EIt was a gigantic convoy of Russian military vehicles that first appeared on satellite imagery on Monday, heading towards Kyiv. Trucks, tanks, heavy howitzers and rockets could be seen over a distance of more than forty miles. In the pictures they had advanced west of the Dnieper to Antonov Airport, which had been the subject of bitter fighting for days, but which has been completely controlled by Russian troops since Monday. The satellite images did not bode well for the Ukrainian capital. According to military and intelligence experts, the Russians are preparing a full-scale attack on Kyiv that will take the war to a new level of violence and destruction. “The Russians probably believe that if they take Kyiv, Ukraine’s defenses will collapse,” a senior Western intelligence official told FAZ on Tuesday, adding, “That could be a miscalculation.” It wouldn’t be the first since the raid started on Thursday last week.
In the first days of the war, the Russians advanced towards Kyiv with light units, the military spoke of “spearheads”. They quickly took control of the crucial roads and junctions west and east of the Dnieper. However, the vehicles ran out of fuel faster than tankers followed. And they were not welcomed as liberators, but rather with bazookas the closer they got to Kyiv. The troops suffered significant losses in material and personnel.
In addition, the air landing operation at Antonov Airport was amateurish. Russian Spetsnaz forces tried to take over the area – and were repeatedly thrown back by Ukrainian special forces. Paratroopers were flown in even though the Russians were not yet in control of the airspace, in a risky operation that has Western military shake their heads in bewilderment. According to intelligence, one or even two Ilyushin-76s, each with up to 225 men on board, were shot down.
29 helicopters, 191 tanks destroyed, five air defense systems and two warships
According to the Ukrainian government, more than 5,000 Russian soldiers have been killed, wounded or captured. This magnitude is considered plausible by Western services, the secret service man speaks of “significant losses” by the Russians. Just for comparison: The Russians would then have lost about as many soldiers in five days as the Americans had lost in Iraq in eight years. In addition, the Ukrainian government reports 46 planes shot down, 29 helicopters, 191 tanks destroyed, five air defense systems and two warships. These figures cannot be verified in detail, but they would roughly fit the picture. Numerous videos are circulating on social networks documenting destroyed associations and kills, even if not all of them are authentic.
These significant losses have now prompted a tactical adjustment. This could already be seen on Monday in the second largest city of Kharkiv, which came under artillery fire that also hit residential areas and killed dozens of people, according to Ukrainian sources. It continued Tuesday morning when two cruise missiles with large warheads slammed into central Freedom Square, the country’s largest public square. Elsewhere, internationally banned cluster munitions have been used – thousands of small explosive devices detonating over a larger area. This is documented by unexploded “bomblets”, which in turn pose a danger.
“The number of civilian casualties will increase”
A TOS-1 rocket launcher with thermobaric warheads was also sighted near Belgorod, ten kilometers from the border with Ukraine. These vacuum bombs have a devastating effect, their blast destroying everything within a radius of 300 meters. According to the intelligence officer, they have not yet been deployed, contrary to some Ukrainian reports. But he warns: “The number of civilian casualties will increase, not only because the Russians are moving into densely populated urban areas, but also because in the past 48 hours they have resorted to weapons whose lethal power and spread is much greater.” There will therefore also be more and more war crimes. For this reason, the International Criminal Court launched an investigation on Monday.
The secret service man does not expect Russian troops to immediately advance to the center of Kyiv. Because the tanks would be easy targets there. First of all, massive attacks on the Ukrainian defense positions on the outskirts of the city are to be expected: with bombs dropped from fighter planes, with rockets and with heavy artillery. All of this should shape the picture of the war in the next few days – a far more brutal war than before. The Russian armed forces are thus returning to their traditional combat pattern, which is based on superior firepower and low precision. The column in front of Kyiv documents that the small, mobile, tactical battalion groups are now being massed into large formations.
Will they reduce the Ukrainian capital to rubble? This is to be feared in the outskirts, but the secret service agent does not expect it in the historic center. He points out that Kyiv, Kievan Rus’, is central to Putin’s narrative of a unified Russian nation. It could therefore not be in his interest to destroy everything. However, he adds, the Russian president has so far “not shown a great deal of rationality”.
#Western #secret #services #chances #Russia #largescale #attack #Kyiv