“What Russia learned in this war is to withdraw”. With undisguised satisfaction and a certain dose of sarcasm, Roman Kostienkoa deputy in the Ukrainian State Duma and a mid-ranking officer in the SBU, the Ukrainian secret services, responded in this way, a few days ago, to the questions of Nastoiashieie Vremia (Current Times), a kyiv-based Russian-language television channel.
And he was right. with the of Kherson it’s already three o’clock withdrawals undertaken by the Kremlin Army since the start of the war in February, first from the environs of kyiv and Chernihiv, in the north of the country, a month after the invasion began, given the losses suffered in men and material and the impossibility of closing a clamp around the capital. Then came the hasty withdrawal, in October, of Russian forces from the northwestern province of Kharkiv, caught off guard and by surprise thanks to an effective decoy and misinformation operation. And finally, this recent withdrawal of all positions on the western bank of the Dnieper rip. With the winter in the making, these are three possible scenarios in which the conflict could evolve in the coming months.
Ukraine continues its offensive, although on other war fronts
After having reaped important and unexpected partial victories In the nine months of war, morale in the Ukrainian Armed Forces and authorities, as well as in the rear, is at its highest. Unlike what happened in the early stages of the invasion, when they only aspired to stop the blowamong the politicians, the military and the citizens of the attacked country, the conviction has spread that the military victory it’s possible. Thus, the kyiv government plans to continue its military offensive, and shows no interest in stopping it. Yes indeed; according to the military logic, the pressure should be transferred to war fronts outside of Kherson, due to the complexity that it would entail for the locals to cross a river bed that, on average, is between half a kilometer and two kilometers wide, exceeding twenty in some sections. “A landing transported from a sea or a river is one of the most complex military operations for an Army; in this case, you have to ford a 500-meter stream under fire from enemy artillery and aviation,” he explains for telephone Mikhailo Samusan expert on military issues at the head of the think tank New Geopolitics Research Network.
The Zaporizhia provinceand more specifically, the town of Melitopol, has many of the numbers to become the new preferred war arena of the conflict, continues Samus. “kyiv does not reveal its plans in advance, but it is most reasonable for it to concentrate its efforts on Melitopol” trying to “reach the Azov Sea” and opening a gap in the land corridor between crimea and the Russian Federation. It would be a “catastrophic” development of events for Russia, since it would leave the occupied Ukrainian peninsula exposed, defenseless and with enormous supply difficulties. The other access route, the Crimean bridge, inaugurated in 2018, was attacked by Ukraine in a daring partisan operation, on October 8, and “it is running with difficulties,” recalls this expert. “We could step foot in Crimea at the end of December. Is that possible? It is possible,” said the Ukrainian deputy defense minister, Volodimir Havrilovto the Sky News network.
With no room to negotiate, Russia and Ukraine agree to a temporary ceasefire
days before the materialized Russian withdrawal of Kherson, the Italian daily the republic released information according to which at the NATO headquarters in Brussels reports were circulating who spoke of the need to push Ukraine towards a negotiation, now that the winds of war are blowing in its favor and it is in a position of strength. Even the chief of the Army General Staff American, Mark Miller, came to pronounce himself in favor of this possibility in a recent interview with CNN. “If the tactical fighting slows down, there could be a window for a political solution, or at least for the start of political solution talks,” she said.
Nicholas of Peteran expert on Russia from the British think tank Institute for Statecraft, sees it as feasible for Ukraine, under pressure from the US, to enter talks with Russia, although he doubts that it will be able to achieve more than “a temporary ceasefire” given the absence of conditions for a genuine deal. Putin “continues in his thirteen” and refuses to review the objectives to which he aspired when he gave the order to attack the neighboring country, De Pedro notes: “He continues to question Ukraine’s right to exist” and “continues to reject the security architecture Europe” of the present century, with the countries of the former Warsaw Pact firmly anchored in NATO, he stresses. “A ceasefire would be nothing more than a pause in an unresolved war,” he values.
To push kyiv to a negotiation that it does not want, the Kremlin counts on “pressure” and “intimidate” the US and Europe with the threat of “nuclear war”, something in which, in its opinion, it is having a “relative success“. Options such as the use of a dirty bomb or an attack with a tactical weapon“although they cannot be ruled out” in the long term, they do not currently constitute “a logical solution” for Putin and his entourage, due “to the risks” that this entails for Moscow, this expert points out.
Russia entrenches itself in its new positions and bets on wearing down Ukraine and the West
Only a couple of days elapsed between the effective withdrawal of the Russian troops and the announcement of the decision, during a televised meeting between Sergei ShoiguMinister of Defense and General Sergei Surovikin, commander of the Kremlin contingent in Ukraine. An unusually rapid withdrawal, and culminated “in a disciplined manner” by the Kremlin forces, in the words of the Ukrainian deputy and lieutenant of the SBU Roman Kostienko. All This leads Ukrainian strategists to think that the military maneuver “had been prepared for a long time” and that the aforementioned interview in Moscow did nothing more than publicize a decision that had been implemented on the ground for some time.
Now, with its soldiers repositioned in an area much less exposed to the enemy, Moscow’s strategy for the coming months will follow two directions, according to analysts in a recent article. Jack Watling and Nick Reynoldsboth senior researchers on issues related to the Land War of the Royal United Services Institute: on the one hand, to try to conclude the deployment on the Ukrainian fronts of hundreds of thousands of reservists recruited during the partial mobilization of October, and on the other, to continue punishing the Ukrainian energy infrastructure, vital for the civilian population to be able to spend the harsh ukrainian winter.
Moscow is aware that the possibility of retaking the initiative in the war and launching a counteroffensive to recover the lost territories next spring depends enormously on the conditions in which it manages to position the fresh troops coming from the territory of the Russian Federation, they agree. military specialists. If the kyiv soldiers manage to inflict draft losses on the newly arrived soldiers, the devalued moral combat Russian soldiers will suffer a new and perhaps decisive blow.
The bombing of energy infrastructure “will make Ukraine more financially dependent on the West,” Watling and Reynolds note. And they also predict that Russia will try to exploit this circumstance with information campaigns in the Allied rearguard to “try to convince audiences” in Europe and the US that “it is better to spend money at home than abroad.”
