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Flipping the Script
RUSSIA-UKRAINE
Top Ukrainian commander Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi boasted this week that his troops now control almost 400 square miles of Russian territory in the Kursk border region, capturing 28 villages and forcing more than 100,000 Russians to flee.
“Russia brought war to others – now it is coming home,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a video posted on Telegram.
The Ukrainian invasion of Russia – marking the first foreign incursion since World War II – began on Aug. 6 and is a daring move that has shocked and humiliated Russia and turned the tables on the country’s president, Vladimir Putin, whose forces invaded Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, more than two years ago.
Over the past week, Ukrainians driving American tanks pushed deep into Russian territory, facing little resistance from a weakly manned border area, reported the Financial Times. Russian planes have launched bombs to stop their progress, but Russian troops have not sallied forth to halt the Ukrainian advance – yet. Meanwhile, as National Public Radio wrote, even pro-Russian bloggers have called Russia’s response “slow and disorganized.”
Putin, in reaction, has called the Ukrainian push a “large-scale provocation,” which the BBC reported as “irony not lost on many.” Regardless, some analysts believe he will use it as an excuse to sanction harsher attacks on Ukrainian civilians and critical infrastructure, and shore up his position that Ukraine is a threat to Russia, Al Jazeera noted.
The counter-offensive, meanwhile, appeared designed to force the Russians to divert forces from fighting on the primary front line to the south. The invasion has also boosted Ukrainian morale, added the Washington Post, as thousands of Russians flee the Ukrainians, reversing the trend so far of Ukrainians running from invading Russians.
It was a way to remind Russians in Russia about the war, said Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian member of parliament. “If Ukrainians feel the war every day and Russians don’t, they don’t want it to end,” he said. “They need to feel it too.”
Western officials also said the advance might offer a strategic advantage during negotiations: Zelenskyy could use seized Russian territory in exchange for Putin agreeing to retreat from parts of Ukraine that Russian troops now occupy.
Meanwhile, analysts at the Atlantic Council explained that Ukraine was going on the offensive because it has failed to make much progress fighting Russia on the main front. Zelenskyy needed to think outside the box and shake up the current terms of the fight, which favored the far-larger Russian military to eventually defeat Ukraine.
“Kyiv’s best chance of military success lies in returning to a war of mobility and maneuver that allows Ukrainian commanders to take advantage of their relative agility while exploiting the Russian army’s far more cumbersome decision-making processes,” they said.
The attack also happened at around the same time that American F-16 fighter jets first arrived in Ukraine, the BBC added, aircraft that were long denied to the Ukrainians because Western allies worried about being dragged into a third world war, even a nuclear war. Now, these jets are supposed to be a vital part of a larger campaign to roll back the Russian army.
That might take a while, if it happens at all, say commentators, noting Russian strength. In the meantime, the Ukrainians have had something to chuckle about, they added.
“There has been quiet delight in Kyiv,” said the BBC regarding the invasion. “People are saying, ‘Oh look, here’s our special operation – we are liberating Russian territory.”
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