Putin wants a 15km “buffer zone” along the border with Ukraine to protect them from raids, but it’s an almost impossible request, military experts say.
Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War said in an update on Tuesday that Russians had called for that zone after the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov pledged to do everything to protect the region of Belgorod from further Ukrainian attacks.
The region has suffered from a series of cross-border raids, including as recently as last week.
Russian authorities have so far failed to announce plans to protect it.
The ISW said Russian sources were reviving calls for a large-scale Russian offensive in Kharkiv to create this buffer zone despite “the military’s likely inability to conduct an operation to seize significant territory in Kharkiv Oblast in the near term.”
One Telegram account quoted by the ISW said the border must be pushed back significantly, while another said a large exclusion zone of up to 15 kilometers, deep inside Kharkiv Oblast was needed to prevent Ukrainian long-range attacks.
Russian ultranationalists urged something similar last summer, citing public dissatisfaction with cross-border raids by pro-Ukrainian forces, the ISW said.
But the ISW said building such a zone along several hundred kilometers of the border was probably doomed to fail.
It would require a “far larger” and “significantly better” equipped force than what Russia now had positioned along the front lines with Ukraine, it said.
The UK Ministry of Defence said in November that Russian forces, as well as their Ukrainian counterparts, were already struggling to make any significant breakthroughs because of how scattered they were along the 745-mile front line.
Russian forces are also yet to advance into Kharkiv, though a Russian grouping stationed there “appears more well-suited to conduct an intensified offensive effort than elsewhere in Ukraine or along the international border,” the ISW said.
The ISW assessed that right now, Russian troops would only be able to carry out “tactical-level actions,” meaning they could engage in battles in Kharkiv Oblast from Belgorod but with no guarantee of success.
© 2024, GDC. © GDC and www.globaldefensecorp.com. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to www.globaldefensecorp.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
