Et could actually be the first hint of a turning point. On Friday afternoon, Sergey Rudskoy, Deputy Chairman of the Russian General Staff, announced that the future focus of the Russian army will be on the “liberation” of Donbass. Of course, Rudskoy did not want this to be understood as an admission that the Kremlin had failed with its broad-based attack on the entire Ukraine. “On the whole, the basic tasks of the first stage of the operation have been completed,” Rudskoy said, according to the Interfax agency.
But from Ruskoj’s further remarks there are indications that the Kremlin may be in the process of changing its strategy and redefining its goals. Initially, in addition to the liberation of the entire Donbass and the prevention of the alleged “genocide” against the Russian-speaking population, they were aimed at the “demilitarization” and “denazification” of Ukraine, i.e. the replacement of the government in Kyiv.
In view of the current military situation, it seems unlikely that Russia will actually be able to take the Ukrainian capital and replace President Volodymyr Zelensy with a Moscow-based puppet. The Russian invasion troops have been stuck in a trench warfare outside the capital for weeks. In the last few days, Ukrainian units have even managed to counter-offensive in several places. According to British sources, they forced the Russian attackers east of Kyiv to retreat up to 35 kilometers.
From the outset, Ukraine also managed to disrupt the Russian supply of logistics and supplies for the soldiers through targeted attacks – which significantly hindered the Russian forces and limited their radius of action. Above all, Western military experts say unanimously that the Russians simply lack the strength to take a city like Kyiv in house-to-house combat. This would probably require tens of thousands of infantrymen, and 500,000 Russian troops are expected to occupy the entire Ukraine – a multiple of the previous invasion force.
In other cities, too, the military situation does not look good for Moscow. Ukraine has since acknowledged that Russia has been “partially successful” in securing the land bridge from Crimea to the separatist areas of Donbass. Russian troops also took control of the town of Slavutych near Chernobyl in the north. However, several sources report a counter-offensive by Ukraine in Kherson at the mouth of the Dnipro. Cherson was the first major city that Russia was able to take. A strategically important bridge is located here, which is of great importance for the supply of the Crimea and the connection to the west. In addition, the Ukrainian forces could encircle the Russian invasion troops there, which have already advanced north-west of Cherson in the direction of Odessa to Mykolaiv.
Moscow’s goal of “demilitarization” achieved?
A change of government in Kyiv forced by Moscow is therefore a long way off. On Friday, Rudskoj therefore did not go any further into the government in Kyiv, which was described as “Nazis”. Instead, he pointed out that the combat potential of the Ukrainian armed forces had been “significantly reduced”. Kremlin propaganda could sell this as achieving the goal of Ukraine being “demilitarized” enough to no longer pose a “threat” to Russia or the people of Donbass. Possibly that would be – with the conquest of the entire Donbass and the adjoining areas – a face-saving way out for Putin.
Whether Russia will actually change its strategy and actually give up the costly, bloody battle for the cities in the north and north-east of Ukraine cannot be said. Rudskoy said Friday that “special operations,” as the Kremlin calls the war, would continue until the tasks set by Putin were fully accomplished. “Originally, we did not plan to storm (the big cities) to prevent destruction and minimize casualties among soldiers and civilians,” Rudskoy said. But this can no longer be ruled out.
Just a distraction?
One possibility is always that the supposed concentration on the Donbass is a diversionary maneuver in order to reorganize the forces and then to take action against Kyiv again. In recent days there have been increasing reports that Russia is withdrawing individual units that had suffered particularly high losses across the border – possibly to regroup them.
But even if Russia were to redefine its goals and confine itself to conquests in south-eastern Ukraine, that would hardly mean an end to the war. Because such a partial peace would be difficult to enforce in Ukraine. Not only do most people there say that handing them over to Putin’s “fascist” state would be a betrayal of the brothers and sisters in the Russian-occupied territories. Even before the Russian invasion, the accounts of the many refugees fleeing the separatist regime in Donbass shaped the Ukrainian public.
Above all, however, people have drawn another conclusion from the eight years of war in the Donbass: that a ceasefire with Putin would not be the end of the war. In Ukraine, Putin is convinced that he will always fuel the conflict as soon as he has the strength to do so.
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