Bollocks..
Victory condition’: Grim sign Putin could win
Russian forces may be moving to encircle the bulk of Ukraine’s military in a pincer move that “could represent a victory condition”, UK analysts have warned.
While much of the West‘s focus has been dominated by Russia’s apparently stalled attempts to take major cities including Kyiv, Mariupol and Odessa, researchers from the Royal United Services Institute say recent troop movements suggest Moscow’s true goal is to encircle the Ukrainian army.
Most of the nation’s defences remains near the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk under the aegis of the Joint Forces Operation.
Analysts say preparations for an amphibious assault on Odessa “may have been a feint, given that the ground forces such an assault could have linked up with appear to be moving north”.
“The position of this force is looking increasingly precarious as Russian forces advance to encircle it on three axes,” analyst Sam Cranny-Evans and research fellow Dr Sidharth Kaushal wrote in the report, titled Not Out of the Woods Yet: Assessing the Operational Situation in Ukraine.
“Viewed in conjunction, these advances present a troubling picture whereby the Ukrainian forces opposite Donetsk and Luhansk are at risk of encirclement on the eastern side of the Dnieper.
“If this is indeed the focus of Russia’s approach, then the emphasis on Russia‘s ability to take major cities as a metric of success will have been an analytical error, as Russia appears more intent on pinning Ukrainian forces in cities like Kharkiv while it bypasses them.”
For Ukraine, this represents a critical moment,” they wrote. “The encirclement and destruction of a large part of the country’s regular armed forces could represent a victory condition for Russia in two ways.”
They point to 1940, when German forces did not besiege Paris. “Having encircled the French army in the field and decisively beaten it, this became unnecessary,” they wrote.
“To hold Kyiv and other major cities at the cost of allowing the forces of the JFO to be encircled could prove disastrous. Even if Ukrainian will did not collapse following the encirclement and destruction of the JFO, the elimination of this force could lead Russia to claim it had achieved its goal of demilitarising Ukraine and would enable an annexation of Donetsk and Luhansk at a minimum.”
They add that for an insurgency to be successful, “they require a regular force to both pin the attention of an occupier and conduct eventual counteroffensives”.
“The survival of the forces currently in the east of Ukraine would therefore be critical to an insurgency’s success,” they wrote.
