flamming_python Sat Oct 15, 2022 8:03 pm
Hole wrote: flamming_python wrote:There will be an offensive, but only once Ukrainian reserves are sufficiently depleted
What I thought 1.5 months ago, but didn't want to write publicly, is that Russia will continue to deplete Ukrainian numbers by encouraging them to go on the offensive.
But not only that - that then once their new NATO trained forces and mercs are expended, Russia will advance on Kiev again which will force the Ukrainians to decide whether to urgently send what men they have ready to defend it, or keep manning the defensive lines in the Donbass, Kharkov and Kherson regions.
They won't be able to manage both, and either Kiev will fall or the way will be open for a painless advance from the south all along the line for Russia
This time the forces in the North won´t be a feint or part of a political gamble or whatever. They will be real.
If the Bandera regime takes forces from the South and South-East the four new russian regions there will be liberated completely + Nikolaev, Odessa and Dnjepropetrovsk. If the regime keeps the troops there it will loose some northern regions + the North-East (Kharkov, Sumi and Chernishev).
My bet: the regime will act as before and send some forces from the South to the North. With this half-measure the whole liberation campaign in the South will take a few days longer but in the end the regime will loose at both ends of 404.
Attempts at such a compromise will just mean losing both.
Last time they didn't compromise, they sent enough to Kiev to keep the Russians from directly assaulting the city, or even completing its encirclement. It would have incurred too many casualties.
They had enough left however to also keep most of the group in the Donbass front and Odessa (they diverted to Kiev mostly from Western and central Ukraine), and had mobilization waves and NATO mercs on the way.
None of this is on the horizon however this time.
I believe they will divert all forces to Kiev, they will not risk their seat of government falling, not to mention seat of railway junctions, seat of oligarchy, seat of western-sourced virtual finances, seat of propagandists, seat of foreign presstitutes, seat of visiting European dignitaries, and all these other seats, that they rely on to keep the war effort, the virtual economy and the state going.
While they can continue the war if they lose Kiev, with a Ukrainian government in exile or in Lvov, it will be a severe blow to them and rob them of most of their soft-power, info-war and other psychological means - most of those specialists are based in Kiev. It will also shake their morale to the extent that now the war will be perceived to shift to a mop-up operation against pro-regime forces, rather than some all-national struggle that is going full steam ahead at present as always.
Losing their southern defensive lines however is not as critical, and it will be some time before any cities will accept surrender or be assaulted regardless. It will be something they will give up long before their capital.
Basically as long as they have Kiev, and have power to it running - they can continue the war from their side full-force with the full apparatus of the state at their disposal.
Last edited by flamming_python on Sat Oct 15, 2022 8:10 pm; edited 3 times in total
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Russian troops continue to arrive in Belarus, which are part of the regional group of troops
