Russia chooses Mariupol to assemble the troops for the new offensive and thus be able to nurture the two fronts

Meanwhile, what remains are the rumors. At first, they focused on Belarus. In the movements on the border that were so reminiscent of those of 2022. To the joint maneuvers with the Lukashenko Army. After, the focus was on Belgorod and Rostov, the two great war centers in western Russia, where the rearguard of Putin’s troops rests and a good part of his weapons and supplies. The idea, it was said, was to attack from Kreminna, despite the inhospitable terrain, being a city practically surrounded by forests.

Now, rumor leads us to Mariupol. And it is not just any rumor, but with a more than reliable source: Petro Andriushenko, the assistant to the Ukrainian mayor of Mariupol, one of the informative references when Russian troops subjected the coastal city to a cruel and long siege that ended up turning the place into a heap of smoking ruins. On his Telegram channel, Andriushenko announced on Monday the arrival through the port, easily connected to mainland Russia and the Crimean peninsula, of thousands of soldiers, anti-aircraft defenses, tanks and other military equipment.

To the ‘Novarossiya’

This movement is added to those of February 1 and 2, when some 20 tanks went to the towns that surround the north of the city, with the idea of ​​joining the offensive in Donetsk on Vuhledar. The use of the port allows not only the arrival of material and troops, but also their transfer to other parts of Ukraine. It must be borne in mind that one of Russia’s big problems during this year of offensive has been its inability to transfer troops from one front to another, something that the Ukrainian Army can do much more quickly by having greater control over communications. terrestrial.

To the facts narrated by Andriushenko, we must add a strategic aspect: the Zaporizhia-Mariupol axis is key to the future of the war. In November, after the fall of Kherson, we discussed the importance for Ukraine of attempting an attack on Melitopol and breaking the Russian defenses in two. However, the initiative in the war has since shifted and now rests with the invading side, which has launched the attack at various points on the front, albeit without decisive advances.

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In that sense, Being able to control that Mariupol-Melitopol-Zaporizhia line would serve Russia to be able to defend both fronts and at the same time establish two different lines of threat. On the one hand, Mariupol is just over 200 kilometers from the core of Sloviansk-Kramatorsk, where most of the Ukrainian troops defending their part of Donbas are concentrated. On the other hand, it is the same distance, to the west, from Zaporizhia, almost in a straight line along the T0803 highway. If Putin really wants to try something as promised in March 2022, that is, the creation of a corridor from Kharkiv to Odessa, in the manner of the idyllic ‘Novarossiya’ of Russian nationalists, Zaporizhia is the key city. Advancing in that direction would force the Ukrainians to have to divert troops from the Donbas front and the Kherson front.

The cost of the offense

We must therefore understand that Zaporizhia would be a more than likely first target of any new offensive. The city, next to the Dnieper river, allows the advance towards the north (Dnipro), the east (Donetsk) and the west (the western bank of the river, currently occupied by the Ukrainians and which leads to Kherson, a few kilometers from the dreamed Odessa). Although It must not be ruled out that Russia will try a maneuver on kyiv again, this movement should be interpreted as a distraction. Ukrainian intelligence estimates that 500,000 Russian soldiers are mobilized in its territory or in border cities. Many of them already have some experience in the field. We are not talking, then, about the Wagner Group and its group of ex-convicts and psychopaths.

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Said this, it is not necessary to understand that an offensive of this type goes to be at all easy. If Russia fails in its attempt to control the center of the board, it will be very exposed to a Ukrainian counteroffensive, as was already demonstrated at the beginning of this war. If we take into account the price that Russia has paid for the advances it has achieved in a year and which do not even include an administrative capital of any Ukrainian region (it is estimated at around 100,000-150,000 dead and wounded), It will be necessary to see where Putin gets more reserves from if things don’t go well from the start.

Russia often boasts that it has “not even started” with the conflict, but it already has more than half a million soldiers on duty and has suffered enormous losses in military equipment. It is true that a window of opportunity has now been opened in how long it takes for the tanks to arrive, the medium-distance missiles – which, by the way, would put Mariupol within a shot – and the anti-aircraft defenses ceded by the West, but that window has closed. measured in months, if not weeks. If taking Bakhmut has already cost all summer, all autumn and half winter, how much can the capture of Zaporizhia cost? Hard to imagine.

Filed under , Mariupol, Russia, Ukraine