Russia is preparing to mobilize 300,000 soldiers, while on the Ukrainian front the military picture appears to be much darker than expected. Between lack of ammunition and air defense systems, waiting for the summer, in August or perhaps earlier, when Moscow is expected to launch an offensive worse than those seen in the last year. The alarm was raised by high-ranking Ukrainian officers, linked to the former head of the armed forces, Valery Zaluzhny, who was fired in February: «There is a great risk that the front lines will collapse wherever the Russian generals decide to concentrate their forces. attacks,” they said. Everything, therefore, depends on where the Kremlin army wants to direct its forces. But currently, the longer the war lasts, the more it risks eating away at the enemy’s territory.
Certainly, in recent days, it has been intensifying assaults with missiles and drones, in a pre-offensive clash, which extends from Kharkiv and Sumy, in the North, to Odessa in the South, along the entire front, targeting the infrastructure and making it difficult to guess where it will make its biggest push. Whatever happens, reveal senior Kiev officers who served under Zaluzhny and spoke anonymously to the magazine Politico, the scenarios are rather pessimistic. Especially if defensive missile systems such as the Patriot, drones or F16s (operational only since the summer, a dozen, after the soldiers’ training) do not arrive. The unconfirmed account is that Kiev is urgently missing howitzers, 4 million shells and 2 million drones. “There is nothing that can help Ukraine now, because there are no technologies that can compensate for the large mass of troops that Russia will throw against us. We do not have these technologies and the West does not have them in numbers either sufficient,” the sources said.
The risk of penetration
Furthermore, the Kiev army is late with the creation of new defensive lines, which have grown by 65% but only in the North, and the East and South are missing. It is digging in to make up for lost time. In the autumn, President Zelensky himself acknowledged that defenses would need to be renovated and new fortifications added to the front line, following last summer’s disappointing counteroffensive, which produced only tiny territorial gains.
How the front line works. In front, there are anti-tank ditches and protections with barbed wire and concrete barricades in the shape of dragon’s teeth. Then, the lines of soldiers arrive. What happens if the front line collapses? The invasion, the massive advance of the Russians, the Ukrainians would be forced to retreat further. When Moscow’s troops advance into the fields, new fortifications cannot be dug in and built. Therefore Kiev could be very unprepared to resist a massive assault, pushed by the Russians also by air attacks, to the point of seeing the collapse of new cities, even large ones, fear senior Ukrainian officials. Immediately, thoughts turn to Odessa, a key point for trade in the Black Sea and an open door to the West.
(reuters)
Ukraine is also mobilizing soldiers, but more slowly: Zelensky has just updated the law that lowers the minimum age for conscription to arms from 27 to 25 years. And he estimates he needs another 500,000 men, even if Zaluzhny’s replacement, Oleksandr Syrsky, immediately corrected the situation. For now, the plan is to move all the army administrators, the soldiers who were behind the desks and those who had not yet gone to the front, to the front line, after an intensive training of three or four months. “Engineering has proven to be one of the strongest branches of the Russian army,” analysts from the British Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) said last year. The constructed defenses, consisting of complex obstacles and field fortifications, will represent a major tactical challenge for Ukrainian offensive operations.” Today, the situation is reversed. Not only do the Russian defenses, fortified with four lines, appear impenetrable, and a rat invasion due to climate change, but also the sedentary nature of the troops, is crippling Kiev’s fighting capacity, leading to soldiers vomiting, illnesses and eyes bloody, just as happened in the First World War. But the Ukrainian lines appear weaker and less resistant. “Give us all available Patriots,” says Foreign Minister Kuleba. “Ukraine is the only country in the world that defends itself against ballistic missile attacks almost every day. Give us all those available in the world – he adds –. There is no more important place for them.”
A satellite shot of Russian trenches last year, with the front line below and then the dragon’s tooth defenses and anti-tank ditches