“I am evil and scary with teeth and claws,” he warned. Vladimir Putin David Cameron, when the then British Prime Minister pushed for the use of chemical weapons by Russia’s ally in Syria, Bashar al-Assad, and wondered how far Russia would go.

According to Cameron’s top foreign policy adviser John Casson, quoted in the BBC documentary, Putin explained that to succeed in Syria he would have to use brutal methods, as the US did in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. “I am a former KGB agent,” he explained.

The remarks were obviously half-joking, but, as always with the Russian leader, the threat was clear, he reports. Politico in an extensive analysis of this.

And, of course, Putin has proven that he is ready to use fear as a weapon in his quest to subjugate an uncompromising Ukraine. His troops attacked civilians and resorted to torture and rape. But victory eluded him.

In the coming weeks, he looks set to try to right his military failures by launching an offensive at the end of winter, quite possibly looking even more fearsome and fighting to the death to save Russia – and himself – from further humiliation.

But can the former KGB officer handle it? Can Russia win Putin’s chosen war against Ukraine in the face of heroic and united Ukrainian resistance?

List of errors

From the very beginning, the war was marked by miscalculations and miscalculations. Putin and his generals underestimated Ukrainian resistance, overestimated the capabilities of their forces, and failed to anticipate the scale of military and economic support Ukraine would receive from the US and European states.

Kiev did not fall for several days as the Kremlin planned, and Putin’s troops were driven back in the summer and autumn, and by November Ukraine had regained more than half of the territory captured by the Russians in the first weeks of the invasion. Now Russia has been embroiled in a costly and protracted conventional war that has sparked rare dissent within the country’s political-military establishment and highlighted infighting in the Kremlin.

The only Russian victory in months came in January, when the Ukrainians retreated from the salt-mining town of Solentar in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. And there are signs that the Russians are on the cusp of another victory at Bakhmut, just ten kilometers southwest of Solentar, which is likely to fall into their hands soon.

However, none of these bloody victories is anything more than token success, despite the heavy losses that both sides likely suffered. Tactically, victory does not matter, and some Western officials are saying behind closed doors that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky might have been better off leaving Soletar earlier and now from Bakhmut, just as the Russians retreated in November with their hopeless military position. in Kherson.

To achieve a real turn in the military fate of Russia, In the coming weeks, Putin will deploy his entire force, supplemented by drafted reservists and conscripts, and launch a major new offensive. Ukrainian officials expect the offensive to become serious before spring.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov has warned in press conferences in recent days that Russia could amass up to 500,000 troops in occupied Ukraine and along the border in reserve, ready to attack. He says it could start shortly before the first anniversary of the war on February 24th.

Other Ukrainian officials believe the offensive, if it does occur, will take place in March, but at least before Leopard 2s and other Western main battle tanks and infantry vehicles arrive. Zelenskiy warned Ukrainians on Saturday that the country was entering “a time when the conqueror is throwing more and more forces to break our defenses.”

All eyes on Donbass

Most likely, Russian attention will be focused on the Donbass in the east. Andriy Chernyak, a member of Ukraine’s military intelligence service, told the Kyiv Post that Putin had ordered his armed forces to seize all of Donetsk and Luhansk by the end of March.

“We observed how the Russian occupying forces were moving additional strike groups, units, weapons and military equipment to the east,” Chernyak said. “According to the military intelligence service of Ukraine, Putin ordered the capture of all territories of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.”

Other Ukrainian officials and Western military analysts suspect that Russia may be taking steps to divert and divert attention. They are eyeing the “fake” coming from Belarus, which imitates the February offensive from the north to Kyiv and west of the capital towards Vinnitsa.

However, according to Ukrainian military estimates, there are now only 12,000 Russian troops in Belarus who allegedly conduct joint exercises with the Belarusian military, which is not enough to carry out an attack.

“A second attack on Kyiv does not make sense,” said Michael Coffman, an American expert on the Russian military and a staff member at the Washington-based think tank Center for a New American Security. “An operation to intercept supply corridors to the west or to seize a nuclear power plant in Rovno could be more feasible, but it would require a much larger force than what Russia currently has in Belarus,” he said in the analysis.

However, where exactly the main Russian offensives along the 600-kilometer front line in the Donbas region will come from is still unclear. Western military analysts do not expect Russia to launch a full-scale offensive — it is more likely that it will strike in two or three directions, focusing on a number of key villages and cities in the south of Donetsk, Kremennaya and Liman in Luhansk and in the south. in Zaporozhye, from where there were reports of an increase in the concentration of troops and equipment near the borders of Russia.

In the Luhansk region, Russian forces are evacuating residents near Russian-controlled sections of the front line. And the governor of the region, Sergei Gaidai, believes that the deportations are aimed at cleaning up potential Ukrainian spies and local residents who have noticed Ukrainian artillery. “There is an active transfer (of Russian troops) to the region, and they are definitely preparing for something on the eastern front,” Heidai told reporters.

Reznikov said he expected the Russian attack to come from the east and south at the same time – from Zaporozhye in the south, as well as from Donetsk and Luhansk. In anticipation of the main strikes, Russian troops are checking five points of the front, the General Staff of Ukraine said at a press briefing on Tuesday. According to them, Russian troops have regrouped at various points along the front line and are advancing in the area of ​​Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region and Liman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Novopavlovka in eastern Donetsk.

combined arms war

The Russians, however, are unlikely to make much progress unless they can correct two major shortcomings that have so far persisted in their military operations – poor logistics and an inability to coordinate infantry, armor, artillery and air support so that they complement each other. otherwise known as combined arms warfare.

Announcing the appointment in January of General Valery Gerasimov, the former chief of the General Defense Staff, as commander-in-chief of Russian troops in Ukraine, the Russian Defense Ministry stressed “the need to organize closer interaction between the types and armament of troops. In other words, to improve the combined arms war.

Kofman believes that Russia’s logistical problems may have been largely resolved. “There has been a big reorganization and adjustment in Russian logistics. “I think the discussion of Russian logistical issues in general suffers from an extreme lack of documentation, to the point of anecdotal,” he said.

Otherwise, a lot for Russia will depend on how well Gerasimov can train his renewed forces in combined arms warfare, and in this regard, there are huge doubts that he has enough time.

Kofman believes that Ukrainian forces “would be better off absorbing the Russian offensive and exhausting the Russian offensive potential, and then seizing the initiative later in the spring. Having used up ammunition, the best troops and equipment, they could generally weaken the Russian defense. He suspects the attack “could be disappointing.”

“Votes” for a new, mass appeal

Pro-war Russian military bloggers agree. They are demanding another deployment, saying they need to step up the offensive needed to reverse Russia’s military gains. Former Russian intelligence officer and paramilitary commander Igor Girkin, who played a key role in the annexation of Crimea and later Donbas, argued that waves of mobilization would be needed to overcome Ukraine’s defenses.

And Western military analysts suspect that Ukraine and Russia currently have about the same number of fighter jets. This means that General Gerasimov will need much more if he wants to achieve the three-to-one ratio that military doctrine considers necessary to achieve an offensive force.

However, others fear that Russia has enough strength, if it mustered them, to make “shocking gains.” Richard Kemp, a former British Army infantry commander, predicts “significant Russian advances in the coming weeks. We need to be realistic about how bad things can get or the shock could “break” the West’s resolve,” he wrote. There are fears that if the Russians can make significant territorial gains in the Donbas, then pressure from some Western allies to negotiate is likely to increase.

However, Gerasimov’s lack of manpower has led other analysts to believe that if Western resolve continues, Putin’s own restraint will hurt Russia’s chances of winning the war.

“Putin’s indecisiveness in making decisions during the war demonstrates his desire to avoid risky decisions that could threaten his sovereignty or international escalation, despite the fact that his maximalist and unrealistic goal of the complete conquest of Ukraine probably requires further risk in order to have any the hope of success. says an analysis from the Institute for the Study of War this week.

Putin may be angry and scary, but according to the Institute, he “remains unwilling to order the complex changes in the Russian military and society likely needed to save his war.”

Source: Politico