As bombing intensifies around Kiev and Kharkiv, Ukraine’s two main cities, Russian forces begin to redraw the map of the neighboring country with the capture of Kherson, in the south of the country.
The announcement was made by the Ministry of Defense in Moscow and, so far, has not been denied by Kiev. Kherson spent about 24 hours under heavy bombardment, which must have resulted in high civilian casualties, thus giving a measure of what a siege brewing around the capital threatens.
It is the first center of reasonable size that Vladimir Putin took in his campaign, which began at dawn on the 24th. With 300,000 inhabitants before the war, it is the main point north of the Crimean peninsula, annexed without conflict by the Russian president in 2014.
With the control extended by the pro-Russian separatists, in civil war since that year, to the historic areas of the so-called Donbass, all that remains is the conquest of the Mariupol region to establish a land bridge linking Crimea to Russian eastern Ukraine.
Until before the war, Russia’s only land access to the annexed area was the massive Crimean road-rail bridge, inaugurated by Putin at the wheel of a truck in 2018. But the peninsula struggled, with its access to fresh water cut off by Ukraine — the Russian troops have now blown up the dam that impeded the supply.
Mariupol is to the northwest, 150 km from the main southern Russian city, Rostov-on-Don. It was attacked from the first day of the war, and is an important port on the Sea of ​​Azov, a minor division of the Black Sea. Almost 90% of the world’s production of neon gas passes through there, for example.
THE sheet managed a quick contact with a resident of the city this Wednesday morning (2), already almost noon there. He, who did not allow himself to be identified, said that his family managed to flee to Rostov-do-Don on Friday (25), when the bombings had just begun.
According to his account, the city has intermittent communication, explosions from all sides and residents, hiding in basements and shelters. Nobody really knows what’s going on, but guesses the Russians are about to take it.
If it falls, the whole region goes together and the bridge will be formed. This is the dream of the most radical Russian nationalists who, in 2014, wanted Putin to annex Donbass and do exactly what he seems to be doing now, creating a fantasy region called Novarossia, or New Russia.
At the time, the president was content with the annexation of Crimea, otherwise a region that is historically part of Russia, and with fomenting the civil war that kept Ukraine from viability as a full state. Therefore, prevented from entering NATO (western military alliance) and the European Union.
These are Putin’s two strategic goals, for which he has mobilized nearly 200,000 of his 900,000 troops in four months around his neighbor. He demanded that the United States, as the lead country of the West, commit not to expand NATO, its geopolitical obsession since Washington betrayed promises to maintain some balance in Europe after the end of the Soviet Union.
Obviously this would be unacceptable, and the West began to denounce the invasion. Practically all the most thoughtful analysts did not believe in the possibility, given that it would be illogical for Putin to employ brutality against the people who claim to be the Russian’s brother.
“I concluded that the invasion was a bluff created for the opportunity of a soft blow. [contra a Ucrânia]. I didn’t attack my own theory, I failed to see its weakness. I ignored data contrary to my position. I’m sorry,” wrote the pope of American geopolitics, George Friedman, to his clients at the consultancy Geopolitical Futures.
To the north, the night continued a routine of isolated attacks on positions around Kiev and Kharkiv, with a growing report of civilian casualties. The notion that a substantial siege, rather than the shoot-and-run attacks of the first phase of the war, is brewing around the capital is crystallizing.
Whether it is to actually use all the firepower at its disposal, obliterating Kiev as the Nazis did in 1941, or to try to force the government to surrender, is in doubt. The country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has again said that he will resist and that he expects a brutal attack in the coming hours or days.
The Pentagon told American reporters that the large armored column heading from Belarus toward Kiev is still at a standstill, but at this point it seems more a sign of preparedness than logistical fuel problems. The Russian Defense Ministry said the lines on its four fronts were in order.
What the portfolio did not respond to, nor the Kremlin, was about the obvious Russian casualties. Zelensky speaks of 6,000 dead, which is impossible to quantify, but Moscow only confirms that there are casualties. On the Ukrainian civilian side, the numbers are in the hundreds, but could be more.
The negotiation channel between Moscow and Kiev remains uncertain. After a meeting in Belarus on Monday (28), the two sides were due to speak this Wednesday. The Kremlin first said there would be no new date yet, then there could be talk this afternoon.
Ukraine suspects the Russians are only buying time. Its chief negotiator, for example, is Vladimir Medinski, a former Minister of Culture with no experience in diplomacy and conflict.
In the economic field, the pressure on Moscow is only increasing. This Wednesday, the largest bank in the country had to close its activities in Europe. The day before, the company formed in Switzerland to manage the contracts for the Nord Stream 2 mega-gas pipeline, which was suspended by Germany in retaliation despite Germany’s dependence on Russian natural gas, went bankrupt.
