Why intelligence services find it difficult for Putin to try to conquer more territory in Ukraine

Of course, there can always be occasional advances in some direction, but the idea of ​​a Ukrainian collapse, which was present in early spring, is now completely ruled out.

This is how the intense ones end rumors that circulated at the time about a Alleged Russian “summer offensive” with hundreds of thousands of soldiers dedicated to the task. Although Putin is likely to continue trying to advance positions north of Zaporizhia and west of Donetsk, the immense expenditure of men and resources required for such minimal advances does not bode well for the Russian army in the medium and long term. In other words, they are not sustainable over time.

In fact, the news that arrived on Tuesday via the daily report of the Institute for the Study of the War can be considered hopeful for the troops of Syrskyi and Zelensky. The recapture of Vovchansk, north of Kharkiv, seems a little closer, which would make the Russian incursion in that province nothing. Similarly, after three months of resistance in Chasiv Yar, one of the possible accesses to the military core of Sloviansk-Kramatorsk, it is now the Ukrainians who are regaining ground.

He Russia’s target The idea was to arrive at this month of July with one foot well inside Kharkiv and the other in the vicinity of Sloviansk. In this way, they could take an all-or-nothing approach and launch themselves against the capital of Russian-speaking Ukraine or try to complete the capture of Donbas. Nothing could be further from their current capabilities, with advances measured in a few dozen square kilometres per month that barely alter the balance of power.

Questioning Zelensky and courting Kim Jong-un

Besides, it seems that Putin has been playing a game for a long time.Double diplomatic Plan B which, as always, is based on terror. After trying for two years to intimidate Ukraine’s allies in the West with nuclear threats, it is now busy signing military agreements with North Korea and dialectically confronting South Korea. He greets Orbán with hugs, to sow discord in the European Union and receives Narendra Modi in Moscow with all kinds of pomp, Prime Minister of India, just as that country was showing signs of leaning towards the United States.

These foreign policy games have been added for a couple of months now the constant questioning of the figure of Volodymyr Zelensky for not holding presidential elections in Ukraine and thus extending his five-year mandate. It omits, however, that such a call is constitutionally impossible given that the state of war in Ukraine is in force. The Kremlin’s efforts to delegitimize the Ukrainian leader, who is also accused of having lied in the negotiations in Istanbul, do not end there: according to Russia, Ukraine has accepted a surrender that we were not aware of at the time and that its authorities have always denied. It was enough for them to get out of that trap alive.

Russia carries decades playing with confusion and confrontation in half the world. He understands that if he can get his message across to the Ukrainian public, even if he can get his international allies to use it as an irrefutable argument on the international stage, he may end up securing an armistice that suits his interests. Putin casually mentioned at a recent press conference that if Ukraine handed over Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, the four regions unilaterally annexed by Russia in September 2022, the war would end immediately. He did not specify when the next one would begin, with Odessa, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv as targets.

A massacre to destroy the morale of civilians

In this strategy of undermining enemy morale, we must frame the savage attacks last Monday over kyiv. The largest children’s hospital in the city was hit by a Russian missile, causing more than 30 deaths, four of them children. The aim is to convince the Ukrainian citizens that their government lies to them, oppresses them and does not defend them. To bring the fear of the front to every corner of the country, something that Ukraine, incomprehensibly, is prohibited from doing by its allies: while in kyiv children were receiving their chemotherapy session in the street, in Moscow, citizens were happily waving Russian and Indian flags.

However, this seems to be a tactic that is not only cruel but desperate and has very little chance of success. At the NATO summit, the allies have once again shown their unwavering support for Ukraine and it is precisely theThe Okhmatdyt Hospital Massacre This has sparked a wave of outrage around the world, leading to numerous offers of more weapons and more aid.

Germany, for example, announced on Tuesday its intention to spend an additional 4 billion euros to help Zelensky’s government. To paraphrase Churchill, the beginning of the end is far away, but the end of the beginning may have already passed some time ago.