On Thursday evening, the UK Ministry of Defense will share a new intelligence report on the war in Ukraine. There they claimed that Russia’s progress would stop even further.
GAME: This is an image of a tank destroyed after the battle in Brovary, which is located north of the capital Kyiv. Photo: Felipe Dana / AP / NTB
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– Due to strong opposition from Ukraine, Russia used a larger proportion of its deployed troops to besiege key cities. This will reduce the number of troops available to continue progress, and will further slow down the Russian advance, wrote the Ministry of Defense in a statement.
They also wrote that Russia had met with protesters in the occupied cities of Kherson, Melitopol and Berdyansk so far this week. They wrote that there were reports that 400 protesters had been detained by Russian forces in the Kherson area on Wednesday.
Three choices
Recently, General and former Chief of Defense Sverre Diesen told Dagbladet that it appears Russia is stuck – especially in northern Ukraine. He believes Vladimir Putin has three options.
– Currently, Russia’s biggest challenge is to take control of big cities, and then there are three possible strategies:
- they could encircle and isolate them to starve them and create a humanitarian catastrophe that would force Ukraine to surrender as they had tried in Mariupol.
- they were able to destroy them systematically with the help of air strikes, missiles and artillery as they had partially done in Kharkiv and as they had done with Grozny during the war in Chechnya.
- they can try to subdue them by land force by fighting from quarter to quarter, street to street.
– The last alternative they will definitely avoid in the long run, this is a very time-consuming, difficult and loss-making form of war that prioritizes defense over attack, Diesen told Dagbladet.
City War
He said the three procedures would have a huge impact in the form of loss of life and material losses.
He further said that Russia knows very well how urban warfare works as they experienced in the battle of Stalingrad during World War II. Diesen describes urban warfare as very demanding.
– I think Putin is willing to besiege and isolate cities, and I think he is willing to destroy them. But I’m not sure if he’s willing to destroy cities and then move in with ground troops and clear them quarter by quarter.
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