Moscow prepares a great offensive

Obviously, it is not a small thing. The thing is, it’s nothing new either. It is rumored that Putin could have sent nine thousand men to that border, divided into four contingents established in Brest, Pinsk, Mazyr and Gomel. The number is too small to think of an invasion, but at least yes forces Ukraine to strengthen that border… something it did not do in February, when, convinced that Russia would only enter from the east, the Zelensky government neglected the rest of its borders, causing the arrival of Russian troops as far as the outskirts of kyiv and occupying the south until beyond the natural border of the Dnieper River.

Although Lukashenko had not signed any agreement then, Belarus acted as an ally of Russia in practice. It was from its border that the radioactive exclusion zone that surrounds the Chernobyl plant was crossed and from where a good part of the missiles that ended up hitting the cities of Lviv and Lutsk were launched. Talking about the “internationalization” of the conflict when Belarus is not doing anything it hasn’t done before and, strictly speaking, hasn’t even declared war on Ukraine – neither has Russia – is a lot of talk.

[Al menos dos muertos tras estrellarse un avión militar ruso contra un edificio en Yeisk]

Is kyiv the target again?

It would be curious, yes, if Putin had not learned anything from what happened then and tried something similar again. The latest bombings of the population and civilian infrastructure seem to have emboldened Russian propagandists and euphoria, in war, spreads very easily. We do not know the damage that Ukraine may have suffered in its rear nor how they will affect your army. We also do not know to what extent they will affect the morale and resources of the local administration when winter comes.

What we do know is that, in the week that has passed since the debut of Sergei Surovikin, “General Armageddon”, Russia has failed to make progress on any of the fronts: not even in Bakhmut, where they have been running into a wall for months , neither on the Svatove-Kreminna axis, nor in the provinces of Kherson and Mikolaiv. With this in mind, plus the fact that the russian army has lost around 75,000 elite soldiers between dead, wounded and captured and has replaced them with reservists apprehended at the exit of the subway and sent to the front without the slightest formation, to think that Putin can try to attack kyiv again seems crazy.

Now, it is Putin and it is Russia. Everything he’s been up to now has been one strategic blunder after another. The attempt could well be added, with an army of circumstances, to attack Ukraine again – a Ukraine with many casualties too, but armed by the West to the teeth – from different flanks. The move went horribly wrong at the time, there is no sign that it can go better in worse starting conditions.

Surround Ukraine and attack it from the air

That said, the truth is that, in certain pro-Russian accounts, the idea is being played with. Russia would have regiments prepared in Belarus, with the intention of attacking kyiv; in Belgorod, with the intention of threatening Sumy and Kharkov; in Valuiki, to recover Kupiansk; in Rostov, to protect the Lugansk-Donetsk-Mariupol axis… and, of course, in the southern regions of Zaporizhia and Kherson, with the hope of crossing the Dnieper again and advancing towards Mikolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk.

[La UE entrenará a 15.000 militares ucranianos y desbloquea otros 500 millones para armamento]

we would be talking about an offensive modeled on that of February, with several objectives and entering all at once instead of doing it in waves, as a well-executed “blitzkrieg” really works. Putin has already failed once, but there may be something that makes him think now is the time. To do that, it would take weeks of damaging the Ukrainian rear and supply lines, but that in turn requires an air force far superior to its enemy’s and the constant use of medium- and long-range precision missiles, when the The British Ministry of Defense has pointed out on numerous occasions that the Russians do not have enough of them.

The fact that Russia is turning to Iran as an arms ally says a lot about the state of its own arsenal. Monday’s attacks on kyiv have been carried out with Iranian drones, highlighting the urgent need for NATO send more anti-aircraft batteries as soon as possible. Surovikin is an expert in aerial warfare, but it should be noted that he has so far excelled in areas where he did not have an enemy worthy of the name. Neither the Chechen nor the Syrian insurgents had anything resembling an air force or defense to match.

Ukraine, yes. Ukraine has drones, it has planes, it has fighters, and it will soon have advanced defense equipment. To think that Russia will be able to walk through the Ukrainian sky like Pedro through his house destroying the internal lines of communication and supply to the point that this affects the forces deployed on the front is complicated. To think that they can cause such a collapse that a combined attack from nearly ten different directions can succeed seems utopian. In any case, I would do well this time Zelensky on not trusting and preparing for the worst, although such an attack seems suicidal. Its partners will also do well to equip it with more precise weapons. What has been seen these two weeks in kyiv cannot be repeated.