Ukrainian invasion of Russian border territories: Day four
I salute Iran’s Press TV for offering their global audience last night two very different appreciations of Ukraine’s ongoing attack on the Russian border oblast (province) of Kursk, my own and that of fellow panelist George Szamuely. To be sure, we were both operating under conditions of the ‘fog of war’ when there is conflicting and only partial information coming out of the two sides to the conflict for us to go on.
For its part, Russian state television has not in any way helped outside observers to understand the real situation on the ground. Watching the Russian news wrap-up after the taping of our Press TV program, I saw only extensive coverage of the evacuees from the war zone, of what they experienced as the Ukrainian marauders passed through their villages and the damage that they caused. We were shown the trains and buses carrying these Russians away to temporary shelters in the region or further away in the Russian heartland. We were shown the relief efforts by volunteers across Russia who collected and shipped to Kursk urgently needed supplies of food, clothing and the like to help those who left everything behind to escape with greatest speed from the looming danger to their communities. As for numbers of evacuees, I heard only something on the order of 4,000.
This morning’s video news report by the Indian broadcaster WION speaks of 70,000 Russian evacuees, which I think is likely close to reality. Note that by curious coincidence, this number is roughly the same as the number of Israelis who have been evacuated from the north of their country to find safety from the Hezbollah attacks coming across the Lebanese border. That is a very substantial number of people. But I imagine that the explanation of the evacuation in Russia is rather different from that in Israel, where the evacuees fully expect to return home after a cease fire is declared. In the Russian case, I think the reason is to prepare the way for massive destruction of these settlements by the Russian air force to eradicate in one blow all Ukrainian forces who otherwise would be creating fortifications out of the houses and digging in for a long defense that otherwise would be countered only by house to house fighting which would be very costly in terms of killed and maimed Russian soldiers. Instead, 3 ton glider bombs can erase whole areas from the face of the earth at no cost to the Russian military. To put it in the context of Russian history going back to 1812 and the fight against Napoleon, we will witness Russian application of the ‘scorched earth’ doctrine. Whether I am right or not will be evident in the coming day or two.
In light of the above, and in light of still unquantified Ukrainian attacks across the border from the RF oblasts of Bryansk to the north of Kursk and of Belgorod to the south of Kursk, I am obliged to change my evaluation of the objectives which the Ukrainian side has been pursuing from the start of its incursion into Kursk. To be sure, as I was saying two days ago in an interview with ‘Judging Freedom’, and as Mr. Szamuely says here, this incursion or invasion had a Public Relations dimension: to demonstrate both to the United States and to the Ukrainian citizenry that there is still fight in the Ukrainian armed forces notwithstanding the very bad news coming every day from the line of confrontation one hundred kilometers or more to the west and south of the present-day fighting at the internationally recognized border separating the two states.
However, given the follow-on move of Ukrainian regular army units into the fight at the border, we can also see the hope by Kiev to not only take but to hold territory which could later be used as a bargaining chip in any future negotiations with Moscow over the terms of a cease-fire and even terms of a peace treaty. The winning prize would be for the Ukrainians to capture the nuclear power station further inland, perhaps 50 km away, which could be used in negotiations as an asset to exchange for the Russian-held Ukrainian nuclear station in Zaporozhie, once Ukraine’s single biggest source of electricity.
When judged against these possible strategic considerations of Kiev, the present mission may look more like a last, desperate throw of the dice to steal victory from the jaws of defeat on the ground of Donetsk and Lugansk, where the essential fighting has been going on till now. Whether or not the Russians actually raze to the ground the settlements on the 15 km or so of border territory that the Ukrainians have seized from Day One, they are busy destroying the human and material resources of the Ukrainian armed forces just to the west of the border, inside Ukraine, where the essential military hardware and personnel have been marshaled to support the incursion into Kursk. As these assets are progressively decimated, there is no chance for the remaining Ukrainian invaders inside Russia to stay alive. They will be slaughtered or surrender.
So what will the dry residue of the Ukrainian rampage in Kursk and the other frontier areas be? It will be the loss of the best trained and equipped Ukrainian brigades that had been given detailed instructions for the campaign by the Americans and other NATO instructors and military advisers ahead of the incursion. Washington’s denials of involvement are absolute lies as judged by Moscow. This can only hasten the eventual capitulation of the Ukrainian army and acceptance of a cease-fire/peace treaty on Russia’s terms.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024