April 22nd-28th 2023 Ukraine’s game plan
A question of calibration
Yüklə 5,71 Mb. Pdf görüntüsü
|
| A question of calibration
Western officials familiar with Ukraine’s preparations are unsure how everything will pan out. It is vital, they say, that Ukrai nian forces have the confidence to keep moving forward. Russia’s layered defences are designed to lure advancing columns into “kill zones” covered by presighted ar tillery. If troops panic and freeze up, they could be decimated. But there are also con cerns about the opposite: an unexpected collapse of Russian forces that puts Ukraine’s army at the edge of Crimea, in a position to seal off the peninsula, attack Russian ports and bases there and deny the Sea of Azov to Russian ships. Large pockets of Russian troops could also be trapped in Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts. Such a humiliation is deemed unlike ly—a leaked American assessment pre dicts only “marginal” gains for either side this year—but not impossible. Many Ukrai nian officials would welcome it. But some Western ones are concerned that a rout would destabilise Russia to a dangerous degree, making it harder for the Kremlin to swallow any negotiations that might fol low. Far preferable, they say, for Vladimir Putin to order a semivoluntary retreat, as he did from the western bank of the Dniep er river in Kherson province in November. The aim is not to defeat Mr Putin militarily but to persuade him that recovering the lost territory would require wave after wave of politically risky mobilisation. But that will not be easy. Mr Putin is thought to remain convinced that time is on his side. He has reinforced failure at every turn, frittering away tens of thou sands of mobilised recruits on a futile of fensive around the town of Bakhmut since January. The dia assessment, first pub lished by the Washington Post , says that even if Ukraine were to inflict “unsustain able losses on Russian forces”, Russia would prefer to conduct a fresh mobilisa tion rather than enter negotiations. On April 12th Russia’s parliament passed a new law allowing the defence ministry to issue electronic rather than physical sum mons for military service, making it easier to dragoon recruits. On April 18th Mr Putin visited Kherson province personally. An other round seems inevitable. Ukraine can sustain a counteroffensive through the spring and perhaps into the summer, says Michael Kofman of cna , a thinktank. But it will burn through am munition and men in the process, he warns, and this could be the “highwater mark” of Western aid. The coming months could be the decisive period of the war. n Area controlled by Russian-backed separatists before Feb 24th 2022 Zaporizhia Zaporizhia Kherson Kherson Zaporizhia Kharkiv Kupiansk Bakhmut Melitopol Shyroke Krasnodar Belgorod Black Sea Sea of Azov Dnieper U K R A I N E R U S S I A Crimea Ukrainian territory annexed by Russia in 2014 Ukrainian territory annexed by Russia on Sep 30th 2022 D o n b a s Luhansk Donetsk Zaporizhia Kherson 150 km Russian operations* Claimed Assessed Approx. Ukrainian advances April 19th 2023 *Russia operated in or attacked, but does not control †Feb 24th 2022-Apr 9th 2023 Sources: Institute for the Study of War; AEI’s Critical Threats Project; Brady Africk Russian-controlled: Russian fortifications built, used or expanded† Ukraine’s inflatable weapons Yüklə 5,71 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
|