Vladimir Putin did not reveal to China his plans regarding Ukraine, nor was he expected to reveal them, beyond insisting during a press conference yesterday in the city of Harbin that any negotiations with Kyiv should be referred to the Istanbul negotiations (at the end of March 2022, after a month of war), in which Russia raised the neutrality of the country it had just invaded. In the short term, the Russian president reiterated once again that the advance of his troops in the Kharkiv region during the last week obeys the need to create a buffer zone to protect the Russian city and region of Belgorod from attacks Ukrainian cross-border workers. The governor of Belgorod, Vyacheslav Gladkov, reported yesterday the death of two civilians – mother and son – due to a nighttime drone attack against one of the towns in the region, the Efe agency reported.
Since May 10, the Russian army would have penetrated the Ukrainian border with a maximum depth of 10 kilometers, and would have occupied a dozen towns and villages in the region, the biggest advance in a year and a half. But Putin pointed out that “currently there are no plans to take Kharkiv”, Ukraine’s second city.
Kharkiv is a big city, and the time and human and material cost Russian forces have paid to take small towns like Avdiivka or the village of Robotine (a conquest announced this week) makes this idea seem extraordinarily ambitious, however that one of the Russian advance lines is heading towards the suburb of Liptsi, thanks to the coverage of a large reservoir on its western flank and the fact that it is a very urbanized route to Kharkiv.
The head of the Ukrainian armed forces, General Oleksandr Sirski, said yesterday that the Russians would have managed to expand the front in the Kharkiv region by 70 kilometers, which has forced the mobilization of reserve troops (but also to transfer them from the Donbass) . “We believe that there will be tough battles and that the enemy is ready,” Sirski said yesterday.
In the last two or three days, the Russian advance would have slowed down, perhaps to end a tempestuous phase in which it used small military units. Apparently, the Russians would have chosen not to insist on occupying the town of Vovchansk, the most eastern of the front. It should be remembered that the region, occupied by Russia at the beginning of the invasion, was liberated by Ukrainian forces in brilliant advances led by General Sirski himself in the fall of 2022.
According to the head of the Ukrainian military intelligence, Kirolo Budanov, the next target of the Russian army is Sumi, to the west and at a great distance (about 200 kilometers) from the current battle lines. Some Ukrainian troops would have already gone there for defense. The Russian intention would be none other than to expand the northern front as much as possible in order to stretch the Ukrainian lines and drain its defenses of combatants in points more interesting for Moscow, such as the enclave of Chassiv Iar, where the conquest would constitute the gateway to finish occupying the Donbass region.
NATO, on the other hand, does not believe that Russia has enough troops to consider a siege in Kharkiv, which seems obvious. But this does not free the city from being at the center of the war right now.
From the first year of the invasion, Moscow realized the need to equip the aviation with guided bombs, and also to protect it, because of the harsh reception it had from the tiny Ukrainian air force. So the bombings that the city of Kharkiv is suffering are coming from the Russian sky. The aim would be, on the one hand, to exhaust Ukrainian anti-aircraft defenses and, on the other, to cause panic in the city and evacuation.
That is why Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has insisted on asking Washington for two batteries of Patriot anti-aircraft missiles. If, in addition, Ukraine could use them to neutralize the aerial threat in Russian airspace, the improvement in its defense would be considerable. Possibly the comment, this week in Kyiv, by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in the sense that the US does not encourage the Ukrainians to attack Russian territory with US weapons but they would not raise many objections either, is the key to what can spend the next few weeks.
