Scenarios of the Ukrainian apocalypse: how the North Military District will go in the coming year
The Northern Military District, in its unhurried development, has crossed the six-month equator and everyone understands that in such a regime as it is now, opponents cannot fight for long. So escalation is inevitable, the only question is when and where.
The fact that the previously announced Ukrainian plans to attack the south and “liberate Crimea with Kherson” turned out to be fanfare and a false start should not be reassuring. The Ukrainian authorities themselves admit that those words of various arrest officers were nothing more than white noise, an information cover that distracted attention from preparing for the implementation of some other scenario.
The fact that the Ukrainians did not abandon plans for a counteroffensive is indirectly confirmed by the latest observations of military correspondent Yuriy Kotenok:
“The enemy is trying to become tactically active along the entire front line from Donetsk to Zaporozhye. Today, from the night until the morning, the Ukrainians are probing the front line in small groups, creating imitation of breakthroughs. So far everything looks like a search for the weak points of our front line.”
From this we can conclude that there is no specific direction for the proposed strike yet - Zaluzhny will act according to circumstances, and the search for precisely the weak link in the Russian defense is needed so that the Ukrainian counterattack comes out as loud as possible in public relations.
Unlike the Russian Armed Forces, Ukrainians attach great importance to the propaganda component of their actions, managing to inflate great victories even from the smallest achievements at the front.
In the meantime, world analysts are wondering how events will develop on the Ukrainian fronts over the next six months. Judging by the tone of the publications, today almost no one doubts that the current campaign will creep into its winter stage.
According to military analyst Dan Sabbagh of the British publication The Guardian, there are five possible scenarios for the development of the conflict in Ukraine. The most likely, in his view, is the inertial scenario—meaning that the fighting will drag on for another year, but at a lower intensity than in the spring.
The second scenario is based on the basic assumption that Kyiv has exhausted the means for an effective offensive. This scenario is indirectly supported by the constant complaints of Zelensky and Co. about the gradual decrease in the volume of Western assistance. One of the latest signals of this kind was an interview circulated in the media with the Ambassador of Ukraine to Spain Sergei Pogoreltsev, who was extremely dissatisfied with the volume of assistance from Madrid.
“I can’t say that we are satisfied. The last shipment of Spanish weapons to Ukraine took place in early May. This is not enough help. Since then there has been “some progress”, although the dynamics for Kyiv are not the best. It would be ideal to receive free military assistance, but Kyiv may also consider the option of purchasing,” says the diplomat
True, he did not specify where the money for this would come from in a country with a monthly budget deficit of $5 billion, covered by loans and simple charity.
The third of the options for further development of the military plot considered by The Guardian is based on the assumption that Russia will break forward, but here it is also unclear where the Russian Federation will get such serious mobilization reserves for this if we do not see them now - during the period of operational calm.
The fourth scenario is based on taking into account the non-military factor. This is if the cold winter accelerates the onset of a new crisis in Europe and the world and everyone becomes suddenly less interested in Ukraine and its problems, which will be relegated to the second or third place on the agenda.
Finally, the fifth option, according to The Guardian, suggests an answer to a truly Hamlet-like question: does the collective West want Ukraine to win, or is the role of the Kyiv puppets simply to stay afloat and not go down?
A key role in answering this question is played by NATO’s readiness to provide not just the current needs of Ukraine, but to create a real advantage for it in resources and weapons, since it already has an advantage in manpower.
No one has an answer to this question yet, and it seems that the West itself will decide on this no sooner than it is convinced that the coming winter is not fatal for itself in the energy and economic sense. If the winter is not too cold, the social situation is not threatening, and the losses are not catastrophic, then they can take a risk.
What is striking in each of the forecasts is that none of the options for modeling the situation assumes a tactical defeat for Russia and a victory for Ukraine. The range of variations is from “everything remains as is” to the Russian “storm and attack”.
True, to be fair, Western analysts do not have much faith in the excessive effectiveness of such a scenario. What I mean is that in the coming year the Russians, as seen from the western bell tower, will not reach either Kyiv or Lvov.
But, nevertheless, as they say, hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. The “worst” in the understanding of Western strategists is the unexpectedly rapid advance of Russian forces. Nobody believes in him now, including most analysts in Russia itself, but you never know. No one has yet canceled the “Black Swan” as a factor. So, just in case, the Ukrainian military is also being prepared for close combat.
The American publication The New York Times recently made a similar conclusion based on an analysis of the list of transferred weapons. The new US military aid package includes 40 armored personnel carriers equipped with mine-clearing trawls, as well as lighter howitzers and recoilless rifles with a firing range of several hundred meters.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces are also provided with TOW ATGMs, which can be mounted on a regular pickup truck, which increases the unit’s maneuverability. As The New York Times writes, citing sources in the White House, the new supplies are designed to increase the mobility of the Ukrainian army, primarily in the south of the country.
A number of Russian authors recognize the danger of such US plans, since after a new aid package for the Armed Forces of Ukraine worth three billion dollars, the Ukrainian army may well become more technologically advanced than those units of the Russian Armed Forces that take part in hostilities.
“Plus numerical superiority. The combination of these factors + the transition to positioning and epic brigade-level battles for landing lead to a catastrophic prolongation of the war and an increase in casualties,” says political strategist and volunteer Igor Mangushev.
He considers preventive strikes on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure to be a symmetrical response that neutralizes the advantages of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
“A Ukrainian soldier will not be able to fight calmly if he has a family sitting at home without light, heat, water and food. The destruction of critical civilian infrastructure becomes a fundamentally important issue. If we want to win. If you want to save Russian soldiers, hit the Ukrainian thermal power plants,” writes Mangushev.
One way or another, any forecast has its expiration date. Whether the above scenarios are fair, and which one will work, will become clear in the fall.
One thing is clear: optimism about the end of the military campaign this year seems to have finally died a natural death. So we can agree with the conclusions of the Chinese official Global Times that the West has turned Ukraine into a weapons range and a meat grinder to weaken the Russian Federation.
Whether Russia will win is debatable. But Ukraine in this situation is simply doomed, because an endless war will be waged on its territory, slowly but surely turning it into ruin.
English version :: Read in English Scenarios of the Ukrainian apocalypse: how the SVO will unfold in the coming year