The war in Ukraine, 9 months after the start: Putin’s cold strategy and a spring that could be bloody

A report to the United Nations Security Council warns that in Ukraine, subjected to aa permanent diet of missile bombing, the risk of a “catastrophic winter”, when just 9 months have passed since the start of the war on February 24th.

In addition to the daily attacks, at the rate of once a week, the Russians launch massive attacks a barrage of missiles which destroy a good part of the energy infrastructures, lengthening the inconveniences drinking water, electricity, gas.

The Vladimir Putin’s strategy aims to freeze the conflict in winter to thoroughly punish the warlike will of the Ukrainians and demonstrate it he is willing to prolong the war.

In the United States and Western Europe, analysts fear a growing conflict at this rate it is unsustainable. The data is staggering: Russia spent 82 billion dollars to finance the war, a quarter of your budget of the last year.

60,000 shells a day, the new phase

The Russian artillery fires 60,000 shells a day, the Ukrainian 20,000. The consumption of weapons creates serious reserve problems. Russia has suspended production of its new weapons. Putin ordered the factories absolute priority to supply of material to the armed forces fighting in Ukraine.

Putin runs the cold strategy because he needs a major victory on the battlefield after these nine months the three offensives he made failed and the Ukrainians continued to take the lead until the new phase of the war arrived with the first massive missile barrage on October 10th.

troop concentration

To negotiate by at least partially imposing his conditions, the Russian president needs time to reorganize his military power. Allied satellites show logistical efforts with large supply caravans which are concentrating in Belarus and also concentrations of weapons and soldiers on the Russian borders of eastern Ukraine.

These movements remind the earlier stages of the invasion on March 24, when the Americans took over massive troop and armor movements Russians around Ukraine. They immediately sounded the alarm of an invasion. The Russians indignantly replied that it was just maneuvering.

The Western impression is that winter quarters should give military leaders and Putin time reorganize the entire military apparatus and in the meantime continue to punish the populationshutting down cities and renewing attacks on the entire Ukrainian infrastructure.

China has taken note, and a spokesman for Beijing’s foreign ministry said its country has prioritized humanitarian issues. He called for “to cool the situation down through dialogue and negotiation”.

the big offensive

the big offensive it would start in late winter or early spring boreal, depending on the circumstances.

Stimulation matters a lot in Putin’s plans the weakening of consensus especially in Western Europe, which is already feeling the effects of the beginning of the restrictions on the supply of energy products and the increase in prices. Inflation eats up the big savings of Europeans. Furthermore, the maintenance of the level of shipments of arms and in particular of European ammunition to Ukraine is emptying warehouses and heralding a crisis of European military reserves.

US President Joe Biden has warned that hugely expensive support for Ukraine cannot be diminished and that Putin is following the wrong strategy. But solidarity will be increasingly tested in the coming months.

The tragic situation in Ukrainian cities with millions of people no light and little water from bombing, forces President Zelensky to do this organize adequate civil protection.

In recent days, the percentage of civilians without water, electricity or fuel has dropped from 70 to 50%. Russian missiles they were unruly with the generators and the United States has announced an immediate shipment of 200 devices to restore electricity.

Putin aims to increase with bombings population flight in other Ukrainian regions and abroad – another increasingly difficult problem.

Zelensky’s plan

Ukraine maintains the line of demonstrating that just as it succeeded in the three major Russian offensives that failed, forcing them to abandon the city of Kherson a few days ago, which was the capital of one of the four regions annexed “forever” by Russia, continues to mobilize its military structure expand military initiatives in the direction of the Crimean peninsula and the Donbass region to the east.

But President Zelensky it needs to back up these ambitions with new weapons and more reservist additions to its 70,000 soldiers already fighting.

Germany and Britain have promised new missiles and drones, along with air combat systems.

The United States is shipping weapons and munitions it has so far refused to supply to the Ukrainian armies out of fear that more sophisticated and far-reaching military devices could generate a clash with Russia which escalates the war with threatening options.

Since Russia can no longer use the nuclear threat as it did in the first months of the invasion after the reactions which resulted in a joint statement by the United States and China against the atomic perspective, they reappear on the horizon old demons.

The Ghost of Chemical Weapons​

The Americans sound the alarm and it is announced that new recovery networks are being created: Russia would renew its hypotheses of use chemical weapons. Especially the Novichok nerve agent. The term refers to a class of neurotoxins that Russia developed in the 1980s.

can be easily provided in devastating quantities and shapes liquids, powders and aerosols Inhaled or in contact with skin, lead to certain death in a few minutes. They are compounds that fatally interfere with the activity of the body’s neurotransmitters, essential for the regulation of the nervous system.

The victims of the Novichok die of suffocation or cardiac arrest. The venom causes fatal muscle spasms. It is considered one of the most effective and very easy to spread when using chemical weapons of nerve agents.

Rome, correspondent

ap​