ReviewUkraine: 100 days … what’s next?

President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledges that Russia occupies 20% of his country’s territory, and Ukrainian troops have been losing, since mid -May, between 60 and 100 soldiers a day. Although he opines that the reconquest will be longhe just declared, in the first days of June, that success will be ours.

In Moscow, people are less talkative than in kyiv. The Kremlin is hiding behind a thick wall of propaganda – or silence – about what is really going on. During this time, the Ukrainian side maintained excellent and relentless communication in the war, a discourse on the whole that was less stripped of reality than Moscow.

Vladimir Putin said Russia achieved some results at the Battle of Donbass … What did he mean there

Lies and pretense

War is also lies, hypocrisy, hypocrisy, dissimulation or exaggeration … In this regard, Putin and the Russian regime are not giving their place. We sow false leads: one thing we say one day and the opposite the next. We saw this in this show of negotiations in April.

In addition, there is, in the official story told by television in Russia, an element of parallel realityof phantasmagoria, for example when one speaks there, with the greatest seriousness, of the Nazi regime of kyiv, a bad story, a “Bonhomme Sept-Heures”, invented to hold the leash the captive audience of Moscow’s official media.

In this short sphinx that says – some results have been achieved – The Kremlin suggests that a limited benefit to Donbass can now satisfy Putin. In fact, Russia has swallowed its first dreams of occupying Ukraine, or overthrowing the Zelensky government – at least in the short and medium term.

Today, Moscow seems to be returning, almost, to the two regions of Donbass (the “oblasts” of Lugansk and Donetsk – not to be confused with the two cities with the same name), along with Crimea, with a piece of land in between of the two, including the martyred city of Mariupol: approximately, 20%, that’s all.

Added to this is the singular case of Kherson, at the gates of Crimea, a city occupied without massacres or destruction, but where a deaf protest was organized.

Donbass is definitely the addition of these two regions. With the horrific ongoing massacre in Sievierodonetsk, Lugansk Oblast is almost in Russia’s hands. What is not true, on the other hand, of the oblast of Donetsk – which, he, was taken only with about 50%… and where the Ukrainians are resistant meter per meter.

kyiv against any territorial compromise

Ukrainian leaders reiterate that for them, any compromise on territory is not included. Their line says: We want to regain our country, our whole country. Because if now we leave to Putin this territory covered by the value of our blood, with his speech of hatred and rejection of our people […]it will only strengthen the monster and encourage it to start again, as soon as possible.

Here, we can discuss a request for justice, as opposed to the approach of peace in every way. And this view is widely shared in Ukraine, according to polls we managed, even during the war, to take place there.

The American channel NBC quoted one on June 3, conducted in May by the International Institute of Sociology in kyiv: we found, not surprisingly, that 82% of Ukrainians think-despite the acquaintances- horrors that they endure – that they should not do not surrender the territorywho had to recapture all that had been drawn.

In this speech, it is argued that Putin’s main Russia drive is the annihilation of Ukraine. This view argues, on the whole, that Russia’s defeat in this war was a moral necessity, in addition to a security requirement. Similarly, in 1945, Germany’s total defeat – and not a compromise with Germany – was a goal for which it was impossible to compromise.

This apathy of Ukrainians vis-à-vis Moscow does not mean to say that Putin’s Russia is the equivalent of Hitler’s Germanybut reflects their total absence of illusions about the possibility of a compromise with their attacker.

Is unity in the West declining?

But there is also an external perspective, Europeans, Americans, Westerners in general who, despite their active solidarity over the past three months, do not necessarily see it that way.

This view – let’s call it the “vision of peace”, but with support for Ukrainians – says that compromise, when the time comes, is inevitable and the care, empathy, determination and ability to provide help, in part of Europeans and Americans. , will end up diminishing, decreasing.

In Germany, in Italy, this point of view is expressed. Even President Joe Biden, an unwavering and generous supporter of the Ukrainian government to this day, said that there must be negotiations to end this war .

This point of view, which is growing, is accompanied by skepticism over the objective possibility of a total reconquest of their territory by the Ukrainians. So, we say that soon we need to sit down to talk about a ceasefire, and, yes, territorial concessions. And that, to do so, will have to put pressure on Ukrainian friends, even if it is compromise with the devil

The war that will last

Meanwhile, on the horizon of 200 days (end of summer), this war seems to end in a long time. We need to see if the delivery of weapons will continue, if they reach their goal, if they change the situation in the coming weeks.

According to many analysts such as those at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, or even British military intelligence-both generous in studying the evolution of fronts-there is a possibility of mutual blockage, of frozen war.

The Russians were about to stop; they had to give up their dream of pushing towards Odessa, but they clung to their landline to the east and southeast. And the Ukrainians will not drive them away. Possible scenario.

So far, the Russian army is placing the package – almost all it has – in Lugansk oblast, in a quadrilateral 50 kilometers of 100 that has become hell on Earth. A deluge of fire and metal was cruelly applied to it to do so declare success.

This tactical advantage seems attainable, but at what cost? At the cost of a systematic destruction of territory covered. It’s here Russian methodwhich has already been applied in Syria between 2015 and 2017 (especially in East Aleppo), at the cost of the brutal suffering of civilians and the destruction of industry and the land we have take.

There is also another possible price for the Russian army’s frantic localized offensive: it is possible that it finds itself on the brink of exhaustion, lack of resources, in people and in material.

A battered winner, in other words, the most capable of maintaining minimal positions wins … and again.