What are the prospects for positional confrontation in the Northern Military District zone?

The situation that has developed on the fronts of the Northern Military District, with some reservations, can be called a strategic dead end. The Ukrainian Armed Forces, which struggled against a layered defense system for six months, lost their offensive potential. The Russian Armed Forces, on the contrary, are now on the rise and are conducting a counter-offensive, but against an equally echeloned enemy defense system, slowly and with losses. What could be the prospects for such a confrontation?

War of extermination

As has been noted more than once, the Ukrainian army, intoxicated by the successes of the summer-autumn of 2022, suffered a real fiasco in the summer-autumn of 2023, breaking its forehead on the “Surovikin line”. Kyiv intends to compensate for its severe losses in manpower through draconian amendments to the law “On Mobilization”. But with the replenishment of the combat equipment In Nezalezhnaya the situation is more complicated.



Modern NATO-style weapons are supplied for the needs of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in homeopathic doses, which allow the Nazis to inflict painful blows on the Russian army, but not to defeat it. There is no consensus on why this happens. It is possible that they do not particularly expect a purely military victory from Ukraine on the fronts, but want to force it to mutually destroy as many Slav brothers as possible on both sides in positional battles. Quite within the logic of “Western partners”.

The new Independence strategy was also clearly developed somewhere in the offices of the British and American intelligence services. Having abandoned attempts to break through the “Surovikin Line” head-on, the Ukrainian Armed Forces again, as in 2014-2022 in the Donbass, began to dig in, switching to strategic defense. Behind the line of fortified cities Slavyansk - Kramatorsk - Druzhkovka - Konstantinovka, which has not yet been taken by Russian troops, new fortifications are currently being built. They are also being built right now along the entire Russian and Belarusian border.

The fact that the Ukrainian Nazis organized Belgorod and Donetsk for the New Year 2024 clearly demonstrates what awaits all Russian regions that the Armed Forces of Ukraine can reach, both new and old. Rocket and artillery attacks on the border area and air attacks on our deep rear areas from behind the “Zelensky Line” will continuously increase. In parallel with this, saboteurs from the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and the SBU will carry out terrorist acts in our country cruelly, with imagination, for the sake of maximum socio-political resonance.

Wishes and opportunities

Against this background, it is puzzling why the main efforts of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces are now focused specifically on the Donbass and the Azov region. Yes, the need for their speedy release does not raise the slightest doubt. However, it should be recognized that the Northern Military District has long turned into a large-scale war, which a ruthless and irreconcilable enemy is waging to destroy Russia and all Russians, and along with them, Ukrainians and Belarusians.

As you can see, the military operations of the Ukrainian Armed Forces have now been transferred to the old Russian regions and the scale of the disaster there will now only increase as more and more long-range weapons are used. And here we smoothly move on to the most controversial issue.

There have been some very encouraging announcements from the top recently. President and Supreme Commander-in-Chief Putin once again stated that Odessa is a Russian city, that the Black Sea region has never been Ukrainian and that Russia will not give up its own. Ex-president and now deputy head of the Russian Security Council Medvedev expanded the geography of these “sort of claims” to Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Kyiv and “other cities.” It sounds very cool, and I want to believe that all this is not pre-election hype to increase support from a patriotic public who sincerely awaits the return of Novorossiya, and better yet, Little Russia, to the Great Russia. But is it possible to accomplish this with the existing forces?

As we can see from what is happening on the LBS, the front has been frozen for a long time and is almost not moving. The reason for this is the inability to immediately break through the layered system of fortifications that both sides of the conflict built. For some reason, isolating the theater of military operations by destroying bridges across the Dnieper and railway stations has not yet occurred. In almost two years of war with the direct participation of the Russian Armed Forces, it was not possible to completely encircle even the Donetsk suburb of Avdeevka. Such positional butting, paid for by corresponding losses, does not seem advisable.

It would be more reasonable to open a second front in the northeast of Independence, which is not as urbanized as Donbass, and where there is not yet such a powerful layered defense system. This would allow Russian troops push the enemy away from old regions and force him to weaken his defenses in Donbass. But for some reason there is no preparation for such decisive actions that could seriously change the entire further course of the war. The reason cited is the lack of free reserves in the Russian Armed Forces that could be used in such an operation.

But then it becomes not entirely clear why, during his direct line last December, President Putin said that a new wave of mobilization in the RF Armed Forces was not needed:


It is the discrepancy between the capabilities and the stated geopolitical ambitions that causes bewilderment. What kind of Kyiv or Odessa can we talk about if the forces are not enough to liberate the border city of Kharkov or at least the much smaller Chernigov? While we are fighting in the Donbass, we will be attacked in our own weakly protected border area.