In one of the very few lightning campaigns in the almost three-year-old Russo-Ukraine War, Ukrainian forces in 2023 cleared the right bank of the Dnipro River of Russian troops in the country's southern Zaporizhzhia region. A later effort to clear the left bank toward Melitopol and Ukraine's Black Sea coast sputtered out with little to show but big losses. Nevertheless, the length of the river between the cities of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson has been relatively quiet for over a year, allowing Kyiv to better husband its forces.
Is that about to be undone?
A Russian counter-counteroffensive in Zaporizhzhia Oblast could begin "any day," according to a statement made Monday by Vladyslav Voloshyn, Ukrainian military's Southern Command spokesperson. The attack "could begin in the near future, we're not even talking about weeks, we're expecting it to happen any day."
Meanwhile, the New York Times reported on Sunday that Moscow has "assembled a force of 50,000 soldiers, including North Korean troops, as it prepares to begin an assault aimed at reclaiming territory seized by Ukraine in the Kursk region of Russia."
With the exceptions of Russia's ill-fated initial attempt at quickly seizing most of Ukraine in early 2022 and Ukraine's longer-lasting 2023 counteroffensives, forward movement in Putin's stupid war has been slow, costly, and bloody.
Still, this throw of the dice makes political sense.
If you're Vladimir Putin and you had a phone call last week with the incoming president of the United States who pointedly reminded you "of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe," you might be thinking very hard right now about seizing as much land as you can, as quickly as you can. Unlike Presidentish Joe Biden, whose weakness and foolishness (and certain grift) hamstrung Western aid to Ukraine, Trump seems serious about using whatever carrots and sticks are available to get both sides to negotiate peace.
If peace talks — purely speculative at this point — were accompanied by a ceasefire in place, Putin would want those lines to be as far west as possible, just as Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would want them farther east.
So whether or not a Russian Zaporizhzhia counter-counteroffensive is actually in the works, it certainly makes sense. At the very least, the threat to Ukraine's South could prove beneficial to Moscow retaking Russian land in Kursk, occupied by Ukraine since August.
As I've written since the beginning of this war, time favors Moscow. Russia has reserves of men and material that Ukraine can't match, and perhaps more importantly, the West is slow to rouse and also suffers from Foreign Policy Attention Deficit Disorder. (I've been calling it "a short attention span" all this time, and I'm filled with writer's shame for not having come up with FPADD much sooner!)
But peace makes sense for Russia, too. Inflation has gotten so bad that the central bank has raised interest rates to 20%, with more hikes expected in 2025. Butter — I'm not making this up — is now a luxury item kept behind lock and key like laundry detergent at a San Francisco Walgreens.
Before peace, however, Putin wants and will get more war.
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