2023-09-03 07:13:13
The Ukrainian counteroffensive has not made rapid or spectacular gains. In the last few days he has achieved break through the Russian defenses somewhere on the front. But Two and a half months since the final battle started, the territory gained is only a few kilometers.
At the same time, and after a year and a half of war, war weariness grows, and in the United States there is already open talk of the possibility of cutting off the enormous aid sent to the invaded country. Donald Trump wants to do it. And the same thing was said in the Republican debate last week by both the Emerging far-right Vivek Ramaswamy as the favorite after Trump, Ron DeSantis. They will turn off the funding spigot to the kyiv government if they manage to be president in next year’s elections.
US officials have told the New York Times that the the slowness of the counteroffensive makes them desperate. kyiv’s response has been sour. “Criticizing the slow pace of the counteroffensive is the same as spit in the face of Ukrainian soldiers who sacrifice their lives every day, advancing and liberating kilometer by kilometer of the country’s soil”, said the Ukrainian minister Dimitri Kuleba during his visit to Toledo this Thursday. “I ask you shut up and come to Ukraine to liberate a square centimeter themselves”, concluded the head of Ukrainian diplomacy.
Some hope appears on the map of the evolution of the war. The Ukrainian Army has penetrated the Russian defensive lines on the front line behind Robotyne, a city it has recaptured. Now they are marching towards Verbove and Novopokopivka, in Zaporizhia. The objective: to break the zones of Russian control in two and reach the Sea of Azov.
“There are only two ways to communicate Russia with Crimea. One is the kersch bridge [que une Rusia con la península ucraniana anexionada]. The other is the so-called “land bridge” [los territorios que conectan el Donbás con Crimea]”, claims William Pulido, doctoral candidate in Strategic Studies and analyst for the magazine Ejércitos. “If they manage to cut them in the next few months or in 2024, they are going to make things very difficult for the Russian Army.”
For cut the “land bridge” they must somehow block the road through Melitopol. The first step they are trying to take is to take Tokmak, which is halfway. The physical Kerch bridge has been unsuccessfully attempted several times.
Patience for a long war
There is a certain consensus that the conflict is going to be very long. Wars that are not resolved soon last five years, even two. A patience that in Washington and Brussels is not guaranteed. French General Jacques Langlade has just warned that the war will continue until 2024 or even 2025.
Stian Jenssen, chief of staff to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, recently said that Ukraine might have to start consider giving up territory to achieve peace before joining NATO, although he backed down afterwards.
kyiv publicly refuses to hand over a single millimeter of land, and has thus put it black on white in its peace plan. but without a continued supply of weapons and Western ammunition (which is in short supply), a scenario of stagnation, first, and a subsequent negotiation that includes territories for peace cannot be ruled out.
Veiled criticism of the Ukrainian strategy begins to emerge from the Pentagon. Volodimir Zelensky said, at the beginning of the counteroffensive, that the objective was minimize the number of dead soldiers. He wanted to avoid a bloodletting that Putin does not object to. But Washington argues that this intention goes against established military doctrine, which makes it clear that going on the attack against a strongly entrenched enemy requires enormous numbers of soldiers, according to sources cited by the New York Timess. Russia is armed behind thousands of kilometers of trenches, anti-tank obstacles and machine gun nests. Ukraine has to try to overcome these obstacles without powerful aviation, something almost unheard of in military strategy books.
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“To continue the supply flow for a long time, the West would have to start pulling supplies from the front line of its Armies, because there is not much stored”, argues Polished. “They had to send cluster bombs due to the lack of reserves of conventional artillery ammunition. All of this poses a risk of depleting NATO itself”.
Long or stagnant war
A total victory for one side or the other would be a surprise. The possibility that, little by little, the conflagration will de-escalate due to wear and tear on both parties and remain as a frozen conflict is on the table.
The Russian industrial magnate Oleg Deripaska, who is very close to the Kremlin, has pointed towards this gradual de-escalation: a year and a half of reduction of the fighting to a standstill, according to what he said in statements to the EFE Agency in New Delhi.
This scenario is reminiscent of Korean War between 1950-1953. After more than three million deaths, the war ended as it began: with the two Koreas divided by the 38th parallel and an armistice that did not end the conflict but stopped it in time. Until today.
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