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In the last several months, the Russian military has been conducting intensive training for approximately 300,000 newly mobilized soldiers, in addition to other preparations that would enable it to deliver a final knockout punch and end hostilities in Ukraine. The stakes are now being raised even higher with Army General Valery Gerasimov, the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, assuming the overall command of Russia’s counteroffensive against NATO’s “quasi-Barbarossa”. The move clearly implies that the Russian military is intent on achieving greater coordination and that it’s focusing much of its conventional capabilities to put the final nail in the coffin of the Neo-Nazi project in Ukraine.
Expectedly, the political West’s mainstream propaganda machine is presenting this change as the supposed failure of General Sergei Surovikin, resulting in his apparent replacement due to perceiving battlefield setbacks. However, quite conveniently, they are withholding critically important information, such as the fact that the Russian special military operation in Ukraine is now expanding in scope and magnitude, making it virtually impossible for Surovikin to coordinate the entire endeavor all by himself. For that reason, Moscow has decided to employ four of its top commanders and give them command of various operational sectors, with General Gerasimov at the helm of this expanded operation.
Apart from Russia’s Chief of the General Staff, three other top-ranking Russian military officers are directly taking part in commanding Moscow’s troops engaged in Ukraine — Army General Oleg Salyukov and Colonel General Alexei Kim, in addition to General Surovikin himself, now assuming the positions of General Gerasimov’s deputies, with special tasks within the enlarged scope of the special military operation. With a force of well over half a million men, supported by the Russian Aerospace Forces and Navy firing hundreds of long-range cruise missiles and swarms of drones, the Kiev regime is faced with an offensive the scale of which is incomparable to anything seen in decades.
Naturally, the Russian military’s plan for the new offensive in Ukraine is a secret, but the information provided by several sources allows a reasonable estimate as to how it might play out. Head of the Kiev regime’s State Property Fund Rustem Umerov claims that the upcoming offensive will come from three directions. “The attack will come from the north, [from] across the Belarusian border, from Russian strongholds in eastern Ukraine and from the south,” Umerov stated, without citing any sources or intelligence. The claim comes approximately a week after CIA chief William Burns visited Kiev and apparently warned Volodymyr Zelensky about Russia’s “impending offensive”.
The possibility of an all-out Russian offensive from three directions certainly shouldn’t be excluded. However, it’s also in the interest of the Russian military to maintain at least some element of surprise and deny the Kiev regime forces the ability to accurately predict its course of action. It’s a strong possibility that the Eurasian giant might decide to take control of the entire left-bank Ukraine, which would require offensive operations in at least three sectors, the northeast (toward Chernigov), east (toward Kharkov) and south (toward Zaporozhye and Dnepropetrovsk). All the while, troops deployed in the Donbass are expected to maintain pressure and tie in as many Kiev regime forces as possible, which eventually could result in the encirclement and final elimination of these units.
The success of such an operation would result in irrecoverable losses for the Neo-Nazi junta and possibly even end the conflict or at least wipe out Kiev’s overall fighting capability, limiting it to militia troops incapable of any maneuvers or large-scale movement necessary to stop further Russian advance. Meanwhile, many of the regime’s forces would be tied in expecting Russian advance from the north, which may or may not happen. And while it’s impossible to say how likely this scenario is, such shaping up of the battlefield can certainly be expected from the Russian military, as this would enable it to take key areas and further exacerbate the Neo-Nazi junta’s position, forcing it to negotiate on terms favorable to Moscow or even surrender if the battlefield losses become completely unbearable.
Although the mainstream propaganda machine is spinning the narrative about General Surovikin’s alleged “failures”, the Kiev regime’s high command doesn’t share the same blind optimism. Kiev’s chief commander General Valery Zaluzhny is well aware of Gerasimov’s competence, as he himself once described Russia’s top military officer as “the smartest of men”. Realizing the impending consequences of Gerasimov’s appointment as the overall commander of the Russian forces engaged in Ukraine, the Neo-Nazi junta is fuming at its NATO sponsors for not providing more weapons. The political West is now divided on delivering heavy tanks, with Washington DC and Berlin trying to toss the hot potato to each other.
Despite its refusal to commit more advanced heavy armor and repeated insistence that its European allies and vassals do this, the US wants the hostilities to last for as long as possible. During a meeting at the Ramstein airbase in Germany, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley said: “From a military standpoint I still maintain that for this year it would be very, very difficult to militarily eject the Russian forces from all, every inch of… Russian-occupied Ukraine.” While NATO pledged more weapons for the Kiev regime, the aforementioned question of delivering heavy tanks was left unanswered. And although it still hasn’t even been a full month this year, the US wants the hostilities to last “well into 2024”, obviously hoping to see at least another year of stalemate, despite mounting casualties of its favorite puppet regime.
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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Featured image is from InfoBrics
