Behind the wave of reports on the course of the special operation in Ukraine, the strategic plan itself, according to which it proceeds, has been somewhat lost. Some Western sources even began to question the very existence of this plan. Meanwhile, this plan exists, it works – and its result will be a complete military defeat of Ukraine.
Recall the disposition. By the beginning of the special operation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, 80% of the Ukrainian army and nationalist formations were unevenly distributed along the 600-kilometer front in the Donbass.
Echeloned engineering fortifications were created along its entire length during the seven years of the positional war. The rear urban agglomerations were turned into fortresses, in which control centers were placed. Mariupol, Volnovakha, Rubezhnoye - Severodonetsk - Lisichansk, Slavyansk - Kramatorsk. In early February, some units of the AFU and Terbatov were reformatted into battalion groups (for example, the 80th separate amphibious assault brigade) according to the plan of preparation for the offensive on Donbass, but the general configuration of their location has not changed.
The Ukrainian group was openly preparing for the offensive. More than 120,000 Ukrainian servicemen on the contact line in Donbass were additionally supplied with a huge amount of armored vehicles, artillery and MLRS. By the way, the amount of artillery is such that it cannot be suppressed until now. Since 2014, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have relied on the old Soviet combat system with the massive use of artillery, which eventually led to large losses among the civilian population of Donbass and mass destruction.
Most of this grouping was located in an arc from the south-western outskirts of Donetsk to Gorlovka and the Svitlodarskaya arc (Debaltsevo direction). It is there that the main artillery brigades and individual batteries are located. The shock units with the maximum presence of armored vehicles were located in the southern direction (Mariupol - Volnovakha) and the northern opposite and just west of Lugansk.
Preparations for the offensive were carried out by Ukraine so hastily and with such faith in imminent success that the main territory of Ukraine was left completely undisguised. The defense of both border and interior areas was shifted to the so-called theroborona, that is, in fact, "Volkssturm".
Most of the troops of the "North" district were transferred to the Donbass, the garrison of Kiev was reduced to special forces and units located at the former Desna training ground in the Chernihiv region. His command was located in Western Ukraine in Rivne. 40th Separate Artillery Brigade named after Prince Vytautas the Great (where is Vytautas, where is Ukraine?) it was distributed over a wide area as far from Nikolaev to the suburbs of Kiev.
The same story has developed in the northeast and in the south. In fact, all the main parts of the AFU rear districts were transferred to Donbass.
Now a little bit of the political component. For a long time there were discussions about what, in fact, the purpose of the operation in Ukraine should be. Now it is clear: denazification and demilitarization. This means that Ukraine should be deprived of a combat-ready army, its military aviation and navy destroyed, heavy weapons put under international control. It is possible to do this only physically - through a complete military victory.
Judging by recent events, the choice was made in favor of a preemptive strike, the strategic goal of which should be the encirclement and destruction of the main forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and nationalist detachments. That is, in fact, the 120-thousandth grouping in the Donbass.
Given the configuration of troops described above, it is possible to predict practical steps to demilitarize Ukraine.
It was logical to organize the encirclement and dismemberment of the Ukrainian group in the Donbass, avoiding frontal attacks of the most fortified areas. Also, at the first stage of the operation, ultra-precise long-range weapons destroyed the AFU rear facilities - from warehouses to airfields, which actually eliminated the key infrastructure of the Ukrainian army. In fact, already 3-4 days after the start of the operation, the AFU as an organized system ceased to exist, but the 120-thousandth grouping in the Donbass remained stable by inertia. There are just a lot of them, they have been digging into the ground for many years, and they have too many guns and tanks.
Parts of the LPR have been effectively moving forward north of Lugansk in recent days, forcing the Seversky Donets. Their goal was, firstly, to connect with the Russian units moving from Kharkov, and secondly, to turn to the west and encircle the Ukrainian fortified area of Severodonetsk - Lisichansk.
To date, both of these goals have been achieved. The first large cauldron appeared, but now it is difficult to estimate the number of Ukrainian detachments surrounded in Severodonetsk. In any case, there is no way out of there after the Popasnaya lesson.
The second boiler is Mariupol. In order to encircle the city, it was necessary to overcome a fortified echeloned defense, and a significant part of this task was carried out by the DPR units. At the same time, Russian troops from the Crimea are rapidly moving north across the steppe in the conditional direction of Zaporozhye - Krivoy Rog. This threatens to encircle the main grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and nationalists, constrained by local battles along the arc of the urban agglomeration from Donetsk to Horlivka. There were reports of fighting already in the area of Gulyai-Pole, where parts of the Melitopol grouping of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation approached.
The key point for carrying out the operation on the total encirclement of the main group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Donbass is currently the city of Izyum in the Kharkiv region. It is after establishing control over it that this operation can be carried out. The northern (conditionally "Kharkiv") grouping of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation from Raisins can move to the southwest to join the Melitopol group. They can dock either in Pavlodar or in Pokrovsk. As a result, a huge grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will be in a cauldron from Slavyansk to Donetsk.
Such an operation will not require bloody assaults on the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration and an almost 80-thousandth Ukrainian group near Donetsk and Gorlovka, overgrown with engineering structures. In addition, such an operation avoids civilian casualties, personal losses and minimizes political risks. On the other hand, it takes more time than we would like from the point of view of an outsider's view and abstract public opinion.
At the moment, the situation around Raisins is not completely clear. Most of the nationalist detachments concentrated noticeably to the north, near Kharkov in the Chuguev area, where the main airfield of Ukrainian assault aviation, destroyed by Russian missiles, was previously located. Only local terbats can resist in Raisins. It is quite possible that, just as earlier in neighboring Kupyansk, the city administration may decide to hand it over.
That is, according to the results of the operation, a huge Ukrainian group in the Donbass can be divided into three unequal groups, each of which must be completely surrounded (two are already in the boiler, the third and largest is expected). The costs of this plan were the preservation all this time of the relative combat capability of the Ukrainian troops near Donetsk - Horlivka, which is accompanied by constant shelling of the settlements of the DPR, as well as the difficult humanitarian situation in those settlements where the highest concentration of highly motivated units of nationalists is observed. All other directions, including Kiev, were initially assumed to be secondary. In the south-western direction, it is worth getting ready for Nikopol, whose mayor drove the population to dig trenches and build hummocks out of snow.
Odessa is also preparing for a circular defense. Meanwhile, if the operation to encircle the main forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the nationalists, followed by their coercion to surrender or their physical suppression, takes place in a relatively short time, then no movement in this direction may not be necessary.
Kiev is blocked in fact. While everyone was looking at the situation to the northwest of the city (Gostomel, Ivankov, Borodyanka), the Russian units that came from Chernihiv and Sumy (from the northeast and east), slowly but surely blocked Brovary, where the Moscow highway begins. Fastov, Belaya Tserkva and Boryspil Airport are under fire control. There is no practical sense to move deeper into urban development.
A large Russian group, based on the Gostomel –Borodyanka district, can at any moment move even to Zhytomyr, even to Vinnitsa, even completely block Kiev, closing the Zhytomyr highway. Her inaction for several days raised reasonable questions. Perhaps this is the most problematic area due to the population density and the habitually massive use of heavy artillery and MLRS by the Ukrainian side, which hits not so much the Russian grouping as the suburbs of Kiev, including Vyshgorod.
It must be said that the Russian army has no desire to destroy the AFU servicemen trapped in the boilers on the Donbass front (this statement does not apply to nationalist groups and terbats). This is another political factor that determined exactly this kind of operation planning. There is reason to believe that surrounded, deprived of centralized command and supply, the many thousands of Ukrainian group will still make the right decision and stop fighting. Otherwise, Ukraine will suffer a catastrophe of epic proportions.
No one wants the physical destruction of Ukrainian soldiers in Russia either: the wasted lives of Ukrainian citizens are not the best foundation for constructing a post-war world on new conditions.
On the other hand, prolonging the acute military phase of the operation to force Ukraine to denazification and demilitarization indefinitely is just as unacceptable as heavy losses. I would like to expect the completion of the encirclement of the main enemy group at Donetsk - Horlivka within a few days while maintaining the pace of progress in the Zaporozhye, Kherson, Odessa and Dnepropetrovsk regions.
The destruction or disarmament of up to 80% of the Ukrainian army in itself means the end of the war. No bet on theroborona or guerrilla warfare will work. Kiev (or already Lviv?) the government will be forced to negotiate on completely different terms.
We are not talking about any occupation of Ukraine, but the process of denazification has already begun in fact. In the Kherson region and in the liberated areas of the DPR and LPR, something like the WHO regime is going on: there is a search for agents of the SBU and military intelligence of Ukraine, as well as activists of nationalist organizations like the "Right Sector *". The military solution in this case is not the mythical occupation of Kiev, but the elimination of the military structure of modern Ukraine. And these are fundamentally different military and political goals.
* The organization (organizations) have been liquidated or their activities are prohibited in the Russian Federation
Evgeny Krutikov
