Propaganda or damage control? Putin and Zelenski meet at the front to supervise their troops

The visit was by no means accidental, as nothing is in war. After Bakhmut, Avdivka has been the great object of desire in this winter minioffensive. Avdivka’s importance lies not so much in its offensive utility, but in its purely defensive one. It’s a decisive enclave at the time of putting pressure on the largest city controlled right now by the Russians and its taking would mean break the borders of 2015which are more or less stable throughout the Donbass, with only scant gains in Lugansk and southern Donetsk.

Zelensky was already in Bakhmut when things for his army were looking worse than now, demonstrating unusual value. Gone are the days when prudence invited him to hide in his kyiv bunker before the credible threat of a possible assassination. Zelensky decorated his men at the Azom metallurgy months before it was taken by the mercenaries of the Wagner Group, who released snapshots during its capture very similar to those published by the Ukrainian government so that no one would miss the symbolism.

At the time, those photos and that conquest they had an air of mockery. Zelensky’s insistence on repeating the Avdivka scene directly is an open challenge the Russian army and its intelligence systems. He makes it clear that nothing and no one is going to prevent him from acknowledging the merit of his boys at the front and raises the morale of his men before the expected counteroffensive, which, if it arrives, should do so in the coming weeks.

[Rusia fortifica Melitopol: el objetivo más probable de la contraofensiva de Ucrania en primavera]

Putin’s obsession with Crimea

Zelensky’s visit on the front line of Donbas coincided with that of Putin south of Kherson, although footage of the Russian president visiting his men in the rear of the southern front They could be earlier and are being spread now for security reasons. Be that as it may, this is Putin’s first visit to his troops. He had previously been to Mariupol and a couple of times in the Crimea, but he had never visited his own men.

The location of Putin’s trips to Ukraine It doesn’t seem to be random either.: always to the south, always surrounding his precious Crimea. Either he is too scared of Donbas or, simply, he does not give it the importance that he does give to the annexed territories in the right bank of the Dnieper River. It must be remembered that, although, strictly speaking, Russia declared the regions of Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk and Lugansk its own, after respective illegal referendums, in reality the latter two had already declared themselves independent years ago, with which the war of 2022 would only have given the Kremlin half of the two southern provinces.

Why is Putin visiting now and not when perhaps it was appropriate, that is, before losing North Kherson or even when the offensive seemed to be able to reach Odessa in March of last year? It’s hard to know, but it’s hard not to link her too with the aforementioned Ukrainian counteroffensive. Although the interested leakers insist on repeating that Ukraine has no means and that an attack would work more against it than to its benefit, the truth is that it has managed to hold its positions intact during the winter and these are enviable right now. He can not only retake Bakhmut and open the front is it in Avdivka or in Kreminnabut the possibility of entering through Vasiliivka towards Melitopol and dividing the Russian Zaporizhia in two remains open.

the double threat

And it is that in these five months since the fall of the northern front of Kherson and the end of the first Ukrainian counteroffensive, the advances have been practically zero, beyond the ashes conquered in Bakhmut at the price of tens of thousands of casualties on the side Russian. An army that loses about fifty thousand of its men In little more than a year, to advance a few tens of kilometers in a completely artificial and unnecessary conflict, it must, by force, be an army with morale on the ground. See your president, even if in the rearcan serve as encouragement to hold positions before what is to come.

[Desde Crimea, punto clave de la guerra de Ucrania: “No desean el mal a nadie, pero defenderán su tierra”]

And something must be coming if Putin has bothered to travel even Ukraine and if the “Lula on duty” once again beat the drums for peace and negotiation while Russian television is once again filled with nuclear threats and FOX redoubles its alarmism. As we said before, as soon as Ukraine has the strength and means to attempt a double offensive, things could become very complicated for Russia, since it has problems moving units from one part of the front to another, as it has already commented several times. the Institute for the Study of the War, they are remarkable.

If Zaluzhnyi’s forces managed to break the eastern front in two along the axis of Bakhmut-Mariupol or if they did it on the southern front through the aforementioned Vasiliivka-Melitopol, the Russian supply lines would be very exposed and the possibility of reaching the border with Crimea and isolating the peninsula would begin to take on the appearance of reality. The concern in the Kremlin is enormous and it cannot be a coincidence that the Chinese defense minister has been in Moscow these days, even meeting with Putin himself. Winter has not gone as expectedthey can only hope that spring and summer are not too hostile to them.