Vladimir Putin
(Picture: AP)Vladimir Putin may be re-deploying Russian troops “piecemeal” into eastern Ukraine as he scrambles for a victory by May 9 to coincide with the Red Square parade held to mark the Nazis’ surrender in the Second World War, western officials said on Friday.
The Russian president may also be trying to put more forces into the Donbas region quickly before Ukrainian troops, no longer pinned down having to defend Kyiv and Chernihiv in the north of the country, are able to be sent towards the eastern battles.
One western official said: “There is a tension between the military logic of getting the force properly set for a reinvigorated Russian operation into the Donbas, potentially using more appropriate tactics and learning some of the lessons from the disastrous operations largely so far...against a political imperative to actually get on with the operation and move quickly.
“We are starting to see operations at the moment and it looks like a sort of piecemeal approach to feeding Russian forces into the revitalised campaign in the Donbas.
“It’s entirely possible that the need to act quickly is driven both by political imperative, we spoke about the potential impact of May 9 and Putin’s desire for some degree of success by that point in time even if it won’t get total success by then.”
The official added: “But also there is the dynamic of what happens with Ukrainian forces which are no longer being pinned down in operations against Russian forces in and around Kyiv or Chernihiv.
“There is a risk, as far as the Russians are concerned, that Ukrainian forces will redeploy and now start to have an impact on Russian freedom of manoeuvre to be able to execute the operations in and around the Donbas.
“I think that is going to be an unfolding picture over the coming days.”
More Russian forces are believed to be pouring into the Izyum area of eastern Ukraine ahead of a suspected fresh attempt to encircle Ukrainian forces in the Donbas.
But the official said: “If they don’t have sufficient force ready and they launch this operation early, they are going to get themselves into a much more of a grinding operation which will take greater time, it will cause them more casualties, and that is going to have an even greater psychological effect on their armed forces.
“But if they wait, they have not only got the political imperative, they have also got the concern that other Ukrainian forces from wider across Ukraine would be able to be moved to then have an impact on the battle space.
“So, I think the commander for Russian forces has got a delicate judgement to make as to when he has got enough to be able to launch those operations.”
The Russian advances, though, are expected to be launched “sooner rather than later” and that attempts will be made to try to introduce more forces as quickly as possible.
But six weeks into the conflict, some of the military units have already suffered “very significant losses” and it is thought that it will take “some time” to to get them back into fighting shape.
Mr Putin’s retreat from Kyiv is believed to now have been completed with his troops which invaded northern Ukraine now back in Belarus or Russia, with some of them said to have “fled” rather than pull back in an orderly way.
Any large-scale redeployment of these forces to fight in the Donbas region is expected to take at least a week, if not longer.
The Russian troops were pulled back after Mr Putin’s lightning invasion plan, to seize Kyiv within days, failed in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance, as well as logistical problems and low morale among the invading force, some of who had been misled by army commanders to believe they were just taking part in a military exercise.
Mr Putin’s forces have suffered heavy losses, with more than 10,000 killed, according to some estimates, and three or four times as many injured or incapacitated.
The military strategy by Mr Putin and his generals may be to blame for some of these casualties, especially given the huge number of Russian troops, believed to be up to 190,000, which were mobilised for the invasion.
“The method by which Russia has been conducting its operations, by largely driving down single track roads and attacking in column has meant that even with a large numerical advantage in some locations they have been held back by smaller number of Ukrainian units acting in a far smarter way, utilising their advantage, being able to attack with some degree of surprise,” said one official.
Mr Putin launched his invasion on February 24, with relatively lightly-armoured airborne forces swiftly seeking to seize Hostomel Airport, near Kyiv, but they were “quite badly chewed up,” he added.
The leading Russian fighting troops had suffered the “psychological impact” of being defeated in objectives in early battles, hitting their morale and their “confidence” in their commanders, the official explained.
More than 29 out of some 125 Russian tactical battalion groups, each of around 800 soldiers, are believed to have been so badly damaged that they are having to be reconstructed,
Tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and some artillery were ditched as Russian troops retreated from Kyiv. “Some of it is unclear as to why it has been abandoned, some of these vehicles are still usable,” said the official.
“There is something around the collapse in morale and the collapse of the will to fight.
“We have seen some degree of breakdown of discipline which has led to them fleeing rather than perhaps retiring back over the Belarusan border in good order.”
The battlefield around Kyiv was not defined by a front line and forward line of Russian troops, but was more “fluid and diffuse” which had allowed Ukrainian forces to strike in depth and often with surprise against Mr Putin’s forces who may have felt they were in relatively safe rear areas.
The Ukrainian forces also used weapons supplied by the West to achieve “remarkable success in depth”, for example when Kherson airport was attacked destroying many Russsian helicopters, which is believed to have led to “a lack of confidence” for Russian units.
