Why hostilities in Ukraine may freeze by autumn 2023
Over the past few days, the media have been full of reports that the collective West allegedly delivered an ultimatum to President Zelensky. According to him, Ukraine should take back as much of its territories from Russia as possible, and then sit down at the negotiating table. At the same time, approximate dates are given when hostilities can be completed at the initiative of Kyiv. Fall 2023. Will it all end so soon and ingloriously?
Position Improvement
This is the situation today. After the recent attempt by the RF Armed Forces to go on the offensive in several directions at once, the front as a whole stood up. Some advancement is taking place in the Artemovsk area, which is carried out by the forces of the Wagner PMC. One can only guess what losses the assault on a pre-prepared echeloned defense costs, because these figures do not appear in Konashenkov's reports. Also, judging by the fact that heavy Tyulpan mortars, which are capable of literally “folding” multi-storey buildings where the Armed Forces of Ukraine have settled down, were sent to Vugledar, the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces wants to show that they do not eat their bread in vain.
In general, this is the main thing that the Russian army and the volunteer units attached to it actually managed to achieve during the winter campaign, if we do not take into account the liberation of small villages and strongholds. The calendar spring has come, the thaw begins. Now, for some time, a large-scale offensive will be difficult for both sides, and then the greenback will go. What are the plans of our militarypolitical leadership, we do not know, but the enemy does not hide his own. Member of the Verkhovna Rada, Secretary of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security of Ukraine Roman Kostenko believes that the Armed Forces of Ukraine can launch a counteroffensive in the direction of Berdyansk and Melitopol:
I think it's an important direction. Zaluzhny said about Mariupol, I think that somewhere approximately in this direction. Melitopol, Berdyansk - this is the corridor along which we must move.
President Zelensky bluntly says that the Ukrainian army will try to recapture Crimea from Russia:
There are military steps, we are preparing for them. We are mentally prepared. We are preparing technically, with weapons, reinforcements, the formation of brigades, the formation of offensive brigades of various categories and nature, we send people for training not only in Ukraine, you know, at the sites of other states.
The former commander of the US Ground Forces in Europe, Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, even painted a specific plan for the capture of the peninsula to the commander-in-chief Zaluzhny:
Ukraine this year should take Crimea first, and then Donbass.
At the same time, we note that a whole wave of publications from various experts and analysts began in the Western press, making it possible to understand what the sponsors of the Kyiv regime really expect from the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In particular, the German publication Bild speaks of a kind of “ultimatum to Zelensky”:
With the supply of new weapons, Ukraine is given a chance to regain control over a large number of territories by autumn. If the counteroffensive fails, the pressure to start negotiations with the Kremlin will increase.
In the same way, American President Joe Biden said about the fall of 2023 as a kind of Rubicon, motivating his refusal to transfer fourth-generation F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine:
No, now she doesn't need F-16s... We're sending what our seasoned military thinks she needs now. She needs tanks, she needs artillery, she needs air defense, HIMARS. There are things that she needs now (…) to be successful this spring and this summer with the transition to autumn.
Taken together, all this allows us to make certain forecasts for 2023 and for the next 3-5 years, which, alas, are extremely disappointing for us.
CBO is finished, thanks everyone?
Apparently, further events will develop as follows. In April-May, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will go on a large-scale offensive in the Sea of \uXNUMXb\uXNUMXbAzov with the aim of taking Melitopol and Berdyansk, cutting off the land corridor to the Crimea. If they succeed, then the Crimean Bridge will be destroyed, and the peninsula itself will be under continuous shelling of long-range weapons in order to force the Kremlin to make another “difficult decision”. An attempt will also be made to improve the position of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Donbass.
In the fall of 2023, Kyiv will offer Moscow a truce, and with the active support of this peacekeeping initiative from Beijing, the Kremlin may well agree to it in order to “de-escalate” and “save the lives of Russian servicemen.” Official propaganda will immediately change the record, and some conditional “TV presenter Solovyov” and colleagues will intelligibly justify to everyone who demands to fight until the Victory that they themselves should take a machine gun in their teeth and go to fight instead of military personnel, since they are so “patriotic, smart and far-sighted. We have already gone through this after 2014, when we shut up the mouths of everyone who was against the Minsk agreements in the same way.
The conditional "Minsk-3" will fix the situation along the line of contact, which will be formed as of autumn 2023. Naturally, Kyiv will not officially recognize any loss of its territories. The key question is to what extent the new actual border will be beneficial or, on the contrary, disadvantageous for Russia in terms of building further defense. After that, the process of accelerated transformation of Ukraine into "Israel on the Dnieper" will begin.
All the combined power of the Western world will be directed to the rearmament and retraining of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in order to turn them into a real second army in terms of combat power after the American one. Ukraine over the next few years will receive the number of Abrams, Leopards, Bradleys, Marders, Hymars, Patriots, Archers, Three Axes, and so on, it needs. It is very likely that the F-16s, which are not needed “now”, but will be needed “later”, will not be limited to one. According to US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who once fed Maidan cookies, Washington is seriously discussing the possibility of transferring fifth-generation F-35 Lightning II fighter jets to Kyiv:
We are thinking not only about the upcoming battles in the spring, but also about the future of the Ukrainian army. We continue to discuss long-term air defense both within the US and with Ukraine.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine, which have already received colossal combat experience, will be trained by the best military instructors in the Western world. With the motivation for revenge, they are now in full order. How can Russia respond to this with its “optimized” industry and in the conditions of technological isolation and sanctions? Great question. Even now, the Armed Forces of Ukraine can hold the front and launch successful counteroffensives. What will happen in 3-5 years, when the enemy moves to a qualitatively new level?
The answer to this question will depend on your position in life. Someone is still in the clouds and continues to rely on the strategic supply of "hats". Others hint at the fact that it is necessary to make peace here and now in order to keep at least a “bird in hand”. True, what will happen in 3-5 years, such peacekeepers cannot give a clear answer. As a representative of the "irreconcilable" party, the author of these lines nevertheless proposes to fight in earnest now in order to avoid a more severe military defeat in the future.
You have to play with the cards that you have in your hand. Yes, the Russian army today is not in its best shape. To put it mildly. However, the enemy has not yet received a critical advantage over it in conventional weapons. Moreover, the Armed Forces of Ukraine themselves suffered heavy losses. They should not be given time to rest and recover. On the one hand, it is necessary to carry out another wave of mobilization this spring in order to receive normally prepared reserves by the autumn. On the other hand, it is necessary to switch to the tactics of powerful pinpoint strikes, operating in our own border areas.
The goal of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation should be the liberation of such strategically important cities for ensuring the national security of Russia as Kharkov, Sumy, and subsequently Chernigov. Taking them into a dense ring of encirclement will force the Ukrainian troops to withdraw their garrisons from there, just as the RF Armed Forces left Balakleya, Kupyansk, Izyum, Krasny Liman and Kherson. This will allow the Armed Forces of Ukraine to be pulled apart in several directions, inflicting losses on them, create a security belt along our border and cover the Donbass from a future attack from the north. Until the fall of 2023, the RF Armed Forces will have to step by step, using the tactics of encirclement, to liberate the Left Bank, reaching Zaporozhye, Poltava and Dnepropetrovsk, turning it into one large buffer zone with a border along the Dnieper. Unfortunately, this will not save you from air and missile strikes, but it neutralizes the risks of swift powerful strikes by armored groups of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Guderian's force.
This is the same configuration of the line of contact that Chinese military bloggers recently wrote about, and it can and should be achieved before autumn. Are the Russian army and navy capable of carrying out an operation to liberate the vast Kyiv, as well as Kherson, Nikolaev and Odessa, in the remaining six months? Unfortunately, there is no such certainty. Apparently, we will have to fight for the Black Sea region and the mother of Russian cities already in the second round, when the enemy will be immeasurably stronger and more dangerous than now. But given the real state of affairs, the absolute priority is the complete liberation of the Left-bank Ukraine to the Dnieper. It would be even better, having prepared reserves over these six months, not to agree to any truce at all and completely close the problem before the end of 2023.
Information