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The temptation of a Ukrainian offensive in winter

2022-12-13T11:12:50.133Z


Zelensky is in a hurry. He knows that no Western ally is going to get involved in accompanying him to the end in his dream of total victory and that it will become increasingly difficult for him to bear the pressure to negotiate.


At the current point where Ukraine has strengthened its initiative on all fronts of combat, while Russia digs trenches to prevent further setbacks, the idea seems to prevail that winter will force a standstill or, at least, a marked slowdown of the operations.

From there it derives, if all the actors involved in the conflict assume the crude dictate of General Winter, that a parenthesis would now open until next spring with no major changes in sight.

That is logical.

But if all the combatants took these commonplaces as real imperatives, simply accepting that bad weather conditions do not favor the movement of combat units, we would be forgetting that one of the principles derived from the art of war, both at the level strategic as well as tactical

is the surprise

That is why you have to think about the unthinkable: a Ukrainian offensive in the middle of winter.

The temptation is there and it is not an unreasonable option for a Ukraine that has not only managed to resist the invasion but, since the end of last August, has managed to recover more than half of the territory that Russian troops had reached. Check in March.

So far it has been clear that Russia, with the troops deployed since February, is not in a position to launch any large-scale operation to reverse the situation.

Nor does it seem clear that he is going to get Belarus directly involved in the fighting, reopening a new front in the north to openly threaten Kiev and thus force a Ukrainian redeployment that reduces the volume of its units deployed on the southern and eastern fronts to defend his capital.

Equally,

It is a fact that the personnel mobilized in a hurry by Moscow is not helping it to avoid the successive setbacks suffered in Donbas, Kherson and Zaporizhia.

In short, this means that Russia is primarily interested in making the winter as harsh as possible, counting on the fact that this makes it easier to defend the positions reached against an enemy that would have to go out into the open, assuming a greater risk.

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For Ukraine, however, launching an offensive now could be the most attractive alternative.

On the one hand, it would seek to take advantage of its momentum to achieve a better position at a future negotiating table, counting on obtaining favorable results before the unity of its Western allies breaks down, both in economic and military aid and in the application of sanctions to Moscow.

It can even assume that this support will gradually diminish if the development of events leads to a situation so favorable that it points to an imminent Russian defeat (read, losing Crimea), before Putin can think about the use of nuclear weapons.

On the other, he may calculate that by spring Russia will have sufficiently trained its newly recruited troops and that it will then be more difficult for it to make progress on the ground.

The main objective of this hypothetical offensive would be to cut the land corridor that connects Russia with the Crimean peninsula and for this, nothing better than a quick and deep penetration that allows it to regain control of Mariupol or Melitopol, which, together with the problems that Moscow is already having across the bridge over the Kerch Strait (under repair until spring after the attack suffered on October 8), would leave Crimea in a very precarious position.

To carry it out, Ukraine has the necessary forces, morale and material to the extent that it has an operational capacity that Russia is not capable of matching.

In fact, that is the image that both contenders transmit daily: Russia barely maneuvers and is limited to a tactic of systematic bombardments against civilians and critical infrastructures,

Zelensky, in short, is in a hurry.

He knows that his Western allies will continue to supply him with weapons with a limited range to prevent him from hitting targets deep on Russian soil, as he understands that it would provoke an unbearable response.

He also knows that no ally is going to be decisively involved in accompanying him to the end of his dream —a total victory that means the expulsion of all Russian troops from the Ukraine— and that, on the contrary, it will be increasingly difficult for him to bear the pressure to What does it feel like to negotiate?

For this reason, on the one hand, he strives to have his own means to attack more distant targets —there are the recent attacks against Russian military installations hundreds of kilometers from the border— and, on the other,

Jesús A. Núñez Villaverde

is co-director of the Institute for Studies on Conflicts and Humanitarian Action (IECAH).

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Source: elparis

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