After facing logistical problems and violating the manual of military invasions, Vladimir Putin’s forces reach the sixth day of the war in Ukraine in a new stage, potentially more destructive for Kiev.
The appearance of the 64 km long convoy towards the Ukrainian capital and the intensified bombing of Kharkiv, the country’s second largest city, are the symbol of this change.
The local resistance should have problems holding off the assault that is being rehearsed. It’s not that it hasn’t had its moments of glory, despite its over-romanticization in the Western media, but they seem to have derived more from Moscow’s blunders than its intrinsic technical quality.
In November 2020, after the Armenian defeat in the war against Azerbaijan, Russian military analyst Konstantin Makienko of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in Moscow wrote a prophetic text in the Vedomosti newspaper. “The main lesson that Moscow must draw from the tragedy [a Armênia é um aliado indócil russo, e o apoio de Ancara a Baku aumentou a influência turca no Cáucaso] it is never to underestimate the enemy. A condescending and ironic attitude towards the Ukrainian army reigns here,” he said.
“The Ukrainian military already has weapons systems that the Russians do not. Third-generation anti-tank missiles and kamikaze drones. And, soon, the Turkish Bayraktar-TB2 drones,” he added.
Kostia, as he was called by his friends, would not live to see the prophecy come true: he died a year ago. But his warnings were accurate about the difficulties the Russians encountered. But not just these.
Two principles of land invasions were violated by Moscow. The first, that of finality: the most successful operation of its kind in modern warfare, the expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait in the Gulf War (1991), was designed with a single objective. The conflict that took Saddam Hussein out 12 years later, too.
That’s not what you saw now. Putin made it clear from the start what his goal was Kiev: to decapitate Volodymyr Zelensky’s government with minimal civilian damage, in order to likely install an ally that would not face a civil war and maintain support at home.
But their attack was extremely complex, involving the irregular forces of the Donbass, the action towards Kiev by Belarus without apparent coordination with the force coming further from the east and an offensive with divergent courses in the south-east of the country: troops that were supposed to attack Mariupol were divided. in the middle.
The second principle is a corollary of the first: concentration of forces. Despite reaching Kiev’s central streets on the third day of action, it did so with only minimal infiltration by airborne military personnel. This suggests Putin underestimated Kiev, believing that only his arrival in the country would force the surrender of Zelensky, painted in Russia as an American puppet, a real-life version of the TV comedian before he became president, in 2019.
A cornerstone of Russian military doctrine, the massive use of artillery barrages and missiles was not applied in the early stages of the conflict. There have, of course, been stronger attacks like those seen in Kharkiv and Mariupol, but it still doesn’t amount to the “shock and terror” of then US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in Iraq in 2003.
The Russian Air Force has not yet been used decisively, leaving the main work to cruise and ballistic missiles. Only a handful of Su-25 attack planes and perhaps some advanced model Su-34, widely used in the Syrian civil war, were seen in action. Helicopters were only observed taking over Hostomel airport. The idea is to destroy all Ukrainian anti-aircraft defence, and that objective seems close to completion, thus avoiding the embarrassment of seeing aircraft shot down.
The Turkish drones that dominated the 2020 war, as Kostia predicted, did damage. By the last available account, Kiev had received six of them, and at least one Russian tank column was destroyed. The Russians, however, say they have practically slaughtered them all.
“The initial operation was based on dire assumptions about Ukraine’s ability and willingness to fight and an impossible operational concept. Moscow has miscalculated badly. But its forces have not yet entered the war.” wrote on Twitter the American Michael Kofmandirector for Russia of the CNA center.
“There were difficulties, of course. But the degradation of Ukrainian forces is daily. It’s math, after all,” said Konstantin Frolov, a political analyst in Moscow.
On Monday (28th) and Tuesday (1st), the scenario changed. The Kremlin would not put miles of vehicles exposed to air strikes, which shows confidence in its suppression tactic. And the intensification of bombing in Kharkiv, where at least one battery of the TOS-1 thermobaric missile system, almost a weapon of mass destruction, was sent, heralds an escalation. It is not accidental, therefore, the information leaked by the Pentagon to the American media about the renewed action of the Kremlin.
More importantly, it appears that the supply lines have been regularized. This is a problem inherent in any land operation: the Nazis lost their conquest of Moscow because they ran out of gasoline, ammunition and food outside the Soviet capital in 1941.
In 1991, the famous “100 hours war” of the US against Saddam only didn’t lose the title because US soldiers were made of tanker truck drivers to carry fuel for the exhausted 1st Armored Division towards Baghdad.
What stands now is cross-calculation with the clock ticking against the Kremlin, pressed on all sides by economic and political sanctions. With the diplomatic channel open well or badly in Gomel, Belarus, the Russians can still count on some chance of Ukrainian surrender.
Promises of military aid from NATO’s neighbors do not seem to materialize with the speed to change the war: if Kiev does receive any fighter jets, it will not be in sufficient numbers to change the course of action.
But Zelensky seems pretty steadfast in his role as an advocate, given the support he receives in the West. Kofman and Frolov agree on this: Kiev has a huge advantage in the media war, which is no small feat in the world of social media. While the Kremlin basically tries to hide the war at home, forbidding even TVs to call the conflict that way, Zelensky has the upper hand around the world.
Does Putin care about that? As long as his internal position is not threatened, it seems not. But protracted intervention carries increasing risks that its fiery rhetoric of nuclear war and confrontation with NATO indicates.
The relative low number of civilian casualties, central to the Russian given the interconnectedness between his people and the Ukrainians, will also not stay that way if he uses a heavy hand while withholding the initiative to subjugate Ukraine or find an intermediate scenario to keep the country divided. and outside the orbit of the West.
