Ukraine - Russia Conflict
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Un an de guerre raconté par les généraux ukrainiens
One year of war told by Ukrainian generalsValeri Zaloujny, commander-in-chief of the armed forces; Oleksandr Syrsky, commander of the army; Kyrylo Boudanov, head of military intelligence: these three men, at the origin of the resistance and the success of the counter-offensives, have forged themselves a stature of heroes in the country.
By Rémy Ourdan(Kiev and Dnipro (Ukraine), special correspondent)
One year after the Russian invasion, the commanders of the Ukrainian army still feel, according to a fashionable image in the country, in the role of David against Goliath. They know that they are less powerful than the Russian giant, but they are convinced that, being bolder and more cunning, they are destined to defeat him.
For the past year, the defense of Ukraine has been in the hands of a handful of post-Soviet generals, who know the military culture of Russia as well as that of NATO, and who never make the mistake of despising their enemy. Their strength lies in the fact that, unlike the rest of the world a year ago, they never overestimate the Russian army either.
While hundreds of officers play a major role in the Ukrainian armed forces, so much so that commanders at the front are encouraged to show initiative, three men have forged a stature of heroes in the space of a year that is as respected in the army as in Ukrainian society.
At their head is General Valeri Zaloujny, 49 years old, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, an officer with a good-natured look and a sharp sense of humor who has become an extremely popular figure among Ukrainians. At his side is General Oleksandr Syrsky, 57, commander of the army, the man of the fronts, defender of Kiev and then master of the counter-offensive in the Kharkiv region. And, in the shadows, General Kyrylo Boudanov, 37, head of military intelligence, the man who analyzes the Russian army and orders clandestine operations in enemy territory. Receiving Le Monde to sketch an assessment of the first year of war, Generals Syrsky and Boudanov display a cautious confidence.
Met in Dnipro, where he coordinates operations on the eastern front these days, General Oleksandr Syrsky explains that "the Russian strategy is currently to conquer the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk by March 31, a deadline they have already pushed back six or seven times," after various failures to take the city of Bakhmut since July 2022.
Trap set for the Russians
Oleksandr Syrsky entered the war a year ago, awakened by a night call from his boss, Valeri Zaloujny, who announced: "It has begun. We must act!" The general rushes to the headquarters to organize the defense of the capital. Accustomed, in eight years of conflict in the Donbass, to a war of positions on a 400-kilometer front, the Ukrainian generals must adapt, once the Russian breakthroughs have been made, to a war of movement on a 2,500-kilometer front - reduced to 1,500 kilometers since the success of the two Ukrainian counter-offensives of the fall of 2022.
General Zaloujny made a double choice. On the one hand, to fight the enemy head-on when the survival of the capital is at stake, as in the battle, in the first hours of the invasion, at Hostomel airport, which was certainly lost but which prevented the Russian commandos from charging into Kiev, or Irpine, which then made it possible to stop the assault in the suburbs. On the other hand, to let the enemy advance in depth along the roads, even if it means losing territory, in order to stretch its lines so much that the armored columns can, through unconventional tactics, be more easily ambushed or surrounded. The commander-in-chief of the armed forces later explained this dual tactic publicly in an abrupt manner, saying that it was necessary to both "show one's teeth" and "draw blood. The Russian army, to the surprise of Ukrainian officers, fell into the trap.
For Yuri Boutousov, a reporter on the front line and an excellent Ukrainian military analyst - who is also very critical of the political authorities - "the Russian plan to attack Kiev failed in three days. Then, Ukraine regained the advantage, thanks to a fantastically large mobilization. And the plan to cut the country in two along the Dnieper [river] failed in three weeks."
Armored columns are decimated, while others, lacking supplies, risk being surrounded. The enemy withdrew from the Kiev region. General Syrsky, who led the maneuver, including daring operations consisting of heliporting commandos behind the Russian lines, repeated more or less the same battle plan in leading the counter-offensive in the northeast of the country in the fall, isolating the Russian army in the region of Izioum to force it to withdraw.
A stroke of military genius
Oleksandr Syrsky now admits, however, that the Ukrainian plan was not initially to carry out two such victorious counter-offensives at the same time, after six months of war, as was the case from September to November both towards Izum and Lyman (northeast) and towards Kherson (south). The Izum operation was prepared as a fake attack to divert Russian attention from the main offensive [to Kherson]," he says. Then it became a real attack."
Various Ukrainian officers point to a stroke of military genius on the part of General Syrsky, who turned his attention to the Kharkiv region as early as the spring and sensed that, even though Kiev's main objective was to recapture Kherson, the only regional capital to have been conquered by the Russian army, a double victory was within reach. He says he saw "the potential for a breakthrough in Balaklïia and an offensive towards Izioum", helped, he admits with a laugh, by "excellent cooperation with Ukraine's allies", i.e. "precious intelligence" from abroad. Izum was reconquered on 11 September, and Kherson on 11 November. The Russian army, after having failed to conquer Kiev and Kharkiv in the spring, was humiliated on two fronts. For the first year of the war, David inflicted four defeats on Goliath.
However, this is not a coup de grâce, far from it. The Russian army fortified its defensive lines, sent its newly mobilized recruits to the front and, in January, relaunched an offensive in the Donbass that had been launched in April and had stagnated since July. "The Russians understood that they would not win by a mechanized blitzkrieg and that they needed infantry. In fact, they are adopting the Ukrainian strategy," says Yuri Boutousov. With superiority of artillery, it is a war of small steps, intended to exhaust our troops." For the journalist, editor-in-chief of the online media Censor.net, "the Russians know that they can no longer win this war, but want to demonstrate that they can not be defeated." General Syrsky believes that "the Russians keep postponing the date of a large-scale offensive, because they have so many losses.
Goliath still has potential
Valeri Zaloujny, for his part, told the British magazine The Economist in December that he had "no doubt that [the Russians] are going to try a new move in Kiev. The army chief, although confident in his ability to defeat Moscow's army, said that "knowing the Russians as I do, our victory will not be final. It will be an opportunity to catch our breath and prepare for the next war.
General Budanov is much more confident about the possibility of a solution to the conflict. "The Russians are going to throw all their forces into the battle, but the threat is absolutely not comparable with the one at the beginning of the war. Russia does not have the army it used to have. They have completely destroyed their offensive potential. They no longer have units capable of making deep inroads," said the head of military intelligence at his headquarters in Kiev. We are approaching the end of the war.
In a speech broadcast at the Munich Security Conference on February 17, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also adopted the image of David versus Goliath. "Goliath has no chance but, unfortunately, he has potential; he is trying to buy time and he can still destroy many lives," he said, calling on his allies to deliver more weapons to deal the final blow to Russian forces. "David defeated Goliath with his courage and his slingshot. We have the courage. The slingshot, however, must become more powerful."
In Dnipro, General Oleksandr Syrsky returns to his battle plans. Faced with the Russian attacks in the Donbass, "[his] role," he says, "is that their plan fails. With drawn features, visibly exhausted by too many sleepless nights, he confides that "a long war remains a possibility, if the Russian leaders are ready for it, thanks to a great capacity for mobilization. Thinking back to February 24, 2022, when General Zaloujny pulled him out of bed to tell him that Ukraine was facing a Russian invasion, he says to himself that "this day is not over... It continues until today". He smiles, stands up, readjusts his uniform. He and his peers have the fate of millions of Ukrainians in their hands.
I'm less sure about another Kyiv offensive. It could happen, but if Russia had the resources to attempt that, surely it would have held on to Kherson and be advancing faster elsewhere. I think the deployment in Belarus is to keep Ukrainian forces divided between North and South, which is effective as a tactic because Ukraine has to act like a Kyiv offensive is imminent regardless of whether it actually is.
Bherkivka fell yesterday, if not the day before, and I think the Russians took Yahidne, and maybe the station area. The Ukrainians are withdrawing in order to the east (I think they have already withdrawn almost all their forces east of the river).
This is the end of the Bakhmut salient, in a very short time.
This is the end of the Bakhmut salient, in a very short time.
They've killed plenty of them on the way in, and in a few months they will surround them and kill them plenty on the way out, as per last time.
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Ever since their retreat/"goodwill gesture" Russians haven't done sht and they are supposedly a land army supapawa.