“Crimea will be liberated at the latest next summer”, according to Ben Hodges, who was commander in chief in Europe between 2024 and 2017
The American three-star general in the reserves, Ben Hodges, has been convinced that Ukraine will win the war against Russia throughout 2023 and that it will recover all of its currently occupied territories. “I think Crimea will be liberated at the latest next summer,” the former commander-in-chief of the United States army forces in Europe between 2024 and 2017 told the newspaper ‘Frankfurter Allgemeine’ at his Wiesbaden headquarters.
“If I look at the current moment I see that the situation of the Russians is getting worse every week. It is said that war is a test of will and logistics, and on both points Ukraine is far superior”, declares the soldier with experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, for which “the Russians must lose or they will try again in two or three years again”.
Hodges assures that the Ukrainian forces intend to advance towards the Sea of Azov. “They have time on their side. They don’t have to rush. The Russians are up against the wall there, “says the expert, who highlights that the forces of the invaded country have their sights set on the supply lines of the Russian Army on the Kertsch bridge, which connects Russia with Crimea and was recently the subject of a sabotage, and the Mariupol region.
“I think that the Ukrainian Army has reached an irreversible moment. It is highly impossible for the Russians to turn that dynamic around. For this reason, it is more important that the West maintain its support for Ukraine,” says the US general, who acknowledges having been surprised “by how unprepared the Russians were for the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Kharkov region.”
He assures that Russia began this war with four serious miscalculations: the conviction of a military superiority that would allow them to take kyiv in a few days with their tanks, the idea that the West would no longer respond to the aggression, the high price in casualties, isolation and sanctions that they are paying and finally the belief that they would be able to “kill two flies with one blow, erasing Ukraine from the map and breaking up” the Atlantic Alliance.
centralist structure
“None of that has happened,” says Hodges, for whom the best proof of “the difficulties and frustrations” of the Russian leadership is in the fact that “Putin has appointed a new commander-in-chief for the war,” who , he affirms, will not be able to solve the fundamental problems of the Russian Army, among which it counts “the centralized command structure, corruption for decades, the deficient logistics system and the clear inability to coordinate the operations of the forces of land, sea and air”.
“Since the invasion in February the Russians have not been able to carry out a single integrated operation, luckily. The Russian air force is practically no help to the ground troops and the Black Sea fleet has been hiding since the Ukrainians sank the cruiser Moskva in April, ”says Hodges.
Despite everything, he warns that the Kremlin “will do everything possible to prolong the war and sow fear and insecurity in the West. All means are worth it: calling up young people to serve as cannon fodder and committing attacks on infrastructure in the West. I think that is why in the coming weeks and months we will see more acts of sabotage of this type or at least attempts to commit them ».
He is also convinced that Moscow in no case wants the West to be directly involved in the war: “it is the last thing the Russians want. They know exactly that they would not survive militarily.”
And it also rules out that the threat of the Russian President’s regime, Vladimir Putin, to dip into its nuclear arsenal becomes a reality. “It is highly unlikely, because on the battlefield it would have no effect at all,” says Hodges, for whom “the use of tactical nuclear weapons would offer no military advantage, but would have enormous political consequences for Russia. ç
The same can be said for chemical weapons and other proscribed weapons.” He also warns that, in the event that “the Russians make that fatal mistake”, the West has already prepared a “proportionate and painful” response.
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