Putin takes the war to its most dangerous phase after suffering serious setbacks

Russia's war in Ukraine has entered a crucial and uncertain phase.

The substantial losses on the battlefield due to the advances of the Ukrainian army —such as this Saturday in Liman— in a territory in which President Vladimir Putin, in his eagerness to redraw borders by force, already considers part of Russia, they persecute the head of the Kremlin.

In his rush forward, he has raised the tone of his nuclear threats, in an escalation-to-de-escalation strategy that brings the war to its most dangerous moment since it began on February 24.

Putin is losing battle by battle and has stressed that he is not bluffing his warnings.

NATO and the EU have warned that the risk of nuclear war is real.

“It is the most serious escalation since the conflict began,” the secretary general of the Atlantic Alliance remarked on Friday,

The illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions signed on Friday by Putin;

his desperate order for military mobilization, which has shaken the country;

relentless nuclear threats and an increasingly furious anti-Western rhetoric from the Kremlin are four pivotal points in the full-scale war launched by the Russian president in his ravenous imperialist appetite.

Putin is now maneuvering his new recruits as pawns, waiting for winter to relocate and resupply, a Western intelligence agency source maintains.

Meanwhile, while delving into an ultra-nationalist rhetoric aimed at containing growing discontent at home, he is wallowing in increasingly harsh advertisements, with which he tries to confront advancing Ukrainian forces and cut off the shipment of long-range weapons. of kyiv's allies.

It is not easy to find historical parallels in Russia's war against Ukraine, says Luis Simón, director of the Elcano Institute in Brussels, especially because Moscow is a nuclear power.

“Although nuclear weapons have not come into play directly, they have done so indirectly and limit the parameters of interaction between both parties.

Also the possible modalities of participation of the West in the conflict”, points out Simón.

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The Kremlin has assured that, after the illegal annexation of the Ukrainian regions of Kherson, Zaporizhia, Lugansk and Donetsk - which the international community has roundly rejected - an attack on those territories would be treated as an attack on Russia.

In the furious speech with which he signed the annexation decree, Putin hardly gave any new details about the nuclear threats that are worrying Western capitals, but he once again sowed his words of fear by recalling that the United States has been the only country to use atomic weapons in war

And this, in his words, "created a precedent."

Orysia Lutsevych, director of the Ukraine Forum on Russia and Eurasia program at Chatham House, stresses that Putin seeks chaos and sees his latest maneuvers and nuclear threats as "blackmail."

“We must be responsible and not talk about probabilities without having information.

And we don't have it.

We are talking about a person who made the final decision to invade Ukraine one day before doing it, ”she notes.

"Ukraine is winning the war and it will not capitulate, even if they use this tactical nuclear weapon it will not surrender," Lutsevych maintains.

Jamie Shea, who has served in several key NATO positions, describes three dynamic forces at play that, depending on how they interact and play out, will determine the outcome of the war: the advances of the Ukrainian military into territory that Putin now regards as Russia, the discontent caused by the reckless mobilization and escalation that combines indiscriminate attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, nuclear threats and even, says the former NATO official, "the sabotage of gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea" (at least that is what they indicate circumstantial evidence).

Volodymyr Zelensky, at a meeting of the Security Council of Ukraine, on Friday in Kiev. UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SER (via REUTERS)

"Putin is obviously trying to scare us into making concessions, but his strategy of reckless escalation also carries risks for him," says Shea, now a professor of security and strategy at the University of Exeter.

“Russia is increasingly isolated.

Even Moscow's friends, such as China, Serbia and Kazakhstan, have reacted coldly to the fake referendums in Ukraine”, adds the expert.

Furthermore, he points out, Putin's nuclear strikes would have catastrophic consequences for Russia that go far beyond additional sanctions.

Without forgetting the internal consequences that all these movements may have for the Russian leader.

"The Kremlin's escalation into even more risky steps could well cause the Russian security establishment to rise up against Putin and seek peace," says Shea.

Warnings before the nuclear attack

Nikolai Sókov, who was part of the Russian negotiating team for the START I and II disarmament agreements, believes that the situation is still far from catastrophe and that the Kremlin would send several warnings before taking the step of a nuclear attack.

“It could use conventional weapons or other measures.

It could even resort to an underground nuclear test”, he predicts.

“In any case, we will be able to see that the situation is becoming more dangerous and acute.

A surprise nuclear attack is not one of the cards,” emphasizes Sókov, now an analyst at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation.

The cold is approaching and the Ukrainian and Russian forces have a long road ahead of them to complete their objectives.

In Belgorod, a Russian city bordering Ukraine's Kharkov, military clothing stalls have sprung up like mushrooms, selling outerwear to professional soldiers.

The recruits who are part of the chaotic mobilization decreed by Putin last week are beginning to arrive at the front.

Some have said that they do not even have equipment, that in the recruitment center they have been given a list of things that they must take to the front, which includes items as basic as suitable footwear for winter and clothing.

But Putin, the former head of the Russian secret services, the man who came to power largely because of the bloody war in Chechnya and leaned on the oligarchy, who has wiped out the opposition and snuffed out every sprout of organized civil society, also battle to stay in power at home.

Citizens have not received the illegal annexation of the four Ukrainian provinces with the nationalist jubilation with which they reacted to Crimea in 2014. The indiscriminate mobilization and recruitment have led to an unusual public response in a Russia that severely punishes those who protest and that he had kept his head in the sand—or hidden in a Kremlin propaganda tub—over an alleged operation to “denazify” Ukraine.

The country also attends

According to a poll this week by the Levada polling center, less than half of Russians (48%) support continuing the war in the first week of calls.

Putin needs cannon fodder to fuel his war in the Ukraine and the recruitment will continue.

Proof of this, points out the political scientist Ekaterina Shulman, is that these same centers have postponed until November the annual call for young people who must do mandatory military service—exempted by law from going to the front lines.

Moscow is also beginning to see the sanctions take their toll on it, a storm it managed to weather after the invasion thanks to high energy prices.

The Western punishment has taken a big bite out of its exports and also imports of key products for its defense industry, which, according to intelligence sources, is in a difficult situation.

As Putin raises the tone and the war in Ukraine becomes more uncertain, the West is carefully measuring its next steps.

The United States and the EU have embarked on a low-key but also frenzied diplomatic crusade with a measured tone that seeks to avoid the Kremlin narrative that it is all really a proxy conflict between Russia and the West.

"Europe is not at war," the NATO Secretary General insisted.

Meanwhile, the Twenty-seven rush to approve saving measures, energy efficiency and intervene in the markets to stop the consequences of another battle: the Kremlin's economic war against the EU, in which the Russian president uses energy as a weapon to fragment the unity of the partners, who have remained firm in their support for Ukraine.

For that battle, fueled by inflation and the seed of discontent, winter will also be crucial.

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