NATO’s secretary general said on Wednesday that “it would be very dangerous to underestimate Russia”. Several observers believe that Moscow is preparing a rise in power in Ukraine.
With nearly a month to go before the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine, are we witnessing a comeback from Russia? Moscow claims to have achieved a victory last week, claiming the capture of the city of Soledar, in eastern Ukraine, located near that of Bakhmout which the Russians have been trying to seize for months. A potential take which made Vladimir Putin say on Sunday that his country was in “a positive dynamic” on the front.
While Moscow has suffered military failures for several months, such as that of its withdrawal from Kherson, “it would be very dangerous to underestimate Russia”, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told the World Economic Forum on Wednesday. of Davos, Switzerland.
“Vladimir Putin is planning new offensives and he is ready to sacrifice his youth. He has mobilized more than 200,000 fighters and he is in the process of acquiring weapons from authoritarian regimes like Iran,” he warned.
“Time is running out,” insisted the head of the military alliance, asking for more support from Western countries for Ukraine.
A new strategic action expected
Several observers indeed anticipate a new rise in power of Russia, without being able to date it precisely. For the Institute for the study of war (ISW), an American think tank, “the Kremlin is probably preparing to carry out, over the next six months, a decisive strategic action intended to regain the initiative and put an end to Ukraine’s current string of operational successes”.
The ISW reports in a note from January 15 of “emerging evidence” showing that the Russian president is “altering fundamental aspects of the Russian approach to war by undertaking several new lines of effort”.
The think tank reports, for example, that “the Russian military is keeping personnel mobilized for future use – a departure from the Kremlin’s initial approach of rushing untrained soldiers to the front line in the fall of 2022” .
The French Minister for the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, also planned for the beginning of January on LCI a “rather ground counter-attack” on a “February-March” horizon, relying on the forces mobilized in September.
“It is clear that we are going to go into a moment of massification, where the Russians will throw all their forces into the battle”, affirmed the minister, adding that “the first quarter of 2023 will be quite decisive”.
Towards a second mobilization?
For the Ukrainian authorities, this “massification” could be based on a new wave of mobilization in Russia, as explained by the deputy head of Ukrainian intelligence Vadym Skibitsky in the Guardian last week. The first “partial mobilization” was announced by Vladimir Putin in September and resulted in the enrollment of 300,000 people, according to Russia.
This thesis is also considered by the British Ministry of Defence. On January 15, in his daily bulletin on the situation in Ukraine, he considered “quite possible that the Russian leaders hope that a modification of the age criteria for conscription could strengthen the manpower available to fight in Ukraine while appearing less alarming for the population than the announcement of a new round of the unpopular process of ‘partial mobilization'”.
Raising the maximum age for compulsory military service from 27 to 30 years has for example been mentioned in Russia, according to the ministry.
