The Russian invasion of Ukraine completes a month of transformation, with all actors involved seeking to position themselves against the prospect of a more protracted war, while seeking to increase the pressure against the adversary.
When the first missiles hit Ukrainian territory in the early hours of February 24 (late night on the 23rd in Brasilia), anyone who was not in disbelief to see Vladimir Putin turn four months of supposed bluff into reality began to share the Western certainty about a war. soon.
In fact, within two days there were already Russian commandos acting on the outskirts of Kiev, the capital of the country that Moscow wants to see subjugated and outside the western zone of influence, notably with no chance of joining the NATO military alliance.
The most common reading among analysts is that the complex offensive was intended to force a capitulation of Volodymyr Zelensky’s government without much bloodshed. That’s not what happened.
Obviously, nobody knows what the real Russian military planning is. Putin may, against all expectations, want to turn Ukraine into an occupied land. Or he just had, it seems, had to readjust his tactics. But this is now, a month in time.
When it invaded, Russia made mistakes, some crass ones. The main thing was not to have made a concentrated attack of forces, dividing into several fronts with sometimes competing objectives. Actions such as airborne assault by helicopter in hostile terrain multiplied, with disastrous results. Moscow barely risks its Air Force, either out of fear or future necessity.
That said, your campaign advanced as such, that is, a movement of troops and equipment pursuing primary and secondary objectives. Over the weeks, however, the military definition that forms is another: war of attrition.
The main example of this is Mariupol, a port on the Sea of ​​Azov that suffered the most brutal siege of this war. There, the full weight of Russian artillery was applied to the city and, as it did in the Syrian civil war in Aleppo, Moscow opened corridors to try to get rid of the residents.
Nine out of the war crime charges on the way, it looks like the city will fall. If that happens, a secondary objective for the Kremlin is consolidated, which is the land bridge between the Donbass (pro-Russian separatist east) and the Crimea annexed in 2014.
This will make it possible to resume the pace of the campaign if there is reinforcement, something that takes weeks, from the entire southern flank. From this it can be inferred that the attacks on Mikolaiv and Odessa will gain momentum, perhaps allowing an amphibious landing if there are enough troops to make the connection ashore.
More importantly, such a situation could allow for a fight against Ukrainian Armed Forces units west of Donbass, seeking a pincer movement with forces to the north and separatist regiments from Lugansk and Donetsk. That would force another war of attrition or the flight of these elements to try to protect Kiev.
For now, friction is brewing, and there are reports of Russian forces taking defensive positions. But time is in Putin’s favor, who has expanded his power at home and shifted the power equation with the elites that supported him. Meanwhile, negotiations remain open, but without progress.
With all the problems except that there is a military collapse or a palace coup now only in the house of Western magical thinking, Russia still has vast reserves of personnel and weapons. It’s bleeding hard in Ukraine, but Kiev doesn’t have the same strength-resetting capabilities.
Perhaps, and it is good to emphasize the perhaps, this is the Russian calculation now. With Western sanctions having taken their toll in psychological terms and gradually being priced in, not least because they have not really reached the heart of the oil and gas industry that feeds the same Europe that condemns the Kremlin, Putin maintains his position.
Not that it’s a painless process. His chancellor, Sergei Lavrov, said on Wednesday (23) that he did not expect what he called a “robbery from the West”. “When the Central Bank’s reserves were frozen, no one among those who made predictions would have imagined that sanctions like these would be applied,” he said.
The West, for its part, also fears that the pace of stalemate will favor Putin. This Thursday (24), he can take a decisive step depending on the caliber of the announcement he will make about the crisis.
According to US President Joe Biden, who will go to Europe, there will be more sanctions to be combined with the European Union and the G7, the rich club that was once the G8 with Russia. Whether they will reach hydrocarbons remains to be seen, as the issue divides Europeans.
The issue of refugees, 3.5 million out of 6.5 million internally displaced in Ukraine (23% of the country as a whole), is also starting to cause discomfort to the most reticent members of the EU, such as Hungary. All these divisions fit Putin’s claims on European blocs.
But the biggest expectation is about the NATO meeting in Brussels, where the US will accuse Russia of war crimes. So far, the alliance has guaranteed Zelensky’s guerrilla warfare by providing anti-tank and anti-aircraft portable weapons, although the Ukrainian complains with every speech on the Internet or via videos to parliaments around the world.
But NATO refused anything resembling an act of war: seeking to close off airspace or provide offensive weapons.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ So Polish MiG-29 fighters remain with Warsaw, and there has not been an influx of long-range anti-aircraft batteries to Kiev. Maybe something will happen. But it was up to the Americans to add another point: the meeting should establish how NATO should react if Putin uses a nuclear, chemical or biological weapon.
A current speculation in the currently silenced Russian military means, fearing the repression that affects everyone who talks about the “special military operation” in the country, is that Warsaw could send a peacekeeping force to the territories of western Ukraine, and the government from Kiev would move to the capital of those areas, Lviv.
How to do this without starting World War III is another matter. But the pressure is on to adopt a protocol for the contingency, betting that all Putin’s bravado about punishing anyone who meddles in his war with nuclear weapons is just that.
There is still room, in the Western reaction, to try to put the bell further on the neck of Xi Jinping’s China, a Putin ally who does not condemn the war but officially rejects giving any economic or military support to Moscow. With an eye on the spoils of the crisis, Beijing might also have counted on a quick Russian victory and is now seeking utmost caution.
But on Thursday, Norwegian NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Beijing was supporting Putin politically, using “blatant lies”. With Biden’s appetite to stay focused on his long-term, strategic rival, it’s predictable that more accusations will follow.
The Western rush is also due to the growing fear that the cracks in the fabric that united countries against Putin will begin to become cracks, and that the price of adopting the sanctions regime will begin to be felt more in their own economies – in addition to hydrocarbons. , fertilizers that have in Russia a major producer are already at the highest prices in history, which affects the entire food chain in the world.
Meanwhile, Death follows his tour of Ukrainian countryside and cities. There is no reliable data on the cost of the war, but the thousands are credible. They add to the 14,000 who had died since 2014, when Putin reacted to the fall of a friendly government in Kiev with annexation and civil war in Donbass.
