A Large-Scale Strike: President Vladimir V.Putin would take “the safest possible option” and point to the territory Russia has already seized in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine to declare a “preliminary victory.” Professor Dzutsati said that declaring a mass mobilization or an all-out war could prove deeply unpopular among Russians. “This is a question that everybody is asking,” Valery Dzutsati, a visiting assistant professor at the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at the University of Kansas, said on Wednesday, adding that the “short answer is nobody knows what is going to happen on May 9.” Putin’s intent on Victory Day is only growing more acute. Still, Russia’s hierarchy also denied for months that it had intended to invade Ukraine, only to do exactly that on Feb. Putin would declare war on May 9, calling it “nonsense,” and Russia analysts noted that announcing a military draft could provoke a domestic backlash.
However, the Kremlin on Wednesday denied that Mr. Such a declaration would present a new challenge to war-battered Ukraine, as well as to Washington and its NATO allies as they try to counter Russian aggression without entangling themselves directly in the conflict. Putin will use the event, when he traditionally presides over a parade and gives a militaristic speech, to lash out at Russia’s perceived enemies and expand the scope of the conflict. Putin may see the need to jolt the West with a new escalation. Now, however, with Russia about to be smacked with a European Union oil embargo, and with Victory Day just five days away, Mr. Putin the swift victory he originally appeared to have anticipated, including the initial goal of decapitating the government in Kyiv. While Russia has inflicted death and destruction across Ukraine and made some progress in the east and the south over the past 10 weeks, stiff Ukrainian resistance, heavy weapons supplied by the West and Russian military incompetence have denied Mr. Putin may exploit it as a grandiose stage to intensify attacks and mobilize his citizenry for all-out war. With the Russian military still struggling, Western officials and Ukraine’s traumatized residents are looking with increased alarm to Russia’s Victory Day holiday on May 9 - a celebration of the Soviet triumph over Nazi Germany - fearing that President Vladimir V.
0 kommentar(er)
