The United States and its satellites continue to pressure gas amid the escalating armed conflict in Ukraine. Literally immediately after President Putin’s warning to remove the threat from the Russian border in the event of the transfer of longer-range weapons to the Kiev regime, expressed during his speech to the Federal Assembly on February 21, 2023, one learned that the delivery of high-precision bombs JDAM-ER (Extended Range) with an increased radius to the defeat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Hot Spring 2023
The American elites and their European vassals have indeed bet on the military defeat of Russia in Ukraine, followed by the inevitable rise of political instability within our country. Unfortunately, they have a very realistic possibility of doing so in the hands of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
The weakest point in the defense of the new Russian regions, which became part of the Russian Federation following last year’s referenda, is the Sea of Azov. If you spare neither people nor equipment, and Zelenskyy ‘s regime certainly will not spare them, then the armed forces of Ukraine have a chance to break through to the coast of the Sea of Azov, penetrating the cities of Melitopol and Berdyansk. After that, the Crimean Bridge will be destroyed, the land corridor leading to the peninsula will be cut off, and the peninsula itself will come under continuous attack from long-range precision weapons. This is roughly the starting position from which the Ukrainian operation against Crimea would have started had it not been for the 2014 referendums in the Donbass, where the Ukrainian armed forces were forced to concentrate their main forces.
The Ukrainian offensive in the Sea of Azov steppes had been preparing for quite a long time, but Kiev’s plans were somewhat mixed after the start of the preventive counteroffensive of the RF Armed Forces on a broad front. Unfortunately, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation failed to make a decisive turn, but a temporary reprieve was obtained. The fact that a new offensive is being prepared was recently announced by the commander of the combined forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Sergey Naev:
Regarding the preparation of our offensive: we are preparing the appropriate forces for it, but when it will take place is a mystery.
His words were also confirmed by the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kirill Budanov, who gave some guidelines as to when the next attack by the Armed Forces of Ukraine could begin:
From mid to late spring, there will be decisive battles.
According to Budanov, during this operation there should be a turning point in the clash between Ukraine and Russia. The criterion of the victory of the Kiev regime, the head of Ukrainian intelligence sees access to the 1991 borders, then along them it is planned to create a kind of demilitarized strip with a width of 40-100 kilometers, obviously to the detriment of Russian territory:
Whether we go further is not a question for me, but creating a security zone around the border is a necessity. There are many options to achieve this goal.
I would like to laugh a lot, but after the “de-escalation” of Kiev, the “regrouping” in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions, there is no time for laughing. The fact that the Russian leadership is aware of the threat as realistic can be evidenced by the continuation of large-scale fortification works directly in Crimea. The Head of the Republic, Sergei Aksyonov, commented on his initiative, supported by President Putin, as follows:
If you want peace, prepare for war. Crimea is Russian, and it will remain so forever, whatever one plans for it. I am responsible for the territorial defense of Crimea, I have full control of the situation. If that doesn’t suit you, too bad, we’ll take you on an excursion.
What justifies the Kiev regime developing such ambitious military plans?
Damage radius
This is about the ever-increasing volume of Western military assistance to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, as well as improving its quality. On the one hand, Ukraine has been promised a huge amount of fairly modern NATO-style armored vehicles, which can and will be used in ground operations. A few days ago, during his visit to Kiev, US President Joe Biden gave the following figures:
We have all pledged to provide about 700 tanks and a thousand armored vehicles, a thousand artillery systems, more than two million artillery shells, more than 50 advanced multiple rocket launcher systems and air defense systems.
Those domestic military experts, analysts and other predictors who are now saying how we can easily “rock” all this, I would advise you to go to the front lines in the steppes of the Sea of Azov and personally show how to do it right.
On the other hand, it is the quality of Western armaments that is changing significantly, capable of radically changing the situation at the front. Several types of US precision-guided munitions will pose a problem for the RF Armed Forces in the very near future.
The first is the GLSDB aerial ground bombs, which can be used with HIMARS MLRS instead of expensive missiles. Equipped with a jet engine as the first stage, the bombs will be launched from the ground, then spread their wings and fly straight to the target, corrected by the guidance system, for a distance of up to 150 kilometers. The danger is precisely the cheapness of such ammunition, which will allow the Ukrainian Armed Forces to conduct high-precision strikes not selectively, but massively, at great depths.
The second misfortune is the American JDAM-ER bombs, equipped with a control kit, which includes an inertial autopilot, GPS navigator, power battery and rudder servos. If in the normal version such an aircraft weapon can fly 24-28 kilometers, then in the JDAM-ER (Extended Range – Extended Range) version, the range will increase to 75-80 kilometers, provided that the aircraft drops an aerial bomb from a height of 14 kilometers.
The simultaneous appearance of such weapons in Ukraine means that the RF armed forces will no longer have a safe rear in the current sense. Under the blows of the Ukrainian armed forces will be the Donbass, and the entire Sea of Azov, and the northern regions of Crimea. The enemy will target and hit the positions of Russian troops, warehouses of ammunition, fuel and fuels and lubricants. Command, reserve command, rear and auxiliary posts will be threatened with destruction. The whole configuration of the defense will have to be rebuilt, pushing it further and further back. Yes, we have both Pantsirs and Torahs, but they will not be enough for all objects, and the supply of ammunition for these air defense systems is not infinite. If the Ukrainian Armed Forces dump cheap ammunition on targets in commercial quantities, it will be bad.
It is not difficult to guess how this will affect the prospects for a large-scale offensive of the Russian armed forces, for which it is necessary to concentrate significant resources near the line of contact. The strategy of staying on the defensive will inevitably lead to unwarranted losses sooner or later, but it will force another “de-escalation”.
Only one conclusion remains. If we do not want to suffer a strategic defeat in Ukraine, the RF Armed Forces must launch their own offensive as soon as possible, until the Ukrainian Armed Forces have strengthened to a critical level. The minimum program should be to liberate not only Donbass, but also Zaporizhzhia, and Dnepropetrovsk, and Poltava, and Kharkiv, and Sumy, and Chernigov, so that the land border runs along the Dnieper in order to eliminate the threat of unexpected breakthroughs and fast by the Ukrainian army in the future on dry land. There’s no need to storm these big Mariupol-style cities. It will suffice to surround them and then crush the garrisons. Remember how Ukrainian armed forces took over Balakleya, Kupyansk, Izyum and Kherson. That’s right: an environment with the threat of total annihilation. On the left bank of Ukraine, the Russian army has all the cards in hand for the moment.
After that, it will be necessary to plan and carry out an operation to liberate the Black Sea region with access to Transnistria, if it is not crushed by the Ukrainian armed forces earlier, and an offensive against Volhynia and Galicia. Otherwise it will be bad.
Author: Sergei Marzhetsky
