After 200 days of war, the Ukrainian Army has caused a real turning point in the development of the conflict by recovering 3,000 square kilometers in the Kharkov region and to a lesser extent in the Kherson area. Although Russia has unnecessarily presented the withdrawal of its troops as a movement aimed at concentrating resources in Donetsk and on the Mariupol route, the Ukrainian offensive has put the Russian Army out of its positions on the front thanks to the use of state-of-the-art material sent by NATO partners, an even more resounding defeat than the Russian withdrawal on several fronts after its failure in kyiv. Added to the initial miscalculation by Vladimir Putin is the disastrous planning of the war by the Russian generals and the deficiencies that the fighting has shown in the logistics, organization and quality of the weapons of an Army undermined by the corruption.
What is absolutely certain is that not even the most pessimistic of the generals feared a counteroffensive like this one. The initial plans were a revival of Budapest in 1956 or Prague in 1968; a military walk to kyiv, the dismantling of the Ukrainian regime and the proclamation of a puppet government. Later, the occupation of eastern and southern Ukraine as far as Odessa. No one in the Kremlin thought that there could be a prolonged stalemate on the fronts or an effective counterattack from Ukraine. And no one glimpsed the scope and effectiveness that the Western reaction would have to help Ukraine as it has occurred.
What now remains to be seen is whether such a change in the front favors in the long run the opening of negotiations between the contenders, even through an intervening power, or exactly the opposite happens and the intensification of the combats for the exploitation of success, by Ukraine, and to recover lost ground, by Russia, lead to a new version of the pendulum war, with advances and setbacks extremely costly in lives and property but insufficient to decide the fate of the conflict. That the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, has not ruled out negotiating, with all the precautions required by the situation, is a first indication that something can move; Putin’s defiant behavior during the military exercises held in the extreme east of Siberia suggests the opposite. Nor do they seem to be able to count on an intensification of the involvement in the war by NATO and the EU, to the point of appearing in the eyes of Putin as direct belligerents in the conflict, nor on the spread of discontent in the rear or the Russian ranks.
In the Kremlin’s strategy to break the unity of Ukraine’s allies, it continues to be essential to cause the greatest possible damage to their economies, Putin’s entourage convinced that in deliberative regimes such as the European ones, with a very important specific weight of public opinion , the tightness forecast for next winter will fracture the EU. But it is a fact that the damage that the Russian economy must face, not to mention the setbacks of its Army, are also enormous, although Moscow denies it, and it is not by chance that some oligarchs are beginning to fear for the fate of their businesses. Putin can boast in public that Western sanctions have not substantially damaged the country’s GDP, but all estimates point to the exact opposite.