The warnings of the weekend and the corridors announced on Monday could be the last pause before Moscow’s operations in Ukraine move into the next phase
People cross an improvised path under a destroyed bridge while fleeing the town of Irpin, Ukraine. In Irpin, near Kyiv, a sea of people on foot and even in wheelbarrows trudged over the remains of a destroyed bridge to cross a river and leave the city. AP
Russian and Ukrainian representatives are holding another round of talks in Belarus on Monday, their third such meeting. Meanwhile, Russia has announced a ceasefire and opening of humanitarian corridors in the major cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv and Sumy in the north, and Mariupol in the east. This is a decisive moment in the present conflict.
As has been the case through the unfolding of the present crisis — and many years before — Russian president Vladimir Putin has been quite clear. On Sunday, he told his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron that Russia would reach its objectives in Ukraine “either through negotiation or through war”.
A day before this, Putin served another warning. “If they continue to do what they are doing, they are calling into question the future of Ukrainian statehood. And if this happens, it will be entirely on their conscience,” he said.
Considering that Russian forces have occupied roughly two-fifths of Ukraine, established air and naval dominance and surrounded major cities, the finality in the warning is unmissable.
The narrative built in the Western and Western-inspired media has till now sought to build up a picture of heroic Ukrainian resistance and make Putin one of the global bad guys, a list of whom can be made from nations turned into smoking ruins and economic basket-cases over the past three decades. The problem with the narrative is that it is a construct, and reality has a way of washing wishful constructs away.
Putin’s words, however, are in tandem with the Russian campaign in Ukraine. Here’s how, beginning with what Ukraine basically looks like at this stage:
Here is what this means: The Russian military has squeezed Ukraine from north, south and east. The western part of Ukraine is clear of Russian presence, presumably to leave a line of escape for Ukrainian forces who cease to take further interest in the war. In the north, two major axes of movement are south from Belarus and southwest from the Kursk region (where the greatest tank battle of all was fought — and won — by the Soviet Union in World War II). Kyiv is surrounded, except for a narrow corridor to the south, again an escape line kept open before the inevitable encirclement of the capital city. Chernobyl has been secured, and Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, is surrounded and in the process of being demilitarised and taken. So is Sumy.
In the east, the Russian-backed forces of the squeezed Donbass republics — Luhansk and Donetsk — are arrayed against Ukrainian military concentrations (the purple egg in the map above). On the western side of the egg are two axes of Russian military movement; the moment this pincer closes, the Ukrainian forces in the egg — estimated at about 50,000 men, with a high proportion of neo-Nazi militias — will face annihilation.
Putin’s forces from Crimea have moved up along the southeast of Ukraine. Mariupol, Ukraine’s access to the Sea of Azov, is surrounded. This port city is home to the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, and could turn into a bloodbath.
In the south, the Crimea is now joined to Russia by land. The other Russian axis of movement out of Crimea is to the northwest. This means Odessa is surrounded even as Ukraine’s southern coastline has been taken over by Russia. The Black Sea is a Russian pond now; Odessa could even be attacked from the sea.
Talks of a no-fly zone apart, Russia dominates Ukrainian airspace completely. The air force has been used sparingly so far; a sign of Putin’s calculated campaign that contrasts with the shock-and-awe tactics of US-led military operations of recent times. A few Ukrainian warplanes have been flown out to West-friendly Poland and Romania but Russia has clearly said their use in the present area of operations will be an act of war. That is not something Poland and Romania would look forward to.
All Ukrainian military command centres and infrastructure have been destroyed or taken control of. The Ukrainian forces are now operationally disconnected military clusters. The country’s navy has ceased to exist; they’ve even had to scuttle their flagship.
The major cities are encircled. Ukrainian forces in the Donbass are about to be completely cut off, and if Putin moves more forces from north and south to meet in middle of Ukraine, he will have severed the eastern half of the country.
This is why the Belarus talks are vital: the warnings of the weekend before and the corridors announced on Monday could be the last pause before the Russian operations in Ukraine move into the next phase. The Russian deployment will increase hugely if that happens, with the air force and heavy artillery coming into major play for the first time in the conflict, as well as bloody urban battles to take the cities.
For the West, victory over Putin’s Russia is the target, and it can only come in a long-drawn out insurgency. Such an insurgency will, among other things, devastate Ukraine, give Europe the shivers in more ways than one, and starve the Middle East.
Putin’s stated military aims are the demilitarisation and de-Nazification of Ukraine, and he has so far positioned himself perfectly to execute that twin task.
If the Belarus talks fail, the Ukraine war will begin in right earnest.
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