Russia knows that it is going to lose this entire area because, according to sources on the ground, the proportion of troops is four to one in favor of the Ukrainians. The pressure is simply unbearable. Even less without reinforcements worthy of the name, since most of the reservists are being sent to the Donbas front and, in any case, lack the necessary preparation for a war of this type. Kherson is going back into local hands and Russia will thus lose the only provincial capital that it had conquered during this offensive.
The question is how he will deal with that withdrawal. The idea, obviously, is protect crimea, the red line of the Russian defense. Everything else, annexations included, are ways to gain vital space for the peninsula. In that sense, both the occupied territories in Kherson and Zaporizhia, even though they nominally belong to the Russian Federation, are nothing more than scenarios of contention in which the citizens are little more than hostages of the Kremlin. This is how the general mobilization announced this week by Putin for those territories must be understood.
[Putin envía 2.000 nuevos soldados a Jersón para frenar el avance ucraniano]
The importance of the Nova Kajovka plant
Since Russia has no interest in the south of Ukraine other than as a protective wall and a source of energy resources – above all, the Nova Kajovka hydroelectric plant, next to the capital Kherson, and the Energodar nuclear power plant, in the province of Zaporizhia – Western and Ukrainian intelligence services fear that the withdrawal of the invading army will serve as an excuse to cause chaos.
Specific, warn of what is known as a “false flag attack”, that is to say, that Russia sabotages part of the industrial fabric of the region and then blames the Ukrainians for having carried out the attack. This is exactly what they did in Crimea in 2014 to justify their military intervention and subsequent annexation. In fact, it is a fairly common method in almost all Russian conflicts: deny reality, assume the role of victim and, from that role, retaliate at will.
The target could be the aforementioned Nova Kajovka hydroelectric plant, according to all reports. Exploding this complex would cause not only a huge loss of energy resources for the inhabitants of the region, who number in the millions, but floods that could destroy the fields in the area and force the evacuation of entire populations, in addition to obviously hindering the advance of the Ukrainian troops.
It could be understood as a scorched earth policy: destroy the resources of the occupied area so that those who arrive behind do not enjoy them. The problem here is that those affected would be, once again, the civilians, following the Surovikin doctrine of causing the greatest possible damage to the population in order to lower the country’s morale, force the government to diversify resources and force an agreement as close to their claims, which are far from being the same ones with which Russia began this conflict and may go through legal recognition of Crimea and, perhaps, almost symbolic Russian administrations in the annexed regions of Kherson and Zaporizhia.
NATO as a scapegoat
The problem, in this case, is that, by blaming Ukraine and, by extension, NATO – this was recently done by Sergei Markov, director general of the Institute for Political Studies and president of the Russian National Strategic Council -, Putin would reserve the letter of retaliation, as it did after the explosion of the Kerch bridge in Crimea. To the damage caused both in the energy field and in that of pure and simple survival, the possibility of organizing new attacks against civilians as revenge for the alleged NATO actions allowed by the Zelensky government would be added.
That way, Surovikin could continue to bomb big capitals and leaving them without key energy resources to endure the cold winter, no matter how much their troops have to keep retreating and are unable to advance in any of their positions. This would be in line with what state propaganda in Russia demands: to force the Ukrainians to die of cold and hunger in order to accelerate their surrender without suffering further losses of troops or their own resources. A Machiavellian plan and one that comes quite close to the definition of “war crime”.
Markov also hinted at the possibility of NATO using a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, blaming Russia for it, and justifying subsequent conventional intervention. That is the same as implying that Russia is thinking of using a tactical nuclear weapon and blaming NATO for it. It is necessary to take these references to the nuclear thing with certain calm, although it is difficult. It is Russia’s propaganda strategy since the beginning of the war: threaten the Apocalypse so that the West trembles and withdraws its aid. Now, the Apocalypse is a very serious thing and it is in everyone’s interest to delay it as much as possible. Also to the Kremlin.