Tom Balmforth — Reuters Jan 14, 2022
Russia’s deployment of tens of thousands of troops to the north, east and south of Ukraine is fuelling fears in Kyiv and Western capitals that Moscow is planning a new attack. Russia denies any such plans.
Western military analysts have suggested Russia cannot keep such troops deployed where they are indefinitely for financial and logistical reasons and would need to pull them back by summer.
Estimates of the numbers of new Russian troops moved closer to Ukraine vary from 60,000 to around 100,000, with a U.S. intelligence document suggesting that number could be ramped up to 175,000. read more
U.S. officials have said Russia might attack Ukraine as early as this month when the ground will be harder, making it easier for tanks and other armour to move swiftly.
At talks this week with the United States and NATO, Russia has sought security guarantees to defuse the crisis.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday Moscow was not ready to wait forever for a response and that it wanted a detailed written response to every Russian proposal.
But what might a Russian attack look like and what could it seek to achieve?
“The current deployments are versatile. They keep Russia’s options open and therefore keep the defender guessing,” said Keir Giles, an Associate Fellow at Chatham House.
Here are some possible scenarios.
DONBASS ESCALATION
A pro-Russia rebel stands guard in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, Oct. 29, 2015. Click to enlarge
Heavily armed Russian-backed separatists have controlled a swath of eastern Ukraine since 2014 and continue to exchange fire with Ukrainian government forces despite a 2015 ceasefire that ended major hostilities.
The conflict in Donbass has killed 15,000 people, Kyiv says. Ukraine has long accused Russia of having regular troops in the region, something Moscow denies.
Russia has accused Kyiv of harbouring plans to retake the region by force, something Ukraine denies.
In such a febrile atmosphere, the risk of a misunderstanding or unplanned escalation is greater, and Russia could use such an incident as a casus belli.
A source familiar with the Russian Defence Ministry’s thinking said this was the most likely scenario if Moscow decided to attack, but that he was unaware of any such decision. Kyiv might also be provoked into attacking by the separatists who could then ask Russia to send troops to help, he said.
Russian forces could expand the fighting in Donbass to draw Ukraine into a conventional conflict, said Neil Melvin, director of International Security Studies at the RUSI think-tank in London. He said Moscow could try to seize Ukrainian coastal areas on the Sea of Azov, creating a land bridge from the Russian city of Rostov through Donbass to Crimea, adding: “That would put the Ukrainian government under a lot of pressure.”
ASSAULT FROM CRIMEA
Russia has brought in new forces to Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Moscow could launch an attack on Ukraine from Crimea and seize territory up to the Dnieper River that could serve as a natural barrier against any Ukrainian counter-offensive, said Konrad Muzyka, director of the Poland-based Rochan consultancy.
The operation could begin with artillery, missile and air strikes on Ukrainian units in the south, and special forces units might seize bridges and railway junctions, allowing troops and tanks to advance, he said. There are only two roads from Crimea that could be blocked or destroyed, a potential weakness, he said.
Forces would secure control of a canal that provided Crimea with fresh water supplies until Russia annexed the region and Ukraine stopped the flow, he said. read more
MULTI-FRONT ATTACK
A publicly available U.S. intelligence document said Russia could stage an invasion this month with up to 100 battalion tactical groups (BTGs) or some 175,000 troops. It said about 50 BTGs were already in place to the north and east of Ukraine and in Crimea to the south.
Seizing southern Ukraine could cut Kyiv off from the coast and NATO’s presence in the Black Sea, Melvin said, and could play well with Russian nationalists who see the area as the historic “Novorossiya” lands or “New Russia”.
A multi-front assault might also involve a move into northeastern Ukraine, encircling but perhaps not entering cities where forces could get bogged down in urban fighting. Russian troops could also move into Belarus, opening a northern front for Ukraine that would put Russian forces closer to Kyiv, Giles said.
“This of course would be the most costly economically, politically and in terms of human lives and that’s probably why it’s least likely,” Melvin said of an all-out invasion.
Military analysts said even if it overwhelmed Ukraine’s army, which is half the size of its own, Russia could face guerrilla-type resistance, making it hard to hold on to captured territory. read more
MISSILE STRIKES OR CYBER-ATTACK
Russia has used trains to transport large numbers of military vehicles close to its border with Ukraine in recent weeks.
Giles said some scenarios could involve long-range missile attacks or cyber-attacks targeting critical infrastructure. Missile attacks would take advantage of Ukraine’s weaker anti-missile defences.
“The different scenarios for how exactly Russia might seek to persuade the West to meet its (security) demands by punishing Kyiv don’t even necessarily include a land incursion,” he said.
Reporting by Tom Balmforth, Additional reporting by Maria Tsvetkova, Editing by Andrew Osborn and Timothy Heritage
You will note how this article sets such low ambitions for Russias military.
Russia won’t get bogged down. The Russians are openly saying the UK is building bases in Ukraine… these bases will be obliterated.
I am sure that there are many in Ukraine who will dob in any resistance groups, which are being setup, armed and finances right now with you’re money.
I’ll take a guess the west is calling its naked aggression Operation Covid Failure.
War with Russia looks like another spectacle for the goyim. Russia is covid mad as the west. Putin is no more a symbol of justice than was Trump. Watch rt news for Putin persepective. Their narrative on “climate change”, BLM and Covid is the same as ours
Kissinger was right when he said that the US forces were “dumb animals”. But it’s not just the US but the UK and the rest of the Western armed forces.
Do any of these morons think?
How can you protect your land fighting hundreds of miles away? More so does your ‘enemy’ pose a threat to your nation and is it even your enemy?
The Western armed forces are nothing more than the murderers for the jew. They’re mercenaries, who murder innocents.
We have no problem with Russia (or any other country bar Israel for that matter). In fact we should be waging war with the IDF, ripping up the Balfour Declaration, seizing all assets and bank accounts of every Jew and booting them off to a heavily monitored Island somewhere far away from humanity.
If these armed forces actually thought, for once in their lives, they’d realise that you can’t have a war without willing participants. If the UK it’s threatened, you fight on this land to protect it.
Geez…. It’s not rocket science is it? Armed forces personnel really are thick.
My guess is that Russia is moving so much artillery and men south with the greater objective of invading Israel.
If so, it will be the end of the great Russian army. We shall see.
what the whole white world needs :
A NICE MASSKILLING OF ITS
TRAITORS + EXPLOYTERS !
not blacks against whites, not moslems
against white, not whites against them.
there were once rebellions in haiti,
suriname, indonesia, panama, colombia,
solomon islands . it seems only coloured
folks are able for rebellions . and all
rebellions started by their military mostly.
they have to start , they have the arms
and must kill first their secret service
spies/snitches/informers/watchdogs .
without this scenario no change to better
is not possible . the jew slavedrivers not
better forget how suriname slaves fought
the jews 200 years ago . it seems white
assholes are the most indulgent slave idiots !
American Jew Satanists like “Cookies” Nuland, wife of Satanist Kagan, caused this problem in Ukraine.
Could it be that the Ashkenazi Bolshevik Khazars like Nuland and Blinken wanted to reclaim their
ancestral homelands between the Black and Caspian Seas because they know the ROTchild experiment in
IsraHELL will fail?
Don’t worry about it…its all a scripted Zionist production…Putin, Zelensky, Johnson, Biden etc..are all puppets on the same yarmulke wearing team–deceiving, dividing & manipulating the moronic white masses into conflict/war–as they advance their anti-white geopolitical demographic designs upon Europe/N.America/Oceania.
If they start a new war, the whites will kill each other off, as millions of Afro-Asian apes/mongrels continue pouring into the West. Notice Africa, Asia & South America are never involved in these major wars–just Europe & dumb whites from North America/Oceania fight/die in them…
When the war comes, I trust that any British troops (terrorist enablers) taken prisoner will be executed out of hand.
Reuters and their whore presstitute writer can’t get out of the very first sentence without lying:
Russia’s deployment of tens of thousands of troops to the north, east and south of Ukraine is fuelling fears in Kyiv and Western capitals that Moscow is planning A NEW ATTACK.
Um, when was that alleged previous ‘attack’? I stopped reading after that.
R.C.
@White Elephant… don’t mind me saying…post of the day. Your post sums up the foreign policy of all western governments. How far have the war time policies of the U.S. been removed from the founding fathers who forbade foreign entanglements.
Russia could face guerrilla-type resistance, making it hard to hold on to captured territory. what weal analysis and useless. The Russians will respond in like manner. Russia has many infiltrators in both the ukrainian army and intelligence sympathetic to Russia. Should war occur they will know precisely where to hit and so doing cut off ukraine from the black sea and annex donbass. many of the ukrainian army will down guns as they know the outcome. CIA knows this, Chatham knows this. as for usa bases, the first bases to be taken out will in germany, poland, baltic states and turkey. greece had better wake up and so should usa as russia will have their submarines with hypersonic missiles position 200 miles off the east and west coast of the country and perhaps positioned in cuba and venezuela.
@Ann Blue… I agree you have a right to your opinion. You need to rethink your Christian Zionist brainwashing and throw your Scofield bible in the fireplace. Russia is in bed with Israel lock, stock and barrel. The internet provides enough images of Putin hanging out with Chabad Lubavitch; a radical Jew supremacist criminal group.
Leech,
Back at you!
Ann’s completely incapable of understanding just who Putin is. Agree fails to see, as you correctly state, Putin is surrounded by Chabad Lubavitch. The only time Russia would ever move armies to Israel would be to defend it.
It beggars belief. There are many good posters on here. Ann comes up with good ones, at times, but you’re correct in that she’s clearly indoctrinated with the Schofield Bible and a Zionist believing that the jews in Israel are God’s chosen. Israel is an abomination and these demons within have nothing to do with Israel, promised land and god’s chosen.
The sooner Israel is word off the face of this earth the better access of course the jews removed to an island to be imprisoned there forever. Away from noon Jewish lands where they can’t do wrong in.
the only question worth asking: IS IT GOOD FOR JEWS.
answer: YES.
any goy bloodshed is good for jews, the only reason for existence of jew hive, the smell of goy blood is sweet to hairy horned beast YHWH.
the power of the blackest of dark magics is shown beyond doubt in that goyim would rather lose a billion of their lives than be called antisemitic by pointing out the obvious:
→there can be no solution to the age-old Jewish Problem unless all options are on the table.←
we need Christ to return and spell it out clearly, unequivocally, pop that magic wax out of our ears.
@Ann Blue 40% of Israeli citizens are ethnic Russian. There will be no attack by Russia on Israel. This will just be another Cull, Of Israelites! (Not Israeli’s) Like all wars, just a sacrifice by Satan’s kids.
“White elephant is back…..if he wasnt one of these flat earthers (tell that Vasco de Gama) he would maybe have a point.
Lerch
‘Putin hanging out with Chabad Lubavitch; a radical Jew supremacist criminal group’
don’t you know Putin keeps his friends close and his enemies closer. this is a new level of diplomacy. as long as dual citizenship is cutoff, (unlike in the US) the game is in Putin’s hands.
All I want to say is I was in England when this UK minister got the sack/resigned for putting his hand on some woman’s leg.
He left without even a whimper.
Ann Blue believes Russia is the king of the North.
Present day Israel has nothing to to with anything written in the Bible.
Israel certainly isn’t any fulfilment of any Bible prophesy.
IS THIS FALLON SECOND EISENHOWER
PREPARING HIS TROOPS FOR D DAY ?