ministry, the raising of the maximum age for conscription from 27 to 30 years was mentioned in Russia, for example.
Original article published on BFMTV.com