Russia launched its offensive on the north of Kharkiv with a very clear intention: to distract the Ukrainian troops in Donbas and thus lay the foundations for a summer offensive that would culminate in the capture of the capital. Although this objective has never been very realistic, even with a supposed collapse of local defenses, there was a moment when it was feared that the accumulation of holes to plug would make Russia advance enough to force a truce favorable to its interests. That way, he could buy time to continue later with capturing the rest of the New Russiathat nationalist entelechy that goes from the north of Kharkiv to the west of Odessa.
However, things have not gone as Putin and Gerasimov they had thought. The Kharkiv offensive effectively fixed Ukrainian troop positions and forced the diversion of some units deployed in Donetsk and Lugansk. Now, as soon as these units arrived and were organized, the number of Russian attackers proved clearly insufficient to go beyond the city of Vovchanskpartially occupied, but with the invading army now forced into a defensive posture.
We are talking about an incursion of less than 10 kilometers into Ukrainian territory, the most that can be achieved with inexperienced and poorly supported troops. Furthermore, the recurrent bombings from the Russian region of Belgorod to the capital of Kharkiv, which has claimed so many civilian deaths, has in the end caused the opposite effect to that desired: the Western powers, starting with United Kingdom and France and ending in the last days by Germany and USAhave decided to cross one more of the red lines imposed by Moscow.
The division in the Biden administration
This is the condition not to attack legitimate Russian territory with foreign weapons and, in reality, more than a Kremlin condition, it was a Western prevention. If it were up to the Kremlin, they could not have sent Patriot missiles, nor HIMARS, nor ATACMS, nor of course could they have attacked Crimea with the latter. All this has been done without Putin’s rhetoric changing: he has systematically anticipated a nuclear holocaust to each of those movements. Said holocaust, obviously, has not arrived.
Not even the holding of exercises with tactical nuclear weapons and their transfer to Belarus have prevented Western countries, one by one, from changing their policy and untying Ukrainian hands. Now, Ukraine can defend itself from you to you, although with nuances: Russia can continue sending a missile against a shopping center in Kharkiv in the middle of the weekend and kill dozens of innocent citizens. Ukraine, fortunately, can only attack military centers on the territory of Belgorod.
That, at least, is the last imposition of Biden, although it may change over time, as everything has been changing. We know that in the current administration there are two very different sensitivities: the Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, is in favor of giving everything in the defense of Ukraine and not fearing Russian defeat. The National Defense Advisor, Jake Sullivan, believes the opposite: he believes that the Russians can be contained without irritating them excessively and he does see a nuclear escalation as possible. So far, Biden has trusted Sullivan’s instincts more than Blinken’s. That is why, perhaps, we have been at war for two years and three months.
Putin’s irritation
Faced with these American doubts, the French president Emmanuel Macron and the British foreign secretary, David Cameron, have decided to lead a kind of European rebellion. His speeches are forceful and without complexes. Both states are nuclear powers and can play with mutual assured destruction as a deterrent against any of Putin’s fickleness. It is more complicated for Germany, which does not have nuclear weapons and which until now had shown all kinds of misgivings about greater military involvement.
In the end, it doesn’t matter. Putin is irritated by everything and is going to answer everyone in the same way. When Volodymyr Zelensky visited Spain and signed an agreement with Pedro Sanchez For sending tanks to Ukraine, the Russian leader spoke enigmatically of “European countries, small but with a high population density, that should be more careful about what they are getting into.” Aware of the Russian imperialist tradition, of which Putin is but the last link, other countries such as Poland or Sweden have not hesitated to support Ukraine despite not possessing nuclear weapons either.
The great news for the army Oleksandr Syrskyi is that, despite all these hesitations and although the American aid approved by Congress more than a month ago has not yet reached the front, the troops are not only resisting in Kharkov but also in Chasiv Yar, in Robotyne and on the ledge of Ocheretynenorthwest of Avdiivka. There are Russian advances, but at an enormous cost in terms of lives and materials used. These advances do not currently compromise the defense of the Donetsk or Zaporizhia front.
That is the best news that can be given about what has been, without a doubt, a tough spring for Ukraine: Russia has failed to advance in Kharkiv, has failed in its skirmish in Sumy, is making no progress in northern Zaporizhzhia and seems far from establishing the conditions for a serious attack on Sloviansk and Kramatorsk in Donetsk. To do this, they would have had to close the cauldron over Chasiv Yar in the south and Siversk in the north. They may achieve it in the summer, if the announced mobilization really takes place, but the more time passes, the better and with more resources Ukraine will be able to defend itself.
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