The wasting wound, in manpower and infrastructure, that the Russian invasion created in Ukraine is still open. It is a monument of shame for modern European history, but also for the long-suffering region in which it unfolds. Its consequences are lasting and extend over time.
Any plans for rebuilding and healing the wounds have no value, in front of the hundreds of graves of the dead and the unspeakable pain of their loved ones.
And the question that keeps coming up is how much longer the havoc will continue. Parallel to this is the concern that the shift in global interest, as reflected in other issues that appear on the front page of the daily news, will perpetuate an ongoing confrontation, with additional pain and losses.
Which in other parts of the front seems to be stabilizing, as for example in Kherson and the South and in other places, it is evolving into a permanent ‘meat machine’ with the climax of the battles in Solentar and Bakkhmut.
Through a historical consideration and comparison of things, Russia appears to be preparing for a repetition of practices, which it had adopted in the invasion of Finland initially and the ‘great patriotic war’, as Stalin, acting intelligently and utilitarianly, had called it.
In other words, after the initial negative and even disastrous development of the first phase of operations, there should be a reorganization and to capitalize on the factor of the inexhaustible, in relation to the opponent, reservoirs of human potential.
Especially in the case of the defeat of the Nazis, it was the inexhaustible reserves and abundant war materiel supplied by the Soviet forces that turned an otherwise lost cause for the Russians into a unique triumph.
In the same context, the Russian President resorts to the recruitment of hundreds of thousands of new people and to permanent changes of persons and leadership. It is an additional admission that from the beginning the planning of the invasion of Ukraine was flawed, based on persuasive data and insufficient forces.
The facts, however, in relation to the Historical examples are not the same. In the case of Ukraine, Russia, in this new, as it plans to be, phase of the war, has to fight an army trained and steeled in a war environment and with extremely adverse climatic conditions. As for example the Finns were, but they were not the forces of Nazi Germany.
But unlike the Finns, the Ukrainian forces are numerous and reserves in a population of more than 40 million, they can seek.
In addition, the Ukrainians, unlike the Finns and the Nazi troops, have a constant flow and supply of war material, which, in fact, is constantly being upgraded.
A critical parameter for the outcome of the new and potentially final phase of the confrontation is whether the supply of new military equipment and means for the Ukrainians will be timely and in sufficient quantities. It will be the parameter that will make the difference.
At the same time, Russia shows in every way that the outcome of the invasion of Ukraine is a battle of survival for its leadership. It is not by chance the aggressive policy it follows against Azerbaijan, which, according to the complaints of the Armenians, leads to the annihilation of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, nor its tolerance of Turkish adventures in Northern Syria.
They are movements of cynicism, which are sometimes perceived as desperation. And they are not credentials of credibility in the nexus of international relations.
