massive missile attack on Zaporizhia

The attacks have affected practically the entire country, but they have focused on a province that we will hear a lot about soon: Zaporizhia. If Putin really prepares a second offensive worthy of the name and that goes beyond the advance of a few kilometers in certain areas of Donetsk or Lugansk, the minimum objective must be control from Zaporizhia. Let us remember that it is one of the four provinces, together with Donetsk, Lugansk and Kherson, which Russia unilaterally annexed last autumn and its strategic importance in the conflict is enormous.

Zaporizhia, divided in two almost from the beginning of the invasion – the south of the Dnieper River, with the city of Melitopol and the Energodar nuclear power plant, fell into Russian hands in the first weeks – is the key piece of the puzzle that unites the call Novarossia, the Russian nationalist dream in Ukraine. The establishment of such a corridor between Kharkiv and Odessa was one of Putin’s first declared objectives at the beginning of the war, when the Russian president was going beyond the abstraction of concepts such as “denazification” or “demilitarization”.

[Zelenski, infatigable: pide cazas a Sunak, misiles a Macron y entrar ya en la UE a Von der Leyen]

Thanks to its location, control of its capital would give Russia the ability to unite both fronts by cutting distances and thus facilitating common supply. It would also allow you put pressure on the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk core from the west and try to recover all the recovered ground on the western bank of the Dnieper as far as Kherson, effectively leaving Odessa in a very difficult situation to defend. Even more, if the military and political pressure on Moldova and the pro-Russian region of Transnistria continues.

confused objectives

Another thing is that the goal is simple, which is not at all. the fallen from grace Eugeni Prigozhin He stated this Friday in a video posted on social networks that Russia could take three years to reach the Dnieper. We understand that it refers to its northern course, including not only Zaporizhia, but the city of Dnipro. Putin does not have a three-year margin and it is rumored that he has demanded from Valeri Gerasimov, the head of the Russian army, the capture of the entire region before the arrival of springa very unrealistic request.

To take Zaporizhia, Russia would have to make a human and weapons military effort for which she seems unprepared. It is not just a matter of adding hundreds and hundreds of thousands of troops, but of supplying them with the right weapons and the discipline that until now they have lacked. The first offensive was characterized precisely by the lack of a plan. It seemed that, once the attempt to take kyiv and topple the Ukrainian government had failed, Russia was playing a kind of “plunder”: go taking what you could where you could, without much coherence.

Part of that inability to move evenly in a single point without having to run away afterwards The lack of logistical support had to do with the number of independent subgroups within the same invading force: on the one hand, the militiamen of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics; on the other, Kadirov’s Chechens; beyond, and independently, the mercenaries of the Wagner Group… and, trying to unify all these divisions, the Russian regular army itself, made up of a mixture of veterans of the wars in Chechnya, Syria and Georgia, young conscripts fresh out of their military training and, since September, ordinary citizens mobilized against their will.

[Un coronel británico avisa: Ucrania no va ganando y Rusia hará grandes avances en breve]

Kreminna and Mariupol: spearheads

The first step, therefore, would be to put an end to this lack of uniformity and setting clear and precise objectives, something Putin and his propagandists refuse to do. In his ideal world, it is possible to attack Odessa from the Crimea while the troops from Melitopol take Kherson and Mikolaiv and those massed in Mariupol are able to advance towards the aforementioned Zaporizhia. All this, without stopping sending units to Kreminna, Svatove and Sievierodonetsk to continue advancing towards the east and culminating in Sloviansk the conquest of Donbas.

Now, in this ambitious mix of plans there is a lot of magical thinking. We know that thousands of men have arrived at the Kreminna front in recent weeks… but we do not know if they will be able to advance or if said advances will continue to be counted in hundreds of meters, as has happened in the failed offensives on Bakhmut and Vuhledar. We also know that tanks and battalions continue to arrive at Mariupol, through its port on the Black Sea, but coordinating an attack from there will not be easy.

[Zelenski ante la Eurocámara: “Sólo nuestra victoria garantizará el modo de vida europeo”]

This offensive intention also clashes with the fact that Russia has spent a good part of the autumn building defense infrastructure in the form of trenches and minefields. Again, he gives the impression that Putin is changing his opinion and tactics according to the possibilities of the moment. In this case, he will have to find a way to swim and put away his clothes at the same time. Launching in a disorderly manner, only by sending men and men to the slaughterhouse, on Zaporizhia, can give him occasional victories… but leave him in a bad position for the summer and the probable Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Russia’s intention is not only to complete its control over Donbas – something that, again citing Prigozhin’s estimates, could take between a year and a half and two years – and take over Zaporizhia… but to maintain that control over time, something what can it mean decades of military effort and human losses. As much as the Kremlin has demographics in its favor, sooner or later it will no longer be possible to send young men of military age from provinces far from the decision-making centers. As much as it is repeated that the defeat of a nuclear power is impossible -despite Vietnam, despite Afghanistan, even despite Korea-, victory, understood in the original sense of taking over the “New Russia “, is a chimera except Ukrainian collapse. A collapse that will never come as long as NATO is behind.

Filed under War in Ukraine, Russia, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Volodimir Zelensky, Zaporizhia