“I am evil and scary with claws and teeth,” Vladimir Putin Allegedly David Cameron when pressed by the then British Prime Minister about the use of chemical weapons by Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Russia in Syria, and discussed how far Russia was prepared to go.
According to Cameron’s top foreign policy adviser John Casson – Quoted in a BBC documentary — Putin went on to say that to be successful in Syria, brutal methods would have to be used, similar to what the US did at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. “I’m an ex-KGB guy,” he elaborated.
The remark was apparently made half-jokingly, but as always with Russia’s leader, the danger was clear.
And of course, Putin has proved that he is willing to deploy fear as a weapon in his attempt to subdue a defiant Ukraine. His soldiers have targeted civilians and resorted to torture and rape. But victory has eluded them.
Over the next few weeks, he looks set to try to reverse his military failures with a late-winter offensive: possibly going even further and fighting tooth and claw to save Russia – and himself – And with humiliation.
Can the ex-KGB man succeed? Can Russia still win Putin’s war of choice against Ukraine in the face of the heroic and united resistance of Ukrainians?
list of errors
From the outset, the war was marked by bad decisions and miscalculations. Putin and his generals underestimated Ukrainian resistance, underestimated the capabilities of their own military, and failed to anticipate the scale of military and economic support Ukraine would receive from the United States and European countries.
Kyiv did not fall in a matter of days – as had been planned by the Kremlin – and Putin’s forces were pushed back over the summer and autumn, with Ukraine losing half of the territory captured by the Russians in the first few weeks of the invasion by November. occupied more than an area. , Russia is now forced into a costly and prolonged conventional war that sparks rare disagreement and led within the country’s political-military establishment Kremlin discord To scatter in the open
The Russian army’s only victory in months was recorded in January when Ukrainians recaptured the salt-mining town of Soledar in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region. And there are indications that the Russians are on the verge of another victory with Bakhmut, just six miles southwest of Soledar, likely to soon be in their hands.
But none of these blood-soaked victories amount to more than symbolic success, despite the high casualties suffered by both sides. Neither victory is strategically important – and some Western officials say privately that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky might be better advised to withdraw first from Soledar and now from Bakhmut, just as in November In 1865 the Russians began to retreat from their militarily hopeless position. Kherson.
Putin will rely on his forces in the coming weeks to effect a real reversal of Russia’s military fortunes, replenished by recharged reservoirs and recruitment, pulling off a major new offensive. Ukrainian officials expect the offensive to begin in earnest no sooner than the spring. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov warned in press conferences over the past few days that Russia could have more than 500,000 troops in occupied Ukraine and in reserve ready to attack the borders. they say maybe start seriously Around the first anniversary of the war on February 24 of this month.
Other Ukrainian officials think the offensive, when it comes, will happen in March – but at least before the Leopard 2 and other Western main battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles arrive. Zelensky warned Ukrainians on Saturday that the country is entering a “time when the occupier throws more and more of its forces to break down our defenses.”
All eyes on Donbass
A likely focus for the Russians would be the Donbas region to the east. Andrey Chernyak, an official in Ukraine’s military intelligence, told the Kyiv Post that Putin had ordered his armed forces to capture all of Donetsk and Luhansk by the end of March. “We have noticed that the Russian occupation forces are redeploying additional assault groups, units, weapons and military equipment to the east,” Chernyak said. “According to Ukrainian military intelligence, Putin ordered the seizure of all territories in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.”
Other Ukrainian officials and Western military analysts suspect Russia may throw in some wildcards to distract and confuse. They have their eye on a fracas coming from Belarus that mimicked last February’s northern thrust toward Kyiv and Vinnitsa, west of the capital. But Ukrainian defense officials estimate that there are only 12,000 Russian troops currently in Belarus, apparently conducting joint training exercises with the Belarusian army, hardly enough to mount a diversion.
“There is no point in repeatedly attacking Kyiv,” said Michael Kaufman, an American expert on the Russian armed forces and a fellow at the Washington-based think tank Center for a New American Security. He said in an analysis, “An operation to sever supply lines to the West or seize the nuclear power plant by Rivne might be more feasible, but would require a much larger force than what Russia currently deploys in Belarus.” will be needed.”
But where exactly Russia’s main thrust will land along its 600-km front line in Ukraine’s Donbas region is still unclear. Western military analysts do not expect Russia to launch a push along the entire Serpentine front – more likely to launch a two- or three-pronged attack focusing on a few key villages and towns in southern Donetsk, Kremina and Liman in Luhansk on, and in the south. In Zaporizhzhya, where there have been reports of an increased build-up of troops and equipment across the border into Russia.
In the Luhansk region, Russian forces are evacuating residents near parts of the front line held by Russia. And the region’s governor, Serhiy Haidai, believes the expulsions are intended to spot potential Ukrainian spies and locals to Ukrainian artillery. “There is an active transfer of (Russian troops) in the region and they are definitely preparing to do something on the eastern front,” Haidai told reporters.
Reznikov has said that he expects the Russian offensive to come simultaneously from the east and south – from Zaporizhia in the south and into Donetsk and Luhansk. For the main offensive, Russian forces are testing five points on the front, according to Ukraine’s General Staff at a press briefing on Tuesday. He said Russian troops were regrouping on various parts of the front line and were launching attacks near Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region and Liman, Bakhmut, Avdeevka and Novopavlivka in eastern Donetsk.
combined arms warfare
Successes, however, will likely elude the Russians if they cannot fix two major failings that have plagued their military operations so far – poor logistics and the inability to combine infantry, armour, artillery and tanks to achieve mutually complementary effects. Failure to coordinate air support, otherwise known as combined arms warfare.
When announcing the appointment in January of General Valery Gerasimov – the former chief of the defense staff – as overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, Russia’s defense ministry noted the need to organize “closer interaction between troops’ types and weapons”. ” Thrown light on. In other words to improve combined arms warfare.
Kofman assesses that Russia’s logistical problems are largely solvable. “There has been a fair amount of restructuring in Russian logistics and optimization. I think in general the conversation on Russian logical problems suffers too much from anecdotes and acquired wisdom,” he said.
Failing this, much for Russia would depend on how well Gerasimov trained his replenished army in combined arms warfare and it is highly doubtful that he had enough time. Kofman believes that the Ukrainian military “would be better served absorbing the Russian offensive and exhausting Russian offensive capability then launching the initiative later this spring. The cost of ammunition, better troops and equipment Doing so could make the Russian defense weaker overall, he suspected that the offensive “could prove overwhelming.”
Pro-war Russian military bloggers agree. They are clamoring for another mobilization, saying it will be necessary to power the breakout needed to reverse Russia’s military fortunes. Igor Girkin, a former Russian intelligence officer and paramilitary commander who played a key role in the annexation of Crimea and subsequent Donbass, has argued that the call-up would require overwhelming Ukraine’s security.
And Western military analysts suspect that Ukraine and Russia are currently fielding roughly equal numbers of combat troops. This meant that General Gerasimov would have needed more to achieve the three-to-one ratio military principles suggest were necessary for an invading force to be successful.
But others fear Russia has enough forces, if concentrated, to make some “surprising gains”. Richard Kemp, a former British Army infantry commander, is predicting “Significant Russian gains in coming weeks. We need to be realistic about how bad things could get – otherwise there is a risk of a blow to Western resolve,” he wrote. The fear is that if the Russians can make significant territorial gains in the Donbass, it is more likely that some Western allies will come under increased pressure to negotiate.
But Gerasimov’s lack of manpower has prompted other analysts to say that if the Western resolve holds, Putin’s own caution will hinder Russia’s chances of winning the war.
“Putin’s hesitant wartime decision-making demonstrates his desire to avoid risky decisions that could jeopardize his regime or international growth – despite the fact that his ultimate, and unrealistic, objective is the complete conquest of Ukraine.” further risk perception is needed for success,” said the Institute for the Study of War in an analysis this week.
Evil and scary Putin may be, but as the ISW sees it, he has been “reluctant to order the tough changes to the Russian military and society that are necessary to save his war.”