Filenews 13 September 2022
By Leonid Bershidsky
Fireworks flooded the sky in Moscow as the Russian armed forces hastily retreated from the key city of Izyum in Ukraine's Kharkiv province on September 10.
The Russian capital actually did not celebrate military destruction: the show was part of the City Day celebrations. However, there could hardly be a better illustration of the Putin regime's utter lack of preparation for the event of defeat. His attempt to wage an invasion war while maintaining the form of a "life that goes on normally" was doomed from the beginning to failure - and the choices he now finds himself in are difficult.
Exultation
Within a few days, Ukraine repelled Russian troops from the Kharkiv province. This may not look like a significant victory in terms of the territory that has been recovered - about 2,500 square kilometres, or a little more so far, than the 125,000 square kilometres that Russia occupied in Ukraine before this week. However, Ukrainian and Western galiasis is justified.
The province of Kharkov was historically relentless in hubris. As Russian forces were defeated there in recent days, many commentators recalled the disastrous advance of 1942 by Marshal Semyon Tymoshenko against a smaller German force in the region, which moved skilfully to cut off Moscow's forces from the north. About 250,000 Soviet soldiers were captured. The fiasco paved the way for Hitler's troops to reach Stalingrad, where they stopped only at a huge cost in human lives.
The current Russian setback, too, is strategically significant. The loss of positions in Kharkov turns the goal of encirclement of Ukrainian forces in the Donetsk region into a midsummer night's dream: Russian troops can no longer push from the north. The invading army retreated to avoid being blocked by the supply lines and reinforcements. However, the Russians could not avoid damage to their already low morale.
Putin's soldiers dig on the east bank of the Oskil River, but their defensive positions lack depth, just as was the case around Izium. Russian forces - including those in areas controlled by Russian collaborators as early as 2014 - will now be vulnerable to further Ukrainian counterattacks, which are now expected both in the Luhansk province and in Donetsk.
Mistake
These advances will seek to take advantage of what may turn out to be Russia's greatest mistake in its entire sinful and fratricidal campaign. Since the retreat from Kiev and northern Ukraine in April onwards, the Russian command has used the fighting forces of the self-proclaimed "Lugansk and Donetsk People's Republics" as cannon fodder.
In doing so, they lost thousands of the only soldiers who had a real own interest in Putin's game: these combat-age men were by definition anti-Ukrainians - and they had a moral commitment to fight as hard as the Ukrainians themselves. Few Russian soldiers could violate their resolve. When Kiev began its counterattack, the fighters of Luhansk and Donetsk were almost eliminated due to wear and tear.
Indeed, the positions in the Kharkiv region were manned by the regular army of Russia, which fights in exchange for money: they were persecuted without fighting with passion, when the Ukrainians pressed them hard enough.
Now, the "Lugansk People's Republic", "except for the frontline areas, is most likely empty of manpower," Polish military analyst Konrad Muzika, one of the campaign's most penetrating observers, wrote on Twitter. Combat-age men have been recruited in large numbers in recent months, he said, which means that "there are no men to fight in Luhansk".
Counterattack by the Russian far right?
To preserve most of the conquered territory, Russia urgently needs to shrink the front and bring human reserves. It will be difficult to do it quickly enough to cope with the momentum of Ukraine. Even a general mobilization would now be slow to prevent further defeats. The Russian far right insisted from the outset that it would be necessary to win the war.
Now, even those locals who would otherwise welcome a Russian occupation of the area, will as a rule refuse to provide their support. They will either sit quietly or help the Ukrainian rebels. The resounding assurances of many Russian officials since February that "Russia is now here to stay" sound hollow as the cars of fugitive Ukrainian collaborators of the Russian occupation lined up on the border near Belgorod.
Further supplies of sophisticated Western weapons are now secured for Ukraine. Kiev has proven that it is capable of counterattacking and winning, so there is no reason for NATO to doubt the effectiveness of its assistance.
In Russia, meanwhile, an angry and aggrieved community of extreme nationalists is rapidly turning into a threat to the regime. From the beginning of the invasion, she was the only one who was allowed relatively free expression because she is strongly in favor of war.
The narrative that dominates the far-right of the political spectrum on Telegram channels is now full of indignation at the incompetence of the corrupt military and political leadership. They spread a theory of back knives that focuses on leaders of the "special military operation" who are not ethnically Russians - such as Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, who hails from Tuva, near Mongolia - or Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.
Given the great support of ultranationalists within Russia's powerful law enforcement agencies, it is understandable that discontent may be simmering among the very forces on which Putin relied to maintain power.
Scenarios
It is too early to predict a military disaster for the entire Russian expeditionary force in Ukraine, let alone a collapse of the Russian regime. Suddenly, however, such possibilities began to fade on the horizon thanks to something that is essentially a local Ukrainian success.
This is a consequence of the most fundamental flaw in the way of thinking behind Putin's campaign in Ukraine – if there was any real thought within all this burst of imperialist sentiment that took over everything. Russia never took its adversary seriously, nor did it even consider Ukraine a viable entity. So, he never thought about the possibility of a defeat.
No plans were made for pessimistic scenarios - and no such scenario seems to exist today. In a war, the side that is not prepared for setbacks can be dissolved at the first signs of problems.
Overconfidence and panic are the opposite sides of the same coin. The Russians invaded without real will to win, however, they were also not prepared for the risk of losing. Any setback thus becomes a devastating blow to national pride. This will be a source of turbulence even if Russia manages to stop Ukraine's current aggressive momentum. These factors could be the components of a historic defeat.
Source: BloombergOpinion
