The US government claims that Russia has lost 25% of its military power, which will not facilitate the ongoing fighting in the Donbass region, particularly in the southwestern area of the cities of Donetsk and Izyum, which Moscow considers keys to securing independent republics, with a history of pro-Russian separatism.
“When people say the offensive has started, that’s what they mean,” a senior US Defense Department official told MSNBC, referring to Russia’s military capabilities and aspirations to ensure Russia’s “independence.” the two regions located in the Donbass.
The official indicated that Russian troops are taking steps to increase their capacity to carry out combat operations in Donbass and to “prepare for what we believe will be larger offensives in the future”, but not with the speed at which they aspire for an unexpected Ukrainian resistance.
The Russian military lost about 25% of the combat power it sent to Ukraine in late February. Now it is re-equipping ground combat units to send them to Ukrainian territory, and has proceeded to relieve some commanders taking into account the loss of a dozen generals, something unprecedented in a war of these characteristics.
The same Pentagon source emphasized that Moscow added two groups of tactical battalions to the invading force in the last 24 hours, now a total of 78 instead of 65 last week.
However, the port city of Mariupol, surrounded by Russian troops since the beginning of March, continues to be the scene of street clashes, the region’s governor said today in an interview with the US television network CNN.
“There is fighting in Mariupol. They are street fights and they are not only with light weapons but also tank battles in the streets of the city,” said Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of the Donetsk region.
The areas where the Ukrainian fighters are concentrated, starting with the facilities of the Azovstal metallurgical complex, “are under heavy bombardment, but the defenses are holding up,” Kyrylenko continued.
Taking Mariupol would allow the Russians to consolidate their coastal territorial gains along the Sea of Azov, linking the Donbass region, partly controlled by pro-Russian separatists, with the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014.
Competition between blocks
In turn, the war opens up a “bloc” competition between Western democracies: on the one hand, and China and Russia on the other.
It is that the war in Ukraine will imply the return to a world of two great blocs in “intense competition”. The democracies opposed to China and Russia, in an apparent process of “deglobalization” created after the end of the Soviet bloc, considered the American analyst Charles Koupchanof the Council on International Relations.
«It is likely that we will return to a world of two large blocs, democracies on one side and Russia and China on the other, two large blocs in intense competition, in the process of deglobalization, despite the fact that today two thirds of the population world trade are more with China than with the United States,” said Kupchan.
“A world of two blocks around which many countries will gravitate and decide which to privilege,” continued the academic, a former adviser to the administration of former President Barack Obama, speaking by videoconference at an international relations conference organized in Lisbon.
Kupchan considered it important to “understand how we got here”, stressing that “[el presidente ruso Vladimir] Putin did not understand Ukraine”, referring to a “hot war” with Russia, and without including topics related to the possible paranoia of the Kremlin leader, territorial aggressions or other problems.
Why the Donbas?
The Donbas is Ukraine’s largely Russian-speaking industrial heartland in the east, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces for the past eight years and have declared two independent republics recognized by Russia.
The Kremlin declared the capture of the Donbas as its main objective of the war after its attempt to storm kyiv failed. Withdrawing from the capital, he began to regroup and reinforce his ground forces in the east for what could be the climactic battle.
It is also a key area to create a land route to the Crimean peninsula, which it illegally occupied in 2014.
“They [los rusos] they need that corridor to be able to reinforce the occupation of Crimea because an eventual Ukrainian victory in this conflict could make Ukrainian nationalism grow in the region. The Russians lost the war in Afghanistan. [en la era soviética] and in Syria they did not go well either. He needs the Ukrainian victory to continue with his zone of influence. What is not understood is how they planned all this as if they did not know the adversary, as if Ukraine had never been a Soviet republic,” Portuguese Army Major General Mario Gomes da Silva told local television.
