The war in Ukraine began to change, from a military point of view and of asymmetric conflict, this Saturday (26), the third day of the attack initiated by Russia.
In the most classic sense, Vladimir Putin began moving heavier equipment in the northeastern region of the country, hinting at a major assault on the largest city in the region, Kharkiv.
Through images recorded by cell phones and the CNN TV network, two developments became clear. First, columns of tanks, armored vehicles, trucks and self-propelled howitzers were seen entering a large column from the Belgorod region to the outskirts of Kharkiv.
They are siege and attack equipment. So far, the bulk of the bombing of the city has been done with multiple rocket launchers based on Russian soil.
More worrying, from a risk point of view for the civilian population, was the image recorded on a road from a TOS-1 system. It is a brutal strike weapon, which uses explosives considered the worst thing before a military nuclear warhead.
In this case, thermobaric rockets, which use the principle of creating a great vacuum, sucking all the oxygen around them, and exploding in a fireball much longer and more intense than conventional bombs. It is the same base as the so-called American Mother of All Bombs, and its Russian rival, the Father of All Bombs.
TOS-1 was developed in the 1970s and 1980s and used in the war in Afghanistan, Soviet occupation version (1979-89). If Russia intends to use the weapons, it is not good news for those on the other side.
This all took place around Kharkiv. According to the Pentagon leaked to American reporters, the offensive mounted there seems more powerful than the one around Kiev, even though the capture of the capital and the capitulation of the government are primary objectives.
But it raises doubts about the day after an eventual Russian victory in this war, as the Kremlin has been denying that it wants a military occupation of its neighbour, otherwise an expensive and exhausting proposition. It’s easier to support pro-Russian factions in the country’s politics or simply break it up to Putin’s liking.
Naturally, the Russians need to win first. Despite Western propaganda about Ukrainian resistance and the fact that the advance into central Kiev was apparently restricted to vanguard forces, Moscow has the heaviest hand in the conflict.
It is unknown if it will be used, and this is where a weapon like the TOS-1 comes in as a destabilizing factor. Meanwhile, the little data available, all of which are contradictory, suggest that Ukrainians held back Putin’s momentum around the capital, but Russian action was not massive. Ukraine needs armor-barrier weapons, but also the anti-aircraft systems that NATO promises to provide.
On the other hand, Russia began to receive attacks on a front where many analysts say they are worried about the power of escalation: cybersecurity. This Saturday, the hacker group Anonymous called for itself to take down or degrade ten websites linked to the Russian government, including the Kremlin.
They were minor problems, but symbolic for hitting a country considered to be quite advanced in the art of cyber warfare.
On Friday (25), the secretary general of NATO (Western military alliance), the Norwegian, Jens Stoltenberg, said that a cyberattack on any of its 30 members could constitute a case of invoking Article 5 of the group’s founding letter. In other words, collective defense.
It’s a very fluid border. A reporter asked Stoltenberg whether a blackout in Poland, for example, would set this up. And whether the answer would be military or cyber, proportionate. He did not answer.
Russian military doctrine, in turn, considers that a cyber attack that threatens strategic sectors of the country, in an existential sense as in the case of nuclear plants, can be responded to with the use of atomic weapons, including.
Hypothetically, all this leaves open a very wide field of interpretation, which the notion of military responses equivalent to aggression alone does not cover.
