What reflects Putin’s change in military strategy and what can stop him in Ukraine

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Last week, there were signs, stronger than ever, that Russia was acknowledging that it could not achieve a military conquest of Ukraine. These signs, linked to peace talks in Ukraine, indicating that Russia is refraining from trying to encircle Kiev, coincide with an earlier statement that its war goals were limited to conquering the eastern part of the country only. Earlier, Russia and Ukraine said the peace talks were entering a phase of substantive discussions, as opposed to Russia limiting itself to issuing ultimatums.

Russia’s claim that it is halting operations around Kiev and launching an attack in the east of the country is one of the cases where the Russian Defense Ministry’s statement is clearly true. The “reality gap” is not what Russia is doing, but why it says it is doing it. Russia has presented the withdrawal of its troops from the outskirts of Kiev as a kind of concession to “strengthen mutual trust” in the peace talks. But it was already clear that their attack on this side had been halted and in some cases retreated due to Ukrainian resistance. Changing plans for operations in the East and the rotation of Russian troops on the northern flank of Ukraine is a recognition by Moscow that – as many military analysts have predicted before the current conflict – it does not have the forces to deploy. It will take the whole of Ukraine to conquer along many axes of progress.

In fact, Russia has to keep up with its current actions. On the eve of the attack on Ukraine, the accumulation of troops led to divisions from as far away as the Arctic and the Far East. Now that many of these units have been hampered in fighting in Ukraine, Russia is turning to all possible sources of additional corps, including bringing in mercenaries and recruiting from Syria.

But while Ukraine ‘s success in averting some of the Russian attacks may mean that the country as a whole is not in imminent danger of invasion, the future of Ukraine’ s sovereignty remains. Russia has a history of waging destructive wars and then throwing enough troops and equipment into the conflict to destroy its opponents through sheer accumulation. Russia can continue a devastating war, regardless of the casualties of poorly trained troops or the damage done to the Russian economy itself, than Ukraine can maintain Western interest and support.

Meanwhile, Russia will continue its humanitarian disaster engineering to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to make concessions that will end the war. The capital itself will still be in danger. Stopping attempts to advance around Kiev and occupy more territory does not mean that Russia will stop long-range missile and artillery attacks on Ukrainian cities from the territories it already controls.

This Russian pressure will be direct, Zelensky will offer a catastrophic choice – to continue fighting at the cost of an innocent life or to make concessions to end suffering, and indirectly, if Zelensky’s Western supporters change their advice and support – because they do. I do not believe that Ukraine should resist more in the face of a humanitarian catastrophe.

Zelensky has already indicated that he would accept Ukraine’s “neutral” status, thus ending the struggle. But that in itself is dangerous. Zelensky, like everyone else, knows that “neutral security guarantees” was Ukraine’s status ten years ago, and that he did nothing to prevent Russia from seizing Crimea and starting a war in eastern Ukraine. So, in order to express any opinion, these very words must have a radically different international status and international support for Ukraine than in 2014. The division of the country, thus strengthening Russia’s territorial gains.

Optimism about resisting the occupation of the Ukrainian population in Russian-controlled territories, as well as territories that could still be conquered by the East, hides a bitter truth. The sad reality is that Moscow has a very high rate of success in suppressing resistance movements and uprisings, largely thanks to the use of unbridled barbarism against the civilian population that supports them. So if Russia decides to occupy territory that it already has control over, the only thing it can oust is a new and much more significant Ukrainian military offensive that may be inaccessible to Kiev.

Ultimately, a lot depends on what Russia defines itself as a “victory.” He had already re-invented his original war goals, they could not be achieved. The expectation that the Ukrainians were simply frustrated Russians waiting to be liberated from the imaginary neo-Nazi political elite that seized power in Kyiv was torpedoed after their first encounter with a particular reality on Ukrainian soil. Not far from the whole country in hand, but Russia must fight for every inch of Ukrainian territory.

So whatever victory Russia ultimately claims, it is unlikely that it will be what it initially thought it would be. But it matters little when he has established such control over public opinion in his country that a large part of his population thinks that a defensive war is going on. Indeed, Russia’s declaration of success does not depend at all on the reality of the outcome of the war. The long-term problem is that if Vladimir Putin emerges from this war convinced that Russia has achieved more than a substantial defeat, nothing will stop him from continuing his plans for wars of conquest in Moscow territories and regaining control. Peoples who he says are mistakenly independent.

Russia may need time to recover militarily and transition economically under the new sanctions regime, but the only thing that will change Putin’s ambition is an obvious and undeniable failure that cannot be explained by tricks that redefine what Russia wanted in this war. Now, as at the beginning of the war, the West has a responsibility to help Ukraine achieve this defeat.

Kair Giles works on the Russia-Eurasia program at Chatham House and is the author Moscow rules: what pushes Russia to confront the West.

Translated by Julian Cnochaert.

Source: El Diario

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