Two months after the start of the invasion of Ukraine, Russia is ensuring that their goal was full control of the eastern region of the Donbasas well as the south of the country.

However, it is still unclear what military resources Moscow will deploy in the “second phase” of its campaign in Ukraine and What is your medium and long -term goal?

Russia seems to have learned some lessons in terms of objectives and tactics from the difficulties it faced in the first weeks of the war, when its army fought an enemy it clearly underestimated.

Currently, Russian forces is present in a 200-250 km corridor within Ukrainefrom the Sea of ​​Azov to the outskirts of Kharkov, but they have no full control over the area.

In March, the Russian military announced that will focus its efforts on the Donetsk and Lugansk regionsin the Donbas, where pro-Russian separatists have been active since 2014.

The trials

On Friday, Russian Major General Rustam Minnekaev said that “one of the tasks of the Russian army is to establish full control over the Donbas and southern Ukraine”, adding that it will give them “a corridor of land in the Crimea”, the peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

But this goal has challenges, according to Michel Goya, a former colonel in the French army.

“The more Russian forces penetrate Ukrainian territory, the weaker they are,” Michel Goya said on Twitter.

Pascal Ausseur, director of the FMES institute for strategic studies, said the Russian military may wish to establish an axis from Kherson, on the banks of the Dnieper River, to the Dnipro city in the north, and then to Izyum in the east. .

Experts exclude that Russia intends to take kyiv, which seemed to be the initial goal of his campaign.

The difficulties facing the Russian army in March forced it to change tactics to prevent losses of soldiers and equipment.

“They realize that the‘ blitzkrieg ’(blitzkrieg) option doesn’t work,” Ausseur said. “So they went back to the traditional Soviet steamroller model: If you cannot bend the will of your enemies, crush them. “

“They are going to‘ Mariupolize ’the operation,” Ausseur anticipated, referring to the southern port of Mariupol, which has been under intense Russian bombardment for the past two months and whose inevitable collapse was delayed by little Ukrainian resistance.

“It looks like the Russian military is just looking for a scorched-earth approach, trying to destroy the will of the Ukrainian military by using excessive force and indiscriminate shelling to force civilians to flee, ”said Colin Clarke, a researcher at the Soufan Center think tank.

The techniques

Some experts believe the Russian army will try to capture Ukrainian forces as they move east of the Dnieper River.

To avoid being surrounded, Ukrainians could spread to several fields, Clarke said, to stretch Russia’s supply lines.tion and communication. “That approach has been successful so far,” he said.

Western aid has grown in recent days, especially with the announcement of an $ 800 million U.S. military aid package aimed at fighting the Donbas.

But the armored vehicles it will take “weeks or months” to reach the Ukrainian military, according to Mark Cancion of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Even if the vehicles are out of stock in Europe, they will still need some changes before they are ready for shipment,” he said.

NATO countries have begun providing Ukraine with the s300 anti-aircraft missile system, but according to Ausseur, their shipment also takes time.

Meanwhile, France indicated that it would send Ukrainian anti-tank weapons to Milan and Caesar’s cannons.

But experts say kyiv still lacks other advanced weapons such as Howitzer cannons.

Ukraine needs to be established an “iron dome” to defend against an air attack, according to Ausseur.

“They need a shield that makes the equation less favorable for the Russians,” he explained, adding that “if notRussia could carry out an air strike for many years. “

Some observers thought the battle was about to end. “The scenario that is coming out it was one of intense bombing in a few weeks or even months, ”Ausseur hopes.

Alexander Khramchikhin of the Institute for Military and Political Analysis in Moscow said the fighting could continue for years.

“Russia has not achieved any of its goals and it is not easy to see how it will be achieved in the future,” he told AFP.

AFP agency

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