WAR IN UKRAINETime for the Russian Army to Take Stock
Late last week, Vladimir Putin insisted that there are no grounds for concern about Russia’s military performance. “Largely speaking,” he said last Thursday in a meeting with parliamentary leaders, “we haven’t even yet started anything in earnest.” This boosterism may be designed to deter NATO countries from even greater engagement, and also to reassure a domestic audience, although the more discerning will find such reassurances deeply worrying.
In my last post I asked whether Ukraine could win this war, to which I answered it could, although it was not yet clear whether it would. In this post I want to expand on one of the reasons I came to this conclusion.
I suggested that the Ukrainian forces would not follow the same tactics as the Russian, and would instead seek to exploit the accuracy of the long-range artillery delivered by western countries. They would concentrate ‘on supply lines, bases, and command centers, making opportunistic advances, using guerrilla tactics in the city against the occupying forces, leaving Russian troops uncertain about where the next attack is coming from.’ All these things have been happening over the past week.
I went on to suggest that this could start to pose awkward choices for the Russian high command. It would need to consider its long-term position and how to maintain their forces to deal with future threats, other than Ukraine. Russia would not be able to ‘afford an inch-by-inch retreat to the border, taking losses all the way.’ This is the point I wish to explore further.
Late last week the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that after their recent exertions in Luhansk, its forces needed a pause to ‘replenish their combat capabilities’ before moving on to the next stage in the war. Putin took the opportunity to exude optimism and to insist that there are no grounds for concern. ‘Largely speaking,’ he said last Thursday in a meeting with parliamentary leaders, ‘we haven’t even yet started anything in earnest.’ He returned to his familiar themes that it was western support for Ukraine that was prolonging the war, and that economic pressure on Ukraine’s backers would see Russia through this conflict. ‘We are hearing that they want to defeat us on the battlefield’, said Putin. ‘Let them try’. His courtiers talk of fulfilling the original goals of the special military operation. Putin’s old comrade. Nikolai Patrushev, the head of Russia’s security council, still claims that the aim is to ‘demilitarize’ all of Ukraine.
