After more than a month of war in Ukraine, the Russian army seems to be reviewing its military strategy. Russia has indicated this week that it intends to transfer its strike power from the north to the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk in the east. In fact, the Russian forces “do not withdraw but reposition themselves” in Ukraine, confirmed Thursday, March 31, the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Jens Stoltenberg. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, for his part, assures that Russian forces are regrouping in the east of the country in anticipation “powerful attacks”especially on the besieged port of Mariupol.
Calling out “not to neglect the reality and the importance of Russian territorial conquests”geopolitical scientist Jean-Sylvestre Mongrenier, associate researcher at the Thomas-More Institute and specialist in security issues, points out that “the Russian military machine is blocked”. The author of Geopolitics of Russia (PUF, 2016) recalls, however, that “Vladimir Putin’s general political objective remains unchanged: he intends to control the destinies of Ukraine”.
What was the initial Russian military strategy in Ukraine?
Before describing Russian military strategy, it is a question of understanding that this war is part of a grand strategy which carries and expresses a geopolitical project, the latter arising from a vision of the world. In the Weltanschauung of Vladimir Poutine, Ukraine must be dominated and disappear from the political map, this State having, according to him, no raison d’être or legitimacy.
Vladimir Putin’s initial military strategy was based on the idea that the Ukrainian state would collapse like a house of cards. Anticipating a form of passive consent, Vladimir Putin thought that the Ukrainian population would submit quickly.
He therefore thought of waging a blitzkrieg, in two or three days, by decapitating the Ukrainian politico-military leadership. Hence the offensive on kyiv, the political center of gravity, in northern Ukraine. The task being supposed to be easy (a “special military operation”), the Russian armies have opened up other fronts: to the east, from the part of Donbass already controlled by local auxiliaries from Moscow, or even to the south, from Crimea, with the support of the Russian fleet deployed in black Sea.
The ambition was to seize large cities like kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol, even Odessa, which the master of the Kremlin intended to punish. However, the strategy consists not in dispersing forces, but in concentrating them on a breaking point, in order to win a decisive victory. Vladimir Putin and his generals have sinned by arrogance: from contempt to contempt. That said, let’s not underestimate the Russian territorial conquests, in the Donbass and southern Ukraine. With the fall of Mariupol, Moscow would control a “land bridge” from Donbass to Crimea.
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