By RUBEN BAUER NAVEIRA*
Ukraine and the Middle East appear to be converging towards a “married” outcome
The two theaters of war at the moment, Ukraine and the Middle East, appear to be converging towards a “married” outcome. In order to reach this conclusion, we will initially consider them separately.
Ucrania
In recent weeks, Ukraine had been carrying out a move considered strange by military analysts. Since last year, and even more so after the approval of the new and draconian law on forced mobilizations, the new soldiers were not being allocated to replace the missing contingents in the brigades fighting in Donbass, as would be expected since the Ukrainian defense in Donbass it is crumbling under the intensity of Russian attacks. Instead, the newly mobilized were going to form new units, far from the front line.
Four days ago, the mystery was solved: Ukraine began a significant ground offensive against Russian territory, in region from Kursk.
The tactic is the same as the offensive that retook Izyum and Lyman in the Kharkov region, in September and October 2022. Advanced detachments seek to penetrate Russian territory as quickly and deeply as possible, taking advantage of the Russian aversion to casualties among its troops, or that is, inducing the Russians to withdraw. Only then does the Ukrainian army itself actually occupy the territory, consolidating its gains, especially in those areas in which the vanguards identified a scarce presence of Russian defenses.
Unlike the offensive in Kharkov in 2022, this time the Ukrainians are much more subject to Russian artillery, drones and aviation, suffering much heavier casualties — nothing, however, that prevents Kiev from throwing more and more troops into this offensive, in what It seems to be an “all or nothing” strategy.
It is not yet clear what Ukraine's ultimate objective is with this offensive, whether it would be the nuclear power plant in the city of Kursk, whether it would be the measuring station for the gas pipeline that supplies Hungary and Slovakia in the city of Sudzha, whether it would be to induce the Russians to move its troops towards Kursk, thus unguarding other fronts (such as the defense of the Energodar mega nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia), or whether it would be something else.
However, another possible “goal” that is apparently going unnoticed has already been achieved — there will be no more peace negotiations anytime soon. To say the Russians are furious is an understatement.
What the Ukrainians have already achieved with this offensive is to take the Russians out of their comfort zone. The Russians had been following a strategy of wearing down the enemy in a war of attrition, gradually “demilitarizing” Ukraine (it is estimated that, throughout the month of July, Ukrainian casualties were around two thousand soldiers per day, which largest volume since the beginning of the war), prioritizing this demilitarization over the conquest of territories, with time running in their favor.
The only factor that could lead the Russians to lose the war would be a loss of internal support given to the government by the Russian population. What the Ukrainians have achieved so far with their offensive, much more than ten or twenty kilometers of conquered territory, is to place under their yoke around a dozen Russian villages, with their respective inhabitants.
Furthermore, border troops were captured, made up not of professional soldiers or volunteers, but of eighteen-year-old recruits carrying out mandatory military service. Some degree of atrocity against these civilians and prisoners is to be expected, and not only due to the brutality inherent to the war, but due to deliberate planning, because this will wear down the Russian government in front of its population (already on the first day of the offensive an ambulance, which it is not something that can be confused, it was attacked by a drone, causing the death of the driver and a paramedic). From now on, the Russians can be expected to react with disproportionate force.
From a strictly military perspective this offensive makes no sense — not just because it provokes the Russians inconsequentially, but mainly because Ukrainian defenses in the Donbass are collapsing, and that is where these soldiers would be most needed, not in an offensive in Kursk against a great Russian superiority in artillery and aviation. At a time when Ukraine is most suffering from a shortage of soldiers, does it waste the few it still has? There's no point in that.
So, the explanation cannot be military, it needs to be political. Ukraine would apparently be (and this is an assumption on our part) committing intentional suicide. Instead of peace negotiations, even if unfavorable, that would lead to the preservation of a large part of Ukraine as a sovereign country, the path to total defeat seems to be being taken.
The leaders in the Ukrainian leadership are aware that, after a negotiated peace, they will certainly lose power, if they do not lose their freedom or their lives. So, for them an “all or nothing” strategy may make sense. But, for Washington, an unfavorable peace would be infinitely “less worse” than a total defeat of Ukraine.
Symptomatically, Kiev did not warn Washington in advance about the offensive in Kursk (and there is no reason to doubt this, since the US would certainly oppose it). To make matters worse, Western weapons are being used by the Ukrainians in an offensive against Russian territory, something that the Russians will not let go of cheaply. If Moscow was already supplying Iran with state-of-the-art defensive weapons (radars, etc.), from now on Tehran (and Hezbollah, and the Houthis...) will be able to safely count on the supply of offensive weapons (hypersonic missiles, hello? ).
Kiev's strategy with this offensive could therefore be to force the Americans, against their will, to take on the defense of Ukraine themselves, entering into direct confrontation with Russia.
Another possibility would be that the Ukrainians are trying to convince Western governments — especially a possible future Donald Trump government in the USA — that Russia can be defeated, as long as Vladimir Putin's inability to protect Russian citizens comes to an end. made clear to the Russian population, and that, in this sense, Western financial and military aid to Ukraine could not be reduced. This line of reasoning, however, necessarily requires the (doubtful) success in the medium-long term of the offensive on Russian territory.
Middle East
As in the Ukrainian case, Washington was not previously informed of the assassination in Tehran of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, because it would certainly have opposed it, knowing that it would force the Iranians to react militarily against Israel.
However, contrary to what the hegemonic media preaches (because the West wants it to happen), there are no signs that the Iranian attack on Israel is imminent. It appears that Iran is playing on Israeli exasperation over the “imminent” attack that never comes. As a result, with each passing day internal pressure increases in Israel to carry out a preventive attack against Iran.
If this happens, Iran will achieve two things: (i) recognition by the rest of the world (and especially by the entire Arab world) that Israel is the aggressor and Iran the victim; and (ii) the freedom to dump all of its missiles on Israel.
The United States is interested in the Iranian attack being moderate, to the point that Israel can choose not to react to it. An escalation is not in the US's interest, because they will be forced to enter directly into the war on the side of Israel. An Israeli preemptive strike on Iran, however, will make a full-scale war inevitable. By making successive public statements that “Israel will be punished” and, at the same time, by delaying the punitive attack, Iran blocks the Israeli government and impels it to take the initiative.
Confluence
Not even the most conspiracy theory-loving mind could imagine that, in the two great theaters of war of the moment, the United States would find itself (if our assumptions here are correct) increasingly hostage to its proxies who act willfully, recklessly and beyond any control, and at the same time, in a practically synchronized way.
In an inversion of the logic of “proxy” war (proxy war), are now the proxies who in practice seek to force the “lord” to fight for them — and this on the eve of the US presidential elections. There will be a shortage of black stripe medicine in drugstores in Washington…
*Ruben Bauer Naveira is a political activist. Book author A New Utopia for Brazil: Three guides to get out of chaos (available at http://www.brasilutopia.com.br/).
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