The Russian military has stepped on the accelerator to achieve strategic victories in Ukraine this summer. The main objective, as indicated last April by Oleksander Sirski, commander in chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, is to take Chasiv Yar, in the province of Donetsk. But the invading forces have other cards on the table. In addition to Chasiv Yar, modest progress has been made this spring in the direction of the town of Pokrovsk, also in Donetsk province, in Robotine, on the Zaporizhia front, and in the cities of Vovchansk and Kupiansk, both in Kharkiv province .
Russian progress is slow but constant, following a tactic of attrition of the Ukrainian defenses. Its superiority in the number of troops and weapons, in addition to its control of airspace, has allowed Moscow to expand the war front by 70 kilometers, according to Sirski said this Friday, and put Ukrainian resources to the limit. “The enemy wants us to use more brigades in reserve [en la zona norte de Járkov]”the Ukrainian commander-in-chief wrote in a statement. The intelligence services of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (GUR) warn that the enemy may also open new fronts in the north, in the province of Sumi.
Kirilo Budanov, head of the GUR, has reiterated in recent days that Russia wants to take advantage of a window of opportunity, until June, to launch a major summer offensive, the weeks that the Ukrainian Armed Forces will take to receive smoothly and in large quantities of new American weapons. The president, Volodymyr Zelensky, insists that his NATO partners provide him with enough weapons to resist, but not to expel the invader.
EL PAÍS visited the Sumi border region with Russia at the beginning of May and saw the work being done against the clock to build new kilometer-long defense fortifications. Also in Kozacha Lopan, on Kharkiv’s border with Russia, the invader’s artillery is intensifying its fire and alarms are growing about a possible ground attack. These territories were occupied by Russia at the beginning of the invasion, in February 2022, and were not liberated until the Ukrainian counteroffensive in September of that year.
This 2024 has been marked by a serious deficit in artillery ammunition and troops on the Ukrainian side. Depending on the front, Russia has had between six and 10 times more shells than Ukraine. Not only this: a significant change compared to 2023 is Russian air dominance, both in the number of drones and in the greater freedom with which its aviation bombs Ukrainian positions. The main symptom of this was the Russian conquest of Avdiivka, in Donetsk, last February. From this bastion near the city of Donetsk, Russian forces have advanced 15 kilometers in the direction of Pokrovsk, a municipality that serves as the rear capital in the south of the province. For the Kremlin, it is a priority to finish conquering the half of Donetsk that it does not control, to already have full control of the Donbas region. The capture of Chasiv Yar would be even more decisive, as it would threaten to cut the Ukrainian defenses in Donetsk in two.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
Subscribe
Despite having launched tens of thousands of Russian soldiers towards rival fortifications, President Vladimir Putin has surprised his people by ensuring that he is not considering taking Ukraine’s second largest city. “As for Kharkiv, there are no such plans today,” declared the supreme head of the Russian Armed Forces on his official trip to China this week. According to Putin, it is about creating a supposed “sanitary zone” to prevent Ukrainian attacks on the neighboring city of Belgorod, both separated by 80 kilometers.
“This is the first war in history in which the plans do not foresee the assault of strategically important cities of the enemy,” former State Duma deputy and Soviet colonel Viktor Alksnis ironically said on Telegram. “How, without occupying Kharkov, can the main objectives of the operation declared by Vladimir Putin on February 24, 2022 be achieved: the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine?” adds Alksnis before emphasizing that these statements reveal “serious problems.” with the ability of our forces to assault Kharkiv and other cities in Ukraine.”
Russian air dominance
Last Wednesday and Thursday, EL PAÍS witnessed recurrent air attacks by Russian fighters in the Vovchansk area, as well as their use of cluster munitions. The mayor of this town near Kharkiv, Tamaz Gambarashvili, confirmed both information to this newspaper on Wednesday. A day later, at a civilian evacuation point, he was wounded by a cluster bomb.
The Ukrainian General Staff reported that in Liptsi, the other town that the invaders are trying to access in this gray area of Kharkov, aerial guided bombs had wreaked havoc. The progressive deficit of anti-aircraft systems is Ukraine’s biggest defensive problem, as Zelensky stressed this week in his meeting with the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken.
Zelensky also confirmed that after the first Russian attack on Kharkiv, the situation, despite being “extremely difficult”, has stabilized and the advance has been slowed. This has been confirmed by EL PAÍS in visits to Vovchansk and Liptsi, where Russian positions have even retreated. “A few days ago this was hell, now we are putting them in trouble,” explained on Thursday, two kilometers from Liptsi, soldier Maxim, a member of the Sich Battalion.
Help becoming more difficult
International support for Ukraine remains strong. As leaders such as the Frenchman Emmanuel Macron and the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, have reiterated this spring, Europe cannot allow Putin to win the war. But at the same time, as the Ukrainian Government admits, it will be increasingly difficult to convince European and American allies to provide it with large amounts of military assistance. It took more than half a year for the US legislative branch to approve the 57 billion euros in weapons that President Joe Biden promised. The elections to the European Parliament this June, where left-wing and right-wing populist parties question support for Ukraine, and especially the presidential elections in the United States in November, in which the possible Republican candidate, Donald Trump, is a supporter of Ukraine, will bring uncertainty. turn off the tap for kyiv claiming that it is an unwinnable war. Also Biden, according to media reports such as Politicalwants the debate on the war in Ukraine to take a backseat during the next election campaign.
An information published on May 12 by the newspaper caused a stir in Ukraine The Times in which sources from the British Government assured that its foreign minister, David Cameron, raised with Trump in a meeting in April the need to support Ukraine until 2025, so that in that year the two sides could sit down and agree on peace.
For its part, the course of the war has tightened Moscow’s dependence on Beijing, the Putin regime’s main economic lifeline despite the fact that it has hesitated more when it comes to sending ammunition than Russia’s unconditional allies, such as Iran.
Internally, Putin has reinforced his power by persecuting all opposition, both liberal and ultranationalist. An example of this is that hardly anyone has dared to criticize the president after his last purge in the Ministry of Defense, where he removed Minister Sergei Shoigu and two important senior officials were arrested for massive corruption. The election of an economist to head the defense is an indication that Putin wants to prolong the war for the next few years.
Mobilization of civilians
Zelensky also does not have much margin internally. Polls indicate that his popularity is declining and that a large majority of men are against being mobilized to join the army. This Saturday the new civil mobilization law came into force. With this rule, it is expected to be able to incorporate nearly 400,000 new soldiers into the army, an unpopular measure in society, but essential to renew regiments depleted of personnel after more than two years of war. The new contingents could begin fighting in the second half of summer. The question is whether a similar mobilization will be possible in the future without provoking a political crisis in the country.
Both sides currently have equal numbers of combatants on the battlefield, around half a million troops to cover some 2,000 kilometers of front, according to data from the Russian Center for Analysis of Technologies and Strategies, which warns that the The potential of the Russian Armed Forces in 2024 will be absolutely determined by the Kremlin’s readiness to execute a new mobilization.
Despite the step taken by kyiv to reinforce itself, the new Russian Defense Minister, Andrei Belousov, has ruled out that the Kremlin is also going to proceed with a forced enlistment of the population, although it has not been very convincing.. “There are certain problems with army recruitment, but we are not talking about mobilization,” Belousov said this week.
Outside the bubble of Moscow, in the soldier granaries that Russia’s poor provinces have become, cemeteries are filled with the graves of dead soldiers in Ukraine. The Ministry of Defense has managed to weather the losses for now with its 2022 mobilization and the massive flow of volunteers thanks to a very attractive salary for the average citizen: more than 200,000 rubles a month – about 2,000 euros – for enlisting, and compensation to the family for returning injured or dead. In Russia, 59% of the population earned less than 450 euros a month last year, according to Rosstat, and only 10% were more than mileurists.
However, the flow of volunteers is drying up in Russia. The most convinced have already enlisted in these two long years of conflict, war fatigue is also visible among Russians, and the protests for a new mobilization could be greater than those experienced in 2022. The margin for the Kremlin is slim and The Defense Committee of the State Duma this week refused to exempt parents of three children from future conscription.
In addition to the open fronts, Moscow could further strain the Ukrainian army with a military deployment in Belarus, a country bordering Ukraine and the shortest route to kyiv. The Belarusian Railway Workers’ Community and the Belarusian military analysis center Gayun report preparations on their train lines to transport heavy material and Russian soldiers to that ally of Moscow, until now “neutral” in the war in Ukraine. It would be enough to carry out some training in that country, as in the weeks before the invasion in 2022, to cause another threat to the Ukrainian capital.
Follow all the international information on Facebook and xor in our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#fronts #Ukraine #defend #troops #weapons #limit