Not yet a decisive moment in the war, but perhaps the first sign for Ukraine of a change in tone in the balance of power on the ground.
The speed and effectiveness of the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the east of the country for several days now revives hopes of a gradual recovery by kyiv of its territories invaded by Russian forces for more than six months, while confirming in passing the improvisation of the military operation initiated last February by the Kremlin.
But, while being “impressive”, according to several analysts, this liberation of several towns and villages in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions from the hands of the Russian invader is still far from announcing a victory for Ukraine, or even the end of a conflict. Moscow once again promised on Monday to continue its war of invasion “until the set objectives are achieved”. The fall of Volodymyr Zelensky’s government and the return of Ukraine to Russian rule are among them.
“The Russians were taken by surprise, but it will take even more to bend Vladimir Putin, drops, at the other end of the Zoom, retired ex-Colonel Pierre St-Cyr, who has been attached of Canadian Defense in Ukraine during the 2014 conflict. The situation is now becoming more dynamic on the ground. Ukraine has not gained much ground, but enough to have an immense psychological impact on its population and to affect enemy morale. »
On Monday, the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff announced that its troops had completely liberated no less than 20 Russian-occupied towns in the past 24 hours after months of barely perceptible troop movement on the battlefield. In some areas, this Ukrainian counter-offensive even pushed the enemy back “to the Russian border,” said Oleh Syniehubov, governor of the northeastern region of Kharkiv, quoted by the Associated Press.
As Ukraine’s flag flutters again over several municipalities, occupation authorities in the Kharkiv region say they have taken the road to Belgorod province, Russia, near the border , to officially come to the aid of the refugees, summed up the Russian press agencies, to justify this sudden departure.
In total, Ukraine says it has recovered about 3,000 km2 of its territory in the vicinity of Kharkiv since the beginning of September. This is barely 2.4% of the 125,000 km2 of Ukraine that have come under the control of Russian forces since 2014 and after the second invasion last February.
In its latest report, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) states that “Russian forces are not operating a controlled withdrawal and are hastily fleeing to escape encirclement”, emphasizing the picture of a routed army.
“Ukraine has made impressive progress on the battlefield,” notes Alexander Motyl, a Ukraine scholar and professor of political science at Rutgers University in Newark, while noting the irony of recent developments in this conflict: “The Russian troops reacted [à l’avancée rapide des Ukrainiens] as they hoped the Ukrainians would do after the February 24 offensive: throwing down their weapons and heading for the hills,” he wrote in the digital pages of the 19FortyFive website.
“The Ukrainian counter-offensive bears witness to a fivefold failure [pour la Russie] that of Russian intelligence anticipating the offensive, that of Russian military planning to fortify its defenses in potentially vulnerable regions, that of Russian troops reluctant to die for what many within it consider to be a stupid and criminal war, that of the Russian people for not having the courage to save their sons from certain death, and that of Vladimir Putin who leaves the work of war and combat to a general staff”, visibly overwhelmed by the situation.
The small Ukrainian victories of the last few days, supported by the Western arms deliveries of the last few months, have galvanized the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, who, on social networks Sunday evening, returned to a rebellious tone against Russia. “Do you still think you can intimidate us, break us, force us to make concessions, he asked. Cold, hunger, darkness and thirst for us will never be as frightening and deadly as your “friendship” and your “brotherhood”. »
On Monday, the Ukrainian general staff claimed that the recapture of the occupied territories had left Moscow in shock, even prompting the enemy command to suspend the dispatch of new military units to Ukraine. Information that has not been corroborated by the Kremlin. “The current situation in the theater of operations and the mistrust [des soldats russes] towards their superior command forced a large number of volunteers to categorically refuse the prospect of service in these combat conditions,” the Ukrainian army summarized in a press release.
The questioning of the war tends to grow a little more within the Russian Federation, where the elected municipal officials of 18 districts of Moscow and Saint Petersburg come from sign an appeal for impeachment of Vladimir Putin. The strongman of the Kremlin is accused, among other things, of “high treason” for actions that “harm the future of Russia and its citizens”. In St. Petersburg, several of these elected officials were met by the police and should be prosecuted for having publicly “discredited” the use of the Russian armed forces.
“Those who convinced President Putin that the operation would be quick and efficient…those people really trapped us all,” Boris Nadezhdin, a former MP, accused on a primetime public affairs show. from NTV television network, Sunday, in Russia, a criticism of the war less and less constraint on the waves of a television always largely controlled by the Kremlin. “We are now at the point where we have to understand that it is absolutely impossible to defeat Ukraine using these resources and these methods of colonial warfare. »
For Pierre St-Cyr, well before a victory for Ukraine on the ground, it is certainly “the internal situation in Russia which will become the decisive factor in ending this conflict”, and this, provided that it ends up result in the overthrow of Putin and his entourage. “But it is an outcome that is still uncertain and still very difficult to predict,” he admits.
The shock received by the Russian forces was always accompanied by the intensity of the strikes. On Monday alone, Russia launched 5 missiles, more than 10 airstrikes and more than 20 rocket attacks against military and civilian targets in Ukraine, summarized the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
In Kharkiv, after attacking the water and electricity supply infrastructure after the departure of its soldiers, Moscow directed its missile strikes towards the residential district of Nemyshlyansky, according to the same source.
At the end of the day, tensions persisted between Russia and Ukraine around the town of Izium, an important supply point for the Russian forces. His full release “would be Ukraine’s most significant military achievement since its victory in the Battle of kyiv in March”, according to the ISW.
With Agence France-Presse