Russia Faces 40 Dark Days and Nights as Zelensky Presses Advantage
Vladimir Putin might not survive if he loses Crimea.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky authorized the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Thursday to launch a kinetic 40-day pressure campaign against Russia.
Mr. Zelensky said his aim is “to end the war.”
Moscow is already reeling from sustained Ukrainian drone and ballistic-missile strikes targeting Russian energy infrastructure, railways, and military-production plants.
Elsewhere, Russian authorities in Crimea were forced Friday to declare a state of emergency throughout the illegally occupied peninsula situated on the Black Sea.
Over the course of the last month, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) significantly increased their tempo of operations in Crimea. The net result has been to create a growing military stranglehold on Russian logistics.
Gas stations are out of fuel, and civilian use of petrol is being rationed. Crimea is in danger of running on fumes.
The AFU’s overall strategy in Crimea is to progressively isolate the peninsula by land, sea, and air. Its end state is to make the island militarily untenable to the Russian army.
It also tells us, as we have long held, as has retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, that Crimea is the decisive terrain of this war. Ukraine seizing it or rendering it useless to Moscow would effectively be game over for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Ukrainian aerial and sea drones are doing the lion’s share of the damage in Crimea. The island’s Russian air defenses, already overwhelmed, are being systematically destroyed or transferred to guard Moscow and St. Petersburg.
In the balance: Mr. Zelensky fully grasps that the AFU is gaining the military initiative in Crimea and is pressing his advantage. He also clearly recognizes its symbolic value to Mr. Putin and understands that its loss could precipitate the end of the Russian president.
That is why Crimea is essentially a flashing Exhibit A in Mr. Zelensky’s 40-day pressure campaign against Russia. What once was a vacation destination for many Russians is now representative of everything that has gone wrong with Mr. Putin’s war.
Mr. Zelensky’s psyop message?
He is signaling to the citizens of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other towns and hamlets throughout Russia that the long days and nights Russian carpetbaggers are enduring in Crimea are about to become a shared national reality.
Decision point: Mr. Putin is in deep trouble. His wartime economy is imploding. He has killed or wounded 3.5 percent of his prime male workforce on the battlefields of Ukraine.
Four-plus years into his “special military operation” in Ukraine, Russia now finds itself the junior partner in the Dragon-Bear alliance with China. Plus, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a post-Soviet Union defense pact to counter NATO, is falling apart.
Armenia has walked away, and former Soviet satellite states across the Caucasus are looking to Washington and Brussels for new economic and security partnerships.
And militarily speaking, Russia is far more vulnerable to NATO than it was at the start of the war. Its army and navy are shadows of what they were, and the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO has turned the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake.
The latter threatens the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and endangers, if not bottlenecks, its Baltic Fleet, which is headquartered there. Kaliningrad once was an important strategic check on the Suwalki Gap, a thin strip of land that connects the Baltic States to Central Europe.
Now it is a potential liability as Belarus shies away from confrontation with Ukraine.
Russia cannot sustain this war, and yet Mr. Putin continues to be in deep denial of how he has made a train wreck of his nation in his quest to conquer Ukraine.
Perhaps, and only time will tell, 40 days and 40 nights of Ukrainian bombardments will make Mr. Putin realize the red crenelated walls of the Kremlin are closing in on him.
That is really Mr. Zelensky’s overall intent. He is aiming to deliver the coup de grâce to Mr. Putin and his regime.
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