The battle of Kharkiv risks being the bloodiest since Russian aggression began but also the one in which Putin could run aground. Some data: Kharkiv before the war had almost 1.5 million inhabitants, therefore more than Milan, and is the second largest city in Ukraine. It is located in the North-East of the country, about forty kilometers from the border with the Russian Federation. It suffered heavy bombing and at the beginning of the invasion the fighting reached the gates of the city.
Kharkiv, Putin “wants to make it uninhabitable”
According to The Economist, with the intense air attacks, Russia wants to transform Kharkiv into a “grey zone”, making it uninhabitable for the civilian population, but a large-scale military operation to conquer it would be very complex. Local sources also support this in light of the previous failure in 2022. “There is a strong possibility that they won’t be able to make it,” Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a military expert and former defense minister, told the weekly. “They will not be able to take Kharkiv, but to destroy it, perhaps,” warned Denys Yaroslavsky, one of the city’s military commanders.
Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky explained: «Every day and every night Kharkiv is subject to atrocious Russian attacks. We are making every effort to provide better protection. Our allies can provide air defense assistance and put pressure on Russia.”
The Economist’s analysis argues that “a military operation to capture Kharkiv would be an extremely difficult task for Russia. To capture the city it will be necessary to break through the Ukrainian defenses and its encirclement, which Russia is nowhere near capable of doing; establish air superiority, which is not a given; and win a bloody urban campaign.”
The new offensive
Russia could launch a new counteroffensive in late May or early June, probably targeting Kharkiv, says Andriy Yermak, head of Ukraine’s presidential office. Russian sources even speak of 300 thousand men ready to take the city, but even just from a logistical point of view it would be an operation full of unknowns, while in the meantime a new type of guided bomb called UMPB D-30 is being used which ensures similar maneuverability to that of a cruise missile and which is terrorizing the population.
One fact remains: it took Russia 10 months and 80 thousand men to take Bakhmut, a city ten times smaller than Kharkiv. Therefore, even 300 thousand risk being insufficient. Furthermore, the Ukrainians had time to prepare the defensive lines.
To encircle the city, the Russians need to have control of a larger area west of the Oskil River but they have not achieved this objective, while on the southern side there are still problems. In summary: according to the American think tank ISW, given the difficulty of taking a city as large as Kharkiv, it cannot be ruled out that the Russians will instead aim for an offensive in the western region of Donetsk between May and June. In other words: floating the idea that the objective is Kharkiv could simply be a diversion to force the Ukrainians to disperse their forces.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Read the full article at
The messenger
. The diversionary hypothesis: “He wants to make it uninhabitable”){kind=link}