On Tuesday, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that their forces must “drastically reduce” their attacks towards the capital Kyiv and Chernihiv in the north.
In retrospect, several heads of state, including US President Joe Biden, have been waiting to see if the Russians actually keep their word.
At the same time, Ukrainian intelligence believes that Russia’s allegations are a diversionary maneuver. The Pentagon also believes that Russia is only using this as an opportunity to regroup its forces, and that Kyiv is therefore still threatened.
General and Norway’s former chief of defense, Sverre Diesen, is open to the fact that it may be right, even though he thinks he sees signs of something else.
– It may very well be true that this is something the Russians say because they need to regroup, resupply and reorganize, because they do so without a doubt. On the other hand, then we should also have seen a number of other things.
Also read: Russia promises downscaling: – Can be a fog
– ANALYZING: Sverre Diesen, general and former Norwegian Chief of Defense. Photo: Frode Sunde / TV 2
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The Russians can say that to cover up
Diesen points out that the Russians should then have seen signs of the regrouping, for example by displacement columns and reinforcements in the direction of the Russian forces.
– But neither does it happen, nor do we see that they have any particular progress with the offensive that they have previously announced that they would prioritize, namely in Eastern Ukraine. So it is obvious to start asking if this is something the Russians are saying simply to cover up the fact that they are about to stagnate completely on all fronts in Ukraine.
– What is about to happen then?
– Then there is good reason to say that Russia has suffered a violent political defeat. For the political defeat is even greater than the military. And it has to do with the fact that the Russians have to win militarily to achieve what they want politically.
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Disen points out that Ukraine is not dependent on winning militarily, but must only prevent the Russians from doing so, so that they can win politically themselves.
– And that means that if that is how one can begin to get a suspicion of at least, even if it is too early to draw conclusions, then it will be a humiliation of the Russian army that we must go far back in time for to find the like.
The former defense chief is in no doubt that Russia would have gone to take control of Kyiv, if they had the opportunity. He points out that it is the capital of Ukraine, with the political center of gravity and where President Volodymyr Zelensky and his government are located.
– So the danger is by no means over. But even though it is too early to say that this is a Russian attempt to cover up the fact that they can no longer do it, it is at least tempting to start seeing it as an opportunity.
– Russian President Vladimir Putin and his defense ministry say they are scaling down the war in Kyiv and Chernihiv. Photo: SERGEI KARPUKHIN
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Seeing signals of Russian trouble
Furthermore, Diesen points to several signs that Russia is in fact in real trouble, in that they have shown in the negotiations with Ukraine in Istanbul that they are in the process of signaling that they are willing to refrain from both:
- The demand for so-called denazification, ie in reality removing Zelensky and his government.
- The demand for demilitarization, that is, to disarm Ukraine completely.
- And they are willing to join in discussing Ukraine’s EU membership.
– All these are positions that they can hardly go back to without having a greatly strengthened military progress again, and if it is then the case that they can not go back on this, then we can go a long way to say that the Russians have already failed capital , politically speaking.
When asked how he envisions the end of the war, Diesen answers that it looks darker and darker for Russia.
– As I said, it is too early to say how this will end with any particular security, but it will at least be harder and harder to see that the Russians will be able to get out of this in some way that is close to what they had imagined, they obviously will not be able to do that.
– And it is starting to get harder and harder to see that they will get out of this without something that in reality is a defeat and a humiliation of first and foremost Putin, but also the Russian army.
– Want to know more about it in the next few days
Diesen’s analysis of what the next days of the war will look like is that the Russians will still be stuck in several places, and that they will not be able to renew their attacking positions anywhere. Nor in Eastern Ukraine, as they have said they put in the most effort.
– And then the question is what kind of rhetoric they will fall into to explain it. And then it will also be important to see how they will wage the war on the front where they still have an advantage, namely in terms of the ability to bomb with planes, missiles and artillery in the big cities where they are still on firing range, to say it like that.
At the same time, Diesen asks himself, similar to chief researcher at the Defense Research Institute (FFI), Tor Bukkvoll, on how Putin might wrap up a defeat in Ukraine for his own population.
– Because he has control of the propaganda apparatus and the narrative as we say, if he can present what the Russians had to achieve militarily and in negotiations, as a kind of victory, we will know more about that in the next few days.
– Tor Bukkvoll, chief researcher at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment (FFI). Photo: Ole Berg-Rusten
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Bukkvoll told TV 2 on Tuesday that he thinks Putin is simply dependent on a victory, and that the fact that Russia has tightened its space among the media in the country, may have something to say here.
– Now he has the advantage, then, in that there is no more freedom of the press, that he can sell the victory that comes and wrap it up as if it appears as a victory. He can wrap up a lot as a victory, but still there are limits to how far it goes, said Bukkvoll.
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