It is highly unclear whether the Russian offensive has even started

 

Wolfgang Hansson

Putin wants to get ahead of the West's tanks  

 

Published: Less than 2 hours ago  

 

This is a commenting text. Analysis and positions are the writer's.  

 

COLUMNISTS  

 

Time is on Vladimir Putin's side, but he is still in a hurry. 

 

He wants to start Russia's new offensive before the promised tanks from the West are in place in Ukraine.  

 

Even poorly trained Russian soldiers can play a decisive role in the war - if there are enough of them.  

 

It is not easy to wash the truth out of the fog of propaganda. Some say that a major Russian offensive has already started. Others that it begins on the anniversary of the invasion on February 24 or later this spring. 

 

From the U.S. intelligence community, which with its signals intelligence capabilities should really know, it has been unusually quiet. The US appears to have partially abandoned the pre-war and early-war strategy of releasing intelligence to disrupt Russian plans. 

 

But the signal from both Ukraine and Russia is that the fighting is intensifying. 

 

During the winter, the war has been standing and stomping in the same place. Territorial gains have been few for either side. For weeks and months we have been hearing that Russia is about to capture the city of Bachmut but it seems that Ukraine still holds parts of it. Both sides suffer heavy losses in killed and wounded but make minimal advances.  

 

The fighting has closely resembled the frozen conflict that raged in eastern Ukraine from 2014 until Russia invaded for good last year.  

 

Russia's strategy of trying to cut off Ukraine's energy supply and thereby break the residents' will to resist has failed. Putin cannot wage the war remotely.  

Vladimir Putin. Photo: Dmitry Azarov / AP  

 

New promises from the West  

 

In the long run, Putin probably has time on his side. The longer the war goes on, the greater the risk, from his point of view the chance, that the West will tire of supporting Ukraine.  

 

But in the short term, even Putin is in a hurry. 

 

The West has promised to send several hundred tanks and long-range artillery to Ukraine. The first British tanks are due to arrive in March. The Germans in April. 

 

Powerful weapons that make it easier for Ukraine to go on the offensive and try to take back the territories conquered by Russia since February 24 last year. The stated goal is also to take back to Crimea the parts of eastern Ukraine and Crimea that Russia conquered in 2014.  

 

Yesterday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyi was received in London by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and was promised that Britain will investigate the possibility of sending fighter jets to Ukraine. In the evening, he met France's Macron and Germany's Scholz in Paris for talks on the same issue. 

 

Today he is participating in the EU's specially convened summit in Brussels.  

The chance, the risk from Putin's point of view, is great that the West will eventually also agree to send warplanes to Ukraine. 

 

Something that would further increase Ukraine's striking power in the war.  

 

End the war  

 

Putin has found no way to stop Western supplies of military equipment to Ukraine. He can choose to continue to watch helplessly as one advanced weapons strike after another rolls into Ukraine or to try to go on the offensive and create some kind of victory that will allow him to at least temporarily end the war without losing face and power.  

 

No one can say for sure how many more soldiers Russia has managed to mobilize and train. It can be anything from a few hundred thousand to half a million. 

         The battlefield of Bachmut. Photo: LIBKOS / AP  

 

Cash is not unimportant in the kind of old-fashioned warfare now being played out in Ukraine. If hundreds of thousands of soldiers pour across the front, it is not easy to stop this wall of flesh. Russia has shown that it accepts extreme losses. 

 

But it is difficult for them to surprise Ukraine. Satellite and drone surveillance makes it impossible to gather hundreds of thousands of men and heavy military vehicles without being seen. Russia experienced that before and during the invasion.  

 

At the same time, NATO chief Stoltenberg claims that Russia has succeeded in importing weapons from both Iran and North Korea. In the Russian war industry, there is certainly a lack of certain high technology, but they have managed to circumvent Western sanctions in various ways. Production is intensified.  

 

Billions roll in  

 

Money is not a big problem for Putin. The oil and gas that the West no longer buys, Russia sells instead to countries like China and India. Even if it happens at discounted prices, the billions roll into the Russian treasury.  

 

The most likely scenario is that Russia tries to occupy the entire Donbass region in the east. It would give Putin a victory and confirm on the battlefield the illegal annexation of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. 

 

But the only thing you can be sure of is that the biggest battles lie ahead. The war shows no signs of ending.