Yesterday a comrade-in-arms left a message thanking Zhan Hao, saying that his children were studying in Ukraine, because he read Zhan Hao's article on the judgment of the situation in Russia and Ukraine, he let the child come back in the New Year and did not let him go back, the result did not expect to really encounter war, fortunately after the Spring Festival insisted on not letting the child go again. This incident gave Zhan Hao a wake-up call, hoping that those comrades-in-arms who have relatives and friends overseas will share Zhan Hao's public account with them, which is really useful, at least to understand the international situation, to judge the world situation in advance, and in the context of the great changes that have not occurred in a hundred years, they can really seek advantages and avoid harm, and seek good fortune and avoid evil.
A few days ago, many people felt that Russia's progress in fighting Ukraine was not going well, how come it didn't take a few cities for several days? Some even believe that Putin's military operations have failed. For such comments and judgments, Zhan Hao has always been dismissive, for the simple reason that Putin is fighting politics in this battle, so in order to achieve his political goals, he has been very restrained in using military means.
First of all, we see that Putin launched this attack very suddenly, and the Ukrainian navy and air force were wiped out within an hour of war. At this moment, all parties were blinded. Almost no one thought that Ukraine's navy and air force would be so vulnerable to the great powers that even the CIA believed that Russia would take Kiev in 3 days, and public opinion generally believed that Russia's takeover of Ukraine was estimated to be a quick thing. In Zhanhao's view, this is obviously a misjudgment, Ukraine's land area is larger than Germany and Britain combined, and the population is more than 40 million, how can it be taken in a few days? Didn't the United States, the first power in the universe, fight Afghanistan and Iraq 20 years ago?
When everyone focused on the city, the main target of the Russian attack was not the city at all, but the Ukrainian military facilities. Four or five days after the start of the war, Russia had blown up more than a thousand of Ukraine's military infrastructure and had full control of Ukraine's air superiority. Today, Russia's large troops are constantly moving towards Ukraine, without any resistance on the way, that is, in less than a week, all the major Ukrainian cities have been divided and surrounded by Russian troops.
So, let's look at it now, in less than a week, Russia not only controlled ukraine's air supremacy, but also divided and encircled almost all the cities in Ukraine. Don't forget that more than a month after the United States bombed Afghanistan, the Taliban gave up their withdrawal from Kabul, and the Russian army has not yet carried out indiscriminate bombing of Ukrainian cities, but Russia's tactical goals are being achieved.
What kind of military strategy is the Russian army adopting now? The answer is clear, and three main strategies have been adopted:
First, the bombing of the main facilities was limited, not only not targeting the Ukrainians, but also minimizing casualties. So far, Russia has only bombed buildings with political functions and significance, including municipal buildings and TV towers. Why is Russia so moderate? The reason is simple, these regions will be ruled by Russia in the future, and now that the future is blown up, it will have to be built by itself. More importantly, if large-scale bombing is carried out, the damage will be too heavy, especially the casualties will be too heavy, and the Ukrainian people will be enmity, and future rule will become difficult and the cost of rule will be higher.
Second, the use of weapons is very restrained. Everyone can pay attention to observation and find that Russia's use of troops in Ukraine is really too civilized, ordinary people on the street to stop tanks and armored vehicles from leaving, the result is that the Russian army really does not go, and even the large troops directly turn around and take a detour, even the guardrail on the street is not willing to hit. You can think about it, what if it is the US military? I'm afraid I'll just run over it or kill it directly! Don't say that the U.S. military, that is, the American police, see the American people like this, it will also be directly shot and killed.
Third, control the scale of the fight. The Russian army has always been very restrained when attacking the city, although it looks very fierce, but you can think about what it was like when it hit Georgia in 2008, it was a wild bombardment, and it was directly paralyzed and then withdrawn. This time is different, even if Russia now controls the airspace, the Russian army still has not carried out large-scale bombing, although the war situation has been very large, but the fight has been very restrained.
Russia did not take measures such as fighting Georgia in the past, but took measures such as advancing layer by layer, dividing the encirclement, and using weapons with restraint, and the most important reason for Zhanhao's view was that Russia fought a battle with a very clear political purpose. What is Putin's aim? De-militarization, de-Nazismization, these two purposes are not to teach a lesson, nor to blow up, but to control Ukraine for rule, which determines that Putin chose a relatively moderate means, he wants to win this war at the lowest cost, and more importantly, he wants to win the hearts and minds of the Ukrainian people, so that in the future rule will not be too strong a rebound. Imagine that in the past 8 years Ukraine has been dominated by oligarchy and Nazis, and now that Russia is here, their lives may be better.
De-militarization, of course, is to bomb military facilities, blow up those major military facilities, and the de-militarization of Ukraine is basically half complete. The next step is to consume the Ukrainian authorities step by step, and then step by step to eat up all the real central and eastern parts of Ukraine. You can take a look at the map below, which is the overall situation of the war shortly before, as well as the areas controlled by russian forces and eastern Ukraine. According to the current situation, Russia will definitely eat up the whole of the eastern and central regions of Ukraine, which is planned and will not change anything.
From the above figure, we can also see that although the Russian army has not yet taken Kiev, it has basically completed the siege of Kiev, and it is only a matter of time before it is taken. At present, the Russian army still mainly relies on ground troops to fight, and has not used the air force on a large scale or used missiles on a large scale. There is no large-scale use of missiles because Russia's cruise missiles are not so many in number, and secondly cruise missiles are too expensive. As for the bombing of warplanes, it should be mainly considered that the city is not wanted to be destroyed.
Of course, judging from the situation of the Russian army's street fighting, it is not that the Russian army does not want to take the city faster, because in the absence of a large killing weapon, the ground troops do have some difficulty in advancing, and the most important thing is that there are not enough and good enough drones. Just imagine, if there are so many powerful Tatta integrated drones in China, these cities have already taken down, and there is no need to wait until now.
Therefore, the Russian army did not take these cities, mainly because conventional weapons were not powerful enough, the tactics were too old, and there was not so much urgency, so the speed of taking cities was not so fast. However, this does not affect the overall advancement of the Russian army, nor does it affect the achievement of the strategic and tactical objectives of the Russian army in this war, but it is only a little late.
In fact, this battle has been fought until now, we look back at these days, Putin is very clear in strategy, there is no big mistake in tactics, the so-called take down the city is slow, one is limited to the shortcomings of the resource capabilities of street warfare, but more importantly, I still don't want to move the big killer now, I want to leave space.
Of course, if Russia had bent over and bought some powerful drones from China earlier, the battle would have been much better. But on the one hand, Russia doesn't want to bend over, and on the other hand, it doesn't want to spend money, so the city wars don't look very good now. Of course, a few days slower is irrelevant and will not have a fundamental impact on the situation itself.
So, is Putin really not a killer? Not so, he is still waiting for all the large troops to be in place, when all the cities are well encircled, Russia will definitely persuade the defenders of the relevant cities to surrender, as long as one city is saved because of surrender, then there will be more cities surrendering, which is the effect putin wants - to take the city with the least damage. So, what if there are cities that continue to hold on? The big bombing will come, and the relevant important infrastructure and the Ukrainian army that is holding on to it will be blown up into a mess and attack the city by means of a strong attack.
When the army continues to concentrate in the central region and continue to take the cities, when russia has taken the area east of Kiev, the Russian army will definitely move towards the area west of Kiev. Many experts say that Putin will not necessarily attack western Ukraine, but Zhan Hao believes that Putin will inevitably attack western Ukraine. Just think, Putin's purpose is to demilitarize and de-Naziratize Ukraine, de-militarization is to blow up all the military infrastructure of Ukraine, confiscate all armaments, disarm all soldiers, how can this be done without going to Western Ukraine? De-Nazismization means to catch all the Nazi extremists in Ukraine, and how to eliminate those extremists without going to Western Ukraine? If Western Ukraine is left behind, is it not left room for the West to support Ukraine and then, in turn, continue to strike Russia? How can Putin afford to consume energy? Therefore, what Putin wants to do this time is to take the whole territory of Ukraine, and the entire military operation cycle will last about 3 months to 6 months, which is an inevitable thing to do.
Since this goal is clear, war is not an overnight thing, so why rush to take the city at a huge cost? After all, Russia does not have as advanced drones as China, can not do efficient street warfare, if bombed with fighters or missiles, how much money will be invested? For Russia, the economy has already suffered the harshest sanctions from the West, and it is certainly possible to save money to fight a war.
In fact, we are now looking at the war situation in the past few days, Putin's strategic and tactical goals are steadily advancing, there is no delay, it seems that the West is whining about the sanctions are very serious, but no force can stop the russian army from advancing, this is the essence. In particular, now that the Russian army has basically completed the siege of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, then when it is impossible to take Kiev for two more days, the Russian army will definitely use bombing tactics, and then it can also play a role in killing chickens and scaring monkeys, which will help to quickly make the defending Ukrainian army abandon resistance and surrender in other cities.
Zhan Hao believes that Putin has fought this battle smart enough. On the one hand, we see that Putin fought this battle very economically, which is conducive to the future Russian military against NATO; on the other hand, if Putin's battle is finally fought in a very civilized way, then Russia will certainly have no problem digesting eastern Ukraine, and politically as long as there is no hatred with the people of western Ukraine, then supporting a pro-Russian regime will eventually stabilize the pattern of Ukraine. In this way, Russia's geostrategic security space will come out!
Whether Putin can fully achieve his strategic and tactical goals, we continue to look down, it is estimated that by April, the situation will be basically clear! We'll see! Finally, please ask your comrades-in-arms to forward ZhanHao's article to those relatives and friends overseas, which will definitely be useful!