“We have entered a new cold war,” General Jean-Paul Paloméros said on BFMTV on Monday. “Season 2 of the conflict”, estimates our military consultant, General Jérôme Pellistrandi. A certainty: if, after ten months of fighting, the Russian invasion of the Ukraine is prolonged and the two enemies seek proof of the truth.
In wishes they sent to their respective compatriots, Russian Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky promised to make 2023 the year “of victory.” But the logic is formal: both cannot be right.
To triumph over the opposing camp, each of the belligerents must take a strategic turn. And while the front is frozen, everyone is thinking of only one thing – to resume the offensive. It remains to be seen how and who will take the initiative.
Russia will do it all
On the Russian side, we started the year as we had finished the previous one. By bombing. This Monday, Kyiv woke up from a second consecutive night of strikes.
“These are bombings that have no military impact because the targets have no real strategic value. However, it creates a climate of real tension because there are civilian victims”, explains General Jérôme Pellistrandi. “And that will continue for the next several weeks.”
Sébastien Lecornu went to get an idea of this immediate future in situ. In duplex from Lebanon, after visiting the Ukrainian capital last Wednesday, the Minister of the Armed Forces said on LCI on Sunday night: “The first quarter of 2023 will be decisive.” According to him, Russia is preparing to play everything to win the decision. “It is clear that we are going towards a moment of massification where the Russians will throw all their forces into battle,” the minister continued.
Russian “massification” raises questions
This was also the content of the video posted on Friday by Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov. As indicated The Parisian, the latter said that he expected the establishment of martial law in his attacker and a new mobilization as of this month of January.
Statements confirmed by information released by the Russian agency TASS that warned that a decree issued by the Kremlin last August was about to enter into force. It should allow Russia to recruit an additional 137,000 soldiers.
Projection that is not really gospel. He would even tend to leave observers skeptical. “There will probably be men in addition to the 150,000 currently mobilized in formation, but it is clear that the Kremlin is backing down because the involvement of civilians is eroding the support of the population,” counteracts, for example, Ulrich Bounat, an expert in geopolitics, with the Parisian Sunday.
Belarusian abscess
But if the effort threatens to become too onerous for the local population, Russia may consider relying on auxiliary forces. Since the beginning of the conflict, the degree of involvement of its Belarusian ally -and its possible entry into the war- has been one of the great unknowns of the crisis.
Here again, however, the danger quickly reaches its limits. The state of the Belarusian troops does not seem likely to alter the situation. It would rather be a question, always in the event of a worsening of Minsk’s involvement in the conflict, to create an abscess to retain the Ukrainians. “The goal of this threat is above all to keep thousands of Ukrainian soldiers in the north to prevent them from fighting elsewhere,” said Xavier Tytelman, founder of Aviation NXT, a business consultancy in the aviation and defense sector. with the Ile-de-France every day.
The offensive with the thaw
In any case, the Russian and Ukrainian armies are for the moment fixed by force of circumstances. The time is currently on “rasputitsa“, Russian expression that refers to the “time of bad roads”. “Ukraine is not immune to global warming, so temperatures are relatively mild and, with humidity, it is slush, the ‘big sludge’ for everything the world,” noted our foreign policy columnist, Patrick Sauce, on our set.
And this war of positions is particularly deadly. “There is no real progress, it is carnage on both sides,” lamented General Jérôme Pellistrandi. But status quo it shouldn’t last long. “A priori, temperatures are expected to drop. Ukrainians are used to saying that February is the coldest month of the year,” said Patrick Sauce.
That’s why Sébastien Lecornu expects “a fairly ground-based counterattack (in Russian, editor’s note) on the February-March horizon,” as he asked LCI, adding that the Kremlin’s offensive should focus “in quite specific places in the Ukrainian territory”. “. That is, in eastern Ukraine, according to the opinion of Ulrich Bounat. “If we stick to the speeches of the Russian general staff, it is assumed that the war will be concentrated in the Donbass, hence the ruthlessness of trying to take Bakhmout . We can assume that these efforts that have been going on for months will continue.” He told the Parisian.
Ukrainian options
However, Russian optimism could well be dampened by the local freeze because “it would be to the advantage of the Ukrainians,” according to our editorial writer Patrick Sauce’s analysis. It must be said that before the immobilization of operations due to bad weather, they were the ones who took the initiative. Furthermore, they are not interested in the conflict rotting on an inert front.
“It is not in Ukraine’s interest to let this front be established,” General Jean-Paul Paloméros, former NATO ‘Transformation’ Supreme Allied Commander, said Monday in our studios.
“Vladimir Putin continues his attacks in depth, mobilizes his reserves, regains control, while the strength of the Ukrainians was to be very offensive, to take the initiative, thanks to their courage but also to their innovations,” he argues.
It is true that the Ukrainian army must move again, but first it must choose its direction. The French officer took over the ongoing strategic discussions at the top of the Ukrainian state.
“Recently we saw a reflection between the Ukrainian president and his military leaders who raised the debate very clearly, saying: ‘It’s not a good option to let us lock in, but if we want to attack from the north, what would be would be a good option because it would cut the lines. logistics of the Russians, which would destabilize them, either from the south, and would descend on Melitopol, which would bring them closer to the Crimea”.
Mourning for a total victory
Problem: a maneuver of this magnitude requires the support of combat aircraft, which Ukraine does not have. However, a gap that is not prohibitive, according to General Jean-Paul Paloméros, as long as kyiv’s Western partners meet their most pressing needs: “What is needed is to continue to provide means of theater strikes. What the Ukrainians is more artillery pieces, more drones”.
Increased Ukrainian firepower could then defeat the Russians… only up to a point. Likewise, the former NATO executive called on the Ukrainians to mourn a total victory. “Recent experiences show that absolute victory does not exist,” however, tempered General Jean-Paul Paloméros. He continued: “There are victories on the field, the Ukrainians have shown examples of that this year, and an overall victory.”
A global victory that he defined in these terms: “It restores the strategic autonomy of countries that wish to live together, around common values.” It is this relative success that should serve as a compass and form a horizon for Ukrainians from now on. Under penalty of having to think about other strategic turns next year.
Source: BFM TV
