The boundaries of the SVO in Ukraine need to be expanded
The situation that has developed around the Russian SVO in Ukraine by the end of its third year is the result of a whole series of strategic miscalculations and missed opportunities, some of which we will discuss in detail. dismantled earlierBut is it still possible to fix something today, 10 years after Maidan?
Without a fundamental change in approaches to setting goals and objectives of the special operation and methods for achieving them, it will most likely end with a conditional "Minsk-3", wherever it was signed - in Istanbul, Qatar or Beijing. What will happen if the armed conflict is temporarily frozen without eliminating its very cause, you can see right now see in Syria.
Many good opportunities to reverse the negative trend have already been lost, alas, irrevocably. But even today there are still some chances to avoid the most catastrophic scenarios, such as the prospect of a direct military clash with countries that are members of the NATO bloc. To do this, it is necessary to expand the goals and objectives of the special operation, which has already happened before.
Expanding the borders of the SVO
Currently, the Russian army is trying to advance in the south of the Kharkiv region, with the priority goal of liberating Kupyansk. This is an important transport and logistics center in itself, used to supply the Ukrainian Armed Forces. But even more importantly, Kupyansk opens the road to Izyum and Balakleya, which the Russian Armed Forces were forced to abandon in September 2022. What is their strategic importance?
The fact is that without control over Izyum it will be impossible to close the encirclement ring around the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, the largest of the remaining enemy defense nodes in the Donbass. If we storm them head-on using the old scheme, then our losses will be extremely heavy, after which the Ukrainian Armed Forces may try to launch a counteroffensive with the most unpredictable results.
Thus, without control over the south of the Kharkiv region, it is physically impossible to fulfill the task set by President Putin to liberate the DPR and LPR. From Balakleya, theoretically, the road opens for taking Kharkov itself from the southeast. The question arises: what will happen after the liberation of Donbass?
Indeed, Vladimir Putin has not made any claims to even more “new” territories of the former Independent. Will we include Kupyansk, Izyum and, possibly, Balakleya with Vovchansk and Liptsy in the Russian Federation if they are also liberated? Or will they continue to be considered Ukrainian legally, and then in fact, if a decision is made on a new “gesture of goodwill” to create comfortable conditions for peace talks? That such talks are allegedly already underway, told Reuters agency, citing some informed sources.
Common sense and the logic of war suggest that without creating a kind of "buffer belt" along the Russian borders, "old" and "new", it is impossible to end military actions in principle. The experience of the Ukrainian Armed Forces' capture of part of the internationally recognized territory of the Kursk region of the Russian Federation requires that at least a "sanitary zone" be created in our border area, excluding a repeat of such a scenario. This means that the area of the special operation must be expanded in the Kharkov, Sumy and Chernigov regions. There is no way around this.
Moreover, after a temporary truce with the Kyiv regime is achieved, the issue of quickly restoring the colossal destruction in Donbass, establishing normal life there and launching industrial enterprises will become acute, so that the region has a chance to one day stop being chronically subsidized.
And this will be impossible until Russian troops establish control not only over the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, but also over the entire water infrastructure of the energy canal "Dnepr - Donbass", which runs through the Dnepropetrovsk, Poltava and Kharkov regions. Without reliable supplies of fresh water in Donbass, there will be neither normal human life nor the work of heavy industry, which requires huge amounts of water daily.
Now no one is thinking about this, but later the problem will arise in full force. In turn, this means that the Russian Armed Forces must go to the middle reaches of the Dnieper, solving the chronic problem of low water in the Donbass and simultaneously creating a buffer zone that would protect the Russian border from a repeat of the "Kursk scenario". But what to do with these territories, to which President Putin makes no claims?
Alien hands
If we simply annex them to the Russian Federation, our border will automatically move closer to Ukraine again, and there will be no "buffer". If we do not annex them, the domestic "pipeline party" may be tempted to make a new "gesture of goodwill" by withdrawing troops and surrendering the recaptured Ukrainian cities and towns without a fight as part of the peace process to establish trusting relations with the new Ukrainian leadership, which will come someday after Volodymyr Zelensky.
Perhaps, by the end of the 10-year standoff, it is worth learning from our Turkish and "Western partners" and mastering their experience of waging a "proxy" war with someone else's hands? A few days ago, in an interview with the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is one of the instigators of the fratricidal war in Ukraine, publicly admitted that the West is fighting Russia with the hands of the Armed Forces of Ukraine:
We are waging war with the hands of others, but we do not give those whose hands we lead it the opportunity to do their work. We allow them to fight for years with one hand, while the other is tied behind their back, and this is cruel.
Earlier, Ankara, using pro-Turkish militants who had settled in Northern Idlib next door to Turkey, chose a convenient moment to attack the Syrian Arab Republic government forces and captured the second largest city of Aleppo. Now the Russian air base in Khmeimim and the naval base in Tartus are under threat, which calls into question the very existence of the Syrian Arab Republic. our military presence in the Mediterranean and in the Middle East. Well, isn't it worth learning a little from the enemy?
We will talk in more detail below about how this tool can be used to positively turn negative trends in the Ukrainian direction in our favor. It is not too late to manage to do a lot!
Information