Washington now believes that the Russians have thrown to Ukraine 95% of the force, which they have concentrated for many weeks along the border. Their opening tactics did not go up well. They thought they could capture Ukraine using small mobile units, and without fighting over the cities. They made the traditional mistake of generals: they underestimated their opponents. The signs indicate that they are now making the necessary changes.
The battle for Kyiv is exciting and coming. The mayor told the BBC today (Monday) that the Russians “are ten kilometers from the border of our city.” But the quantitative and qualitative advantage of the Russians is decisive, and they seem to have finished saying to use it.
These days, if not during these hours, they are about to weigh down their bombs and shelling on the cities. During Sunday, the Russians’ progress ceased, but according to Ukrainian sources, they tightened their siege ring on a number of cities in the east and south. They are about to expand the damage to civilian infrastructure, as demonstrated on Sunday by the demolition of the civilian airport in Vinnitsa, in the west of the country, using cruise missiles.
On Monday, signs were seen that the Russian offensive against Odessa, Ukraine’s main port city on the Black Sea coast, was about to begin. Russian warships have been on the horizon for several days. Yesterday, a nearby port city, Nikolaev, was shelled. Taking over this beach will rob Ukraine of its origin to the sea and its main commercial route. The results will be felt not only in Ukraine. Ukrainian cereals meet half the needs of countries like Libya and Tunisia.
Not pushing it against the wall?
The most dramatic news of recent days was Vladimir Putin’s rhetorical escalation on Saturday. If Ukrainian leaders “continue to do what they do,” it means resisting Russia’s invasion, Putin said, the Ukrainian state will cease to exist.
According to the New York Times, White House officials are debating whether Putin’s continued extremism is linked to “pushing him to the wall,” and could lead him to “beyond the borders of Ukraine.”
American intelligence is now engaged in a clinical analysis of the Russian president. Roughly speaking, the Americans are asking themselves and others if Putin has gone mad, perhaps even because of his very long isolation in the days of the Corona. They have of course no convincing answer.
Crazy or not, it seems that Vladimir Putin tends to take lightly the value of people, who he thinks are enemies. His public contempt for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zalansky is one example. While Putin would have now easily won last place in any international sympathy table, Zalansky is a cultural and media hero.
Putin also did not notice his critics in the West. He assumed he had found the way to their hearts – through their pockets, and handed out generous favors to former prime ministers, ministers and senior politicians in the West.
The military cap tends in favor of Putin
The opening snippets of the war surprised observers. Three reputable Russian military experts spoke on Sunday about design and execution weaknesses, among which were poor use of sophisticated weapons systems. But they said that past experience shows that Russia tends to open its wars with demonstrations of weakness, and get better later. And although the military cap is necessarily in favor of Putin, it can certainly be argued that the Russian president has encountered a wall of reality that exceeds his expectations.
Although few think that the Ukrainian army has a real chance, here it manages to place barriers to the invading corps. The value of these barriers is primarily political. They are sending a message of national power, a significant interest in a country whose aggressors claim it has no right to exist.
As we wrote here last week, each additional day of fighting increases the pressure on the West to tighten the sanctions regime against Russia, and to find ways to help Ukraine extend its resistance. Although Ukraine is very disappointed with NATO’s refusal to declare its demilitarization to land the Russian Air Force, the supply of weapons and ammunition is expanded and accelerated. NATO is now discussing the possibility that Poland will immediately be allowed to hand over some of its Air Force aircraft to Ukraine. The supply of shoulder-fired anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles is increasing with increasing intensity. Its results can be seen at the entrances to Kyiv, where Jablin missiles stop the Russians.
Hunting for oligarchs’ assets
We hear again and again the term “Putin Fortress”, to describe its economic preparations for war. Surprising how partial the fortifications of this fort were. It is quite clear that Putin did not take into account the West’s willingness to neutralize the central bank by freezing its foreign exchange reserves. The governor of the Russian bank appeared last weekend in an internal broadcast in which she called on the bank’s employees to calm down, not to argue about politics, and to mobilize vigorously for work, in order to prevent a “catastrophe”; Not exactly an expression of self-confidence.
The hunt for the oligarchs’ assets does not harm Russia’s economy as such, but it undermines the logic of the capitalist regime, which has ruled Russia for 30 years. Will the surprising reservations about the war expressed by Mikhail Friedman (oligarch No. 11 on the Forbes list), Roman Abramovich (12) and Oleg Dripaska (34) affect Putin (oligarch No. 2 on the same list)? Doubt.
But thinning the ranks of his loyalists reduces the number of people who carry out his wishes. Even an almighty dictator, certainly in the land of eleven time zones, needs help. He had better ask her for people who dare to tell him the truth, at least from time to time.
On Saturday, Putin left his secluded mansion for a short time and headed to the Aeroflot National Airlines office in Moscow. He was photographed surrounded by flight attendants, who were not asked to sit at the far end of a long table. He then submitted a report on the state of ‘special military action’ in Ukraine, which the whole world except him calls a war, or invasion.
He declared there that the sanctions on Russia were “the same as a declaration of war,” though “thank God, things did not come to that.” He then spoke, with ordinary sarcasm, of “liberal intelligence,” which criticizes Russia’s actions while “neo-Nazis seize people in the streets (Ukraine) and shoot them.” Ukraine and the neo-Nazis again. But this time he added a stern warning. If Ukrainian leaders “continue to do what they do, they risk losing the Ukrainian state.” If that happens, he said, “the blame will fall on their shoulders.”
In this statement Putin came closer to defining the ultimate goal of the war: to abolish the very existence of Ukraine. That is, not to overthrow the government; Not to achieve “military demilitarization”, whatever that means; Not to ensure that Ukraine stays out of NATO; not to get its consent to the partition of the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed, and the eastern regions, which it recognized as “independent”; From the map.It will be a punishment for daring to oppose the invading army.
Cancellation of a land of 44 million
The abolition of 44 million, the second largest country in Europe (after Russia), larger than France and Germany, is an act that has been tried very rarely in modern history, and only in its darkest periods, such as the abolition of Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1939; As the abolition of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein (1990).
The Soviet Union conquered four countries, which it recognized as independent, and annexed them. But it nominally maintained the separate framework of their existence, turning them into “Soviet republics.” The four were Georgia (in 1921), and the three in the Baltics, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia (in 1940). But this time it seems Putin intends to erase every trace of a separate existence, because he denies the historical justification of such an existence. He may be thinking of a return to the territorial order that preceded World War I, when Ukraine did not exist at all as such, and on its territory were administrative districts (“governors”), headed by central government officials, not elected representatives.
It is not easy to abolish a country, but in the last week so many kinds of taboos have been removed in international relations that we may be getting used to it.