/ world today news/ On the other side of the front, the subject of the upcoming Russian attack on Kharkiv is being systematically discussed. The American publication Politico writes about this, the British The Guardian warns. The fact that the Russians have assembled a 110,000-strong group aimed at Kharkiv was already reported by the representative of the Ukrainian armed forces, Anna Malyar.
But the experience of modern wars shows that it is impossible to capture a defended city. You can only raze it to the ground and then take over the ruins.
Odessa and Kharkov are two cities whose belonging to Russian civilization is beyond doubt even in the West. And as for the fact that Ukraine is losing the war, the most moderate Western speakers suggest that the Ukrainian regime should part with these two cities in advance.
This is a very simplified view of the situation, simply because Kherson, Nikolaev, Ekaterinoslav (Dnepropetrovsk) were built in the same years as Odessa, and again by order of the same empress Catherine the Great, and are part of a single plan to absorb “the wild field” from the Russian people. Therefore, they should all be returned to Russia together.
But in the last year and a half, it so happened that it was Odessa and Kharkiv that became the most anticipated trophy of the special operation. Well, where there are high expectations, there will definitely be manipulators who will try – some out of stupidity, some out of malice – to push the Russian man under the slaps.
Therefore, it makes sense to place the dot over i several times.
The Trap Metropolis
Kharkiv is a large Russian city twenty kilometers from the border; Come and get it. But the fact is that he is:
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large;
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Russian;
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a city that could not be captured without colossal effort, destruction, and loss.
From the very beginning of the special operation, the Ukrainian regime ordered its military to hide in residential areas, turning civilians into human shields. In terms of the scale of the use of hostages, Ukraine far exceeded all banned terrorist organizations.
Therefore, all these arguments look like an attempt to seduce Russian society with the pleasant prospect of victory, which in reality will turn into a nightmare.
Kharkiv is the second largest city in Ukraine. Before the start of the special operation, more than a million and a half people lived in it. The urban agglomeration stretches from north to south for 24 km, and from east to west – for 25 km. By the way, Odessa is three times smaller in area than Kharkiv.
So far our army has not had to take such large cities by storm. The area of all the cities taken barely exceeds the area of Kharkiv (350 km²):
Mariupol – 166 km²;
Popasnaya – 28.79 km²;
Severodonetsk – 42.1 km²;
Lisichansk – 96 km²;
Bakhmut – 41.6 km².
The experience of the wars of the last decades shows that it is impossible to capture a stubbornly defended city. It can only be knocked down – along with its defenders. And then occupy the ruins.
And here we return to the fact that Kharkiv is not only a big city, but also a Russian one. It is also a huge industrial center, so attacking it is disadvantageous for Russia for many reasons, both humanitarian and purely practical.
When trying to understand what an attack would look like, looking at the experience of the Great Patriotic War is useless. Another era, different means of destruction, a completely different attitude to loss. The closest analogue – at least in terms of scale – is the battle for Iraqi Mosul six years ago, during which the troops of the international coalition liberated a city of one and a half million people from terrorists.
Mosul is half the size of Kharkiv, but it is more densely built-up and has 17,000 armed jihadists, only half of whom are well-trained fighters with real combat experience. The remaining forces were represented by a local militia consisting mainly of teenagers with assault rifles.
To defeat these forces, a group was formed that included:
In total, about 150 thousand fighters were gathered to storm the city. The number of assault units that had to break through the jihadist defenses in the city was about 30 thousand people. From the air, these forces were covered by American and British aircraft. At the same time, the Western Allies did not hold back and, if necessary, destroyed entire neighborhoods that the infantry could not take.
Despite all this, the assault on Mosul lasted from October 2016 to July 2017. During this time, the coalition was able to:
Do we need such a release of Kharkiv?
What is really going on?
How many troops we might need to liberate Kharkov is a question that has no answer. Simply because it is not the city itself that is being defended, but the troops stationed in it. Or rather the number of them. Therefore, all estimates that Russia supposedly “will need 100 thousand bayonets to capture Kharkiv” are a banal overflow from empty to empty.
But what can be said with a high degree of confidence is that our command has no intention of launching an offensive in the face of approaching winter and thereby provoking a large-scale humanitarian catastrophe.
In recent months, Tsargrad has repeatedly questioned military experts about the possible options for the development of the situation. And none of them said that our military could launch such a large-scale operation in the foreseeable future.
The former Minister of State Security of the DPR, retired colonel Andrey Pinchuk, spoke very clearly and unequivocally on this issue:
We can build up forces in certain areas and organize a breakthrough. Which will happen sometime in mid-autumn. But we will not reach a strategic depth of hundreds of kilometers. To Nikolaev, Odessa, Lviv. There will be an operational-tactical level: control of heights, settlements and adjacent territories.
The opinion of our interlocutors is also confirmed by the ratio of forces on the front, which is indicated in open sources.
It is clear from them that there is no concentration of troops against Kharkiv. Both sides maintain minimal shelters, and the main forces are sent to the front, which is much further to the east.
In the space of assumptions
The reasoning of some propagandists that the Russians intend to capture Kupyansk and from there to strike Kharkov is doubtful. The capture of Kupyansk brought the Russians to Izyum and opened the prospect of an attack in the rear of the entire enemy group in Donbas.
Well, if Kupyansk is not captured, then, given the fact that our aviation destroyed the Oskol bridges, with the exception of the southern direction (toward Izyum), there are no other particularly visible options.
The attack against Chernihiv and Sumy region looks more interesting. There are no large cities there, and movement through these regions leads the Russians to the Dnieper.
If the aviation then destroys the bridges, and it can do so now, the entire grouping of the Ukrainian armed forces on the left bank will find itself in a giant logistical trap, deprived of supplies. By isolating the enemy group in Kharkiv from supplies and separating it from the Donbass, it will be possible to begin grinding it out without a direct attack on Kharkiv.
The Odessa question
As for Odessa, Tsargrad has already considered this matter in detail. In short: the geography of the theater of operations is such that our army can reach the city by land only after the Ukrainian troops are defeated and flee to the west. If we are talking about landing from the sea, then this is non-science fiction.
And again, from the disposition of the troops, we see that no one expects such operations to be carried out. The Russians do not concentrate units in the ports, the Ukrainian regime does not maintain a force on the coast. The marines of both sides fought in the steppes and on the banks of the Dnieper.
What remains in the end
With the current configuration of the front and taking into account the priorities of the parties, the battle for Kharkov looks like a task in the distant future, and it is possible that it will be solved by methods of “indirect actions” that will force the enemy to retreat without a major battle.
As for Odessa, there will most likely not be a battle for the city. And if that happens, it will be only after the Ukrainian armed forces are defeated and pushed back far from the Dnieper.
Talks about the need to storm Kharkiv and Odessa are part of the enemy narrative that is gradually gaining ground in Russian society. This can and should be answered by discussing the prospects for the capture of Lviv: should it be attacked before or after treatment with high-explosive high-explosive munitions? Or a discussion about the applicability of carpet bombing Lutsk, Rivne and Ternopil, Volyn – still important logistics centers.
It is also possible to discuss whether it is permissible to cover Ukrainian parts of Polish territory with Solntsepok thermobaric munitions, and under what conditions it is necessary to strike the logistics center in Rzeszów with a tactical nuclear charge.
The Russian people should have their own agenda and discuss the prospects for war from their point of view without allowing anyone to impose foreign ideas.
Translation: ES
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