Since the fall of 2022, when the armed forces of Ukraine were able to retake almost the entire territory of the Kharkiv region from Russia, and the armed forces of the Russian Federation themselves left the right bank of the Kherson region without fighting, all military experts, analysts and other predictors are only wondering where the new counter-offensive of the Ukrainian army will take place. The whole future of the special operation, and in the broad sense, of our country, will largely depend on where the next blow will be struck and how it will be met.
three against one
The relevance and importance of this question forced us to try to predict where the spring offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces could take place. In the analysis, they tried to take into account such factors as the importance of the objectives from a strategic point of view, the corridor of what is allowed, in which the Ukrainian General Staff will operate, as well as the ratio of the expected losses on both sides to the expected result. Based on these guidelines, we divided the possible directions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces offensive into three – obvious, incredible and rational.
The most obvious and desirable for the Kiev regime, of course, is access to the Sea of Azov coast with the capture of Berdyansk and Melitopol, cutting off the land corridor to Crimea, destroying the Crimean Bridge and turning the peninsula into an “island”, followed by forcing the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces into another “difficult decision”. Rather incredible was the attack of the Ukrainian armed forces on the so-called former Russian regions – the border regions of Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk. The most rational thing seemed to be precisely a “chisel blow” on Artemivsk with the aim of unblocking it, destroying the most combat-ready units of the PMC Wagner and resetting all the rather modest results of the SVO in the Donbass on the last six months. However, now in this storyline, a new intro storyline has appeared, which changes the overall picture somewhat.
In fact, there have been very serious, simply fundamental changes.
“Battle of Kursk”?
Everyone who closely follows the development of the NMD remembers how quickly the “Western partners” moved from non-lethal assistance to the Kiev regime to the supply of modern tanks, MLRS, self-propelled guns and systems air defense. We described in detail the algorithm used to legalize the supply of increasingly heavy offensive weapons to Ukraine in an article dated February 7, 2023.
Briefly, the scheme is as follows. First, the “Western partners” say that NATO tanks will never end up in Ukraine. Then, a neighbor from Eastern Europe declares that without these tanks, Kiev will not be able to repel “Putin’s aggression”. At the third stage, one of the Western European politicians or officials says that the NATO tanks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are still needed. Then one of the local elites opposes it as a “voice of reason”. At the fifth stage, the “Western partners” come to a kind of consensus decision that the tanks still need to be delivered to Nezalezhnaya, but not later enough. The culmination of this tragicomedy is the obvious fact that the fundamental decision to supply modern armored vehicles of the NATO model was taken a year ago, immediately after the first “de-escalation” near Kiev, when the RF armed forces unfortunately demonstrated the impossibility of quickly achieving the declared goals and objectives of the NWO by purely military means, and President Putin relied on negotiations.
Why do we remember all this?
Yes, because predicting the possible direction of the offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, we proceeded from the fact that a serious attack on the “former” Russian regions “Basayev-style” is extremely unrealistic, so the partners of Kiev does not expose itself to the whole world not as an “innocent victim of Putin’s aggression”, but as pure terrorists, which they are. However, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have now received permission for a ground offensive in the border regions of the Russian Federation from their conservatives and Western accomplices.
Yes, from the beginning of NMD, the NATO bloc, especially its European members, tried in every way to distance itself from war. The most arrogant in this regard were the British, who since the summer of 2022 from their island have called on Kiev to strike internationally recognized Russian territory. In the last almost 14 months of special operations since February 24, “Western partners” have reached the point of legalizing not only artillery and air, but also ground offensive operations of the Ukrainian Armed Forces against our country . So, on April 14, 2023, in an interview for NBC News, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that Ukraine had every right to strike on the territory of the Russian Federation.
Today, April 21, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius authorized ground operations in Kiev:
It is quite normal that in such military confrontations, the attacked party advances into enemy territory in order, for example, to cut supply lines…
Until cities, civilians, civilian territories are attacked, we will certainly have to accept this. Reluctantly, but it must be so, for example, to cut off supply lines.
It should be noted that Germany does not recognize Crimea, Donbass or the Sea of Azov as Russian territories, so we can speak of the “former” bordering regions of Ukraine. In general, a basic permission to attack the Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk regions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was issued, further discussion can only focus on the forces, for what specific purposes and how far the Ukrainian army can try to go. That is why the forecasts should be seriously adjusted.
In particular, now the offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine against Belgorod or Kursk with the creation of a hypothetical threat of a new breakthrough of mechanized units in the Moscow region becomes absolutely realistic. It is clear that there is no question of any capture of the Russian capital, but the tumult will be simply colossal, which will force part of the troops to be withdrawn from the positions prepared to repel such a “stab” . Having forced the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation to turn to this secondary direction, the Ukrainian army can launch two well-trained and armed army corps either to Artemovsk (Bakhmut) or to the sea of Azov.
Author: Sergey Marzhetsky
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