This Step Will Change The Course Of The War

Time plays in favor of Ukraine.

Russian troops failed to break into the center of Vovchansk. The occupiers want to create a so-called sanitary zone in Kharkiv region to protect the Belgorod region. This sanitary zone has become another idea of Putin that justifies further aggressive actions on the territory of Ukraine.

Now Russian troops are weakening their offensive in the Kharkiv region. Ukrainian forces, which are concentrated in this region, manage to deter their attempts to seize Vovchansk.

The situation is no less difficult in the strategically important Donetsk direction for the Russians. Back in February 2022, Vladimir Putin ordered his army to reach the administrative borders of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Now the enemy troops can be located about 10 kilometers from Pokrovsk. Moscow's desire to demonstrate its ability to occupy the entire Donetsk region remains one of Putin's important political tasks.

What surprises me is that many people think that the Kursk operation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not divert significant reserves from the Kharkiv or Donetsk directions. In the Kursk region, Ukrainian troops occupied even more territory than the Russian occupiers have recently occupied in the Donetsk region.

As for me, the meaning of the Kursk operation is not at all to divert reserves, but primarily to politically change the nature of the war. This is what now makes it possible for our Western allies to speak aloud about the need to remove restrictions for Ukraine on strikes against Russia. Just as the West coolly reacted to the fact that its weapons were used in the Kursk region, that is, on the sovereign territory of Russia, and not only on the territory that Russia declared its own.

Russia believes that the restoration of the USSR within the borders of 1991 is its legitimate and logical goal. That is why the occupation of Ukraine remains for the Russians the same priority as the liberation of the Kursk region from the AFU. Russia is trying to convince the world that it has every right to the territory occupied by its troops. In this situation, it was not very professional to expect that as a result of the raid of the Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region, the Russians would first of all transfer reserves from the Donetsk or Kharkiv directions in order to return this territory under their control.

You can imagine how the Russians will act in the near future. They will focus on the Donetsk direction and at the same time try to destroy the Ukrainian infrastructure. Only after the Russians realize that their capabilities in the Donetsk direction are exhausted, they will strengthen the groups in the Kursk region in order to try to knock out the Ukrainian forces.

Here, unlike the Donetsk direction, time plays in favor of Ukraine. Because while there will be heavy fighting in the Donetsk direction, those forces that are on the territory of the Kursk region have an additional opportunity to prepare for the inevitable offensive by Russian troops.

This offensive of the Russians on their own territory may be more difficult and bloody for them than the offensive in the Donetsk or Kharkiv directions.

We must realize that the war between Russia and Ukraine in the coming years will take place on the territory of both states. Therefore, the possibility of ending the war will depend primarily on the West and its permission to use its modern weapons to destroy Russia's arsenals. This permission could change the course of the war in the coming years.

Vitaly Portnikov, YouTube

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