Another decisive victory for kyiv. On Sunday, Volodymyr Zelensky announced the takeover of Lyman, a strategic town located in the Donetsk region, annexed at the end of last week by Moscow. The city is “totally rid” of the Russian army, he hailed in a video. Vladimir Putin’s army is forced to redefine front lines.
But how far can Ukraine’s defenders go? Can a victory be envisaged? How far can Vladimir Putin go to avoid having to accept defeat? Michel Goya, former naval colonel, historian and strategist, interviewed by 20 minutesattempts to answer the questions raised by this turning point in the war.
Can the Ukrainian army continue to advance, until victory?
This victorious counter-offensive enabled the Ukrainian army to retake large swathes of territory in the region, forcing the Russians to withdraw. The situation on the ground has been reversed in favor of Ukraine since July marked by successive victories for kyiv. The difficulties of the Russians are also reflected in the “partial” mobilization announced by the head of the Kremlin. If it was to concern 300,000 reservists with military experience or useful skills, in fact, multiple cases of mobilization of the elderly, students, the sick or conscripts without military experience have been reported. The hasty annexation referenda, where the “yes” vote unsurprisingly won, are also a symptom of the decline on the ground.
And for Michel Goya “the Ukrainian army hasn’t stopped advancing for a month, there’s no reason for it to stop”. Indeed, “the military equation” is today favorable to the army of Volodymyr Zelensky, “more qualitative and more numerous”, underlines the former colonel. “Ukraine is benefiting from the mobilization efforts in addition to the material aid provided by the West, and it continues to gain momentum,” he adds.
However, there are limits to these breakthroughs on the ground. Be careful not to declare victory too quickly, because there is still “a lot to do before managing to reconquer the occupied zones” of Donetsk and Lugansk in the east and those of Kherson and Zaporozhye, in the south, recalls Michael Goya. “The army is progressing but the task is still huge,” he insists. Moreover, autumn is here and with it much wetter weather with heavy rains to be expected. Unfavorable weather conditions for the advance of tanks which risk sinking into the mud and no longer being able to advance. “Mechanically, operations will slow down and be limited to roads. This restricts the possibilities of maneuvers, ”analyzes the historian.
Can the Russians turn things around?
Especially since the enemy can still regain the upper hand. Even if the curves don’t tend to cross twice in a war, nothing is still lost for the Russian military. “It can still get out of it, especially if it changes radically, and this is the purpose of this mobilization”, underlines Michel Goya. With the annexation of the four regions, now considered by Moscow as belonging to Russia, conscripts will be able to be sent there and citizens living in this region, now considered as Russians, may even be called upon to fight. But that does not make them men capable of carrying out triumphant attacks.
“This sending of massive human reinforcement can solve the quantitative problem, but not qualitatively, thus qualifies the specialist. If they are not trained, not motivated, the situation can deteriorate for the Russian army”. Their only recourse: to innovate and learn to finally regain the upper hand. Outside help, such as that from Belarus, is highly unlikely. “Alexander Lukashenko, the country’s president, is very reluctant because he knows that a large majority of the population is hostile to the war. An intervention by Minsk would provoke deep internal reactions and he knows his power is more fragile than that of Vladimir Putin”, further analyzes Michel Goya. What could be an element of rupture, would be a commitment of China alongside Moscow, which remains, there again, “Improbable even if we cannot exclude it”.
But in the current situation, the Russians are able to do less and less and reversing the curves seems very complicated without a radical reaction. The best they can hope for at the moment is a freezing of the situation in order to propose a negotiated peace. Volodymyr Zelensky has however already warned: he will not negotiate as long as Vladimir Putin is in power.
What military response to expect from Moscow?
It is hard to imagine Vladimir Putin accepting defeat. At least, in an elegant and fair way. He, who continues to qualify the invasion of his neighbor as a “special operation”, refusing to use the term war, can he really evoke a defeat in front of his people and his supporters? So what reaction can Moscow have in the face of the military rout? One of them has already begun: to bomb, always more. This has already started, particularly in the Zaporozhye region where the nuclear power plant has been targeted several times. Targeting populations is also part of the strategy. Thus, 24 civilians including 13 children were found dead on Saturday, shot dead in their cars near Kupiansk, in northeastern Ukraine, according to the governor of the Kharkiv region, Oleg Synegoubov.
And according to Oleksandr Starukh, head of the military administration of the Zaporozhye region, the death toll from the strike that targeted a line of cars in the transit center of this southern Ukrainian city on Friday rose to 31 (30 civilians and a policeman) with the death of an injured woman. However, ammo does not grow on trees. “The stock of missiles is not inexhaustible and Iranian drones are not powerful enough to change the situation,” says Michel Goya. The real victories are obtained on the ground and Russia is no longer capable today of large-scale offensives”.
Even if this option remains unlikely, there is always the extreme solution: weapons of mass destruction. The leader of the Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, called on Moscow to use “low-power nuclear weapons” in Ukraine, without “taking into account the ‘western-American community'”. A proposal deemed “emotional” by the Kremlin, which does not refrain from brandishing this atomic threat on a regular basis. A defeat of Russia on the ground could “generate an internal disturbance”, perhaps even leading to a change of regime, suggests Michel Goya.