Yahoo News Putin may be about to launch an apocalyptic assault
With Western attention turning towards elections in Britain and America, the war in Ukraine is drifting away from the front pages. While many in the West have written the conflict off as a stalemate, the Kremlin has not. There are now rumblings in Moscow that a decisive offensive to turn the tides of the war squarely in Russia’s favour may soon be underway.
Russia is scouring the globe for drones and ammunition from every dictator and rogue state, while Kyiv scratches around and begs for artillery shells and air defence missiles from its distracted “allies”.
As German Chancellor Shulz urges the European Union to do more – while notably failing to deliver the hundreds of Leopard 2 tanks Ukraine so desperately needs – Russia is moving to a total war footing, with its government spending and economy increasingly dictated by the needs of the war machine. The contrast between East and West could not be clearer; Russia is focused, and we are not.
Putin, meanwhile, may soon need to show gains on the ground. The election in March will be a complete sham, with his only genuine opposition, Alexei Navalny, safely locked away. That does not mean that the autocrat is entirely ironclad. The memory of last summer’s attempted coup will undoubtedly be fresh in his mind, and the civilian deaths caused by Ukrainian assaults across the border will be focusing attention on the state of the war again. Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesperson has insisted that the Russian military will “do everything in order to minimise the danger at first and then eliminate it entirely.”
With Russian ultra-Nationalists calling for a major offensive around Kharkiv, there is a clear incentive for Putin to pull out all the stops in his “special military operation”. The problem is that according to the Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank, the Russian military is likely unable to “conduct an operation to seize significant territory in Kharkiv Oblast in the near term”. In its words, “A Russian incursion 15 kilometres in depth and several hundred kilometres in width would be a massive operational undertaking that would require a grouping of forces far larger and significantly better resourced than what Russian forces currently have concentrated along the entire international border with Ukraine, least of all in Belgorod Oblast”.
This does not mean that such an assault is impossible. It simply means that it would require weapons on the battlefield we have yet to see. In my opinion, the only weapons that Russia has which could achieve this in this time frame would be a tactical nuclear weapon or some sort of chemical or biological attack. Given the infamous failure of Obama’s “red line” in Syria, and the reluctance of the West to fully commit to defending Ukraine, Putin might think this is a gamble worth taking.
Like Stalin, Putin has an insatiable ego and a desire for greatness at whatever the cost. Those in the West who believe that a ceasefire could be followed by a return to “normality” are utter fools. Nobody with any understanding of the Kremlin believes that it is a certainty that Putin will stop his westwards march. The drift towards militarisation of the Russian state and the surging calls for a greater offensive must serve as a warning that the West needs to wake up before he acts. We must fully support and arm Ukraine. If we don’t, as predicted by the Polish Chief of Security, Nato will be at war with Moscow within a few years.
