The Russian offensive in the Donbass, foreseen in the coming days by the Ukrainian General Staff, will represent the real turning point of the war in Ukraine. The failure or success of the assault will decide not so much the winner of the war – if there is a winner, in the face of the immense losses and ongoing humanitarian catastrophe – as the length of the conflict.
In fact, what would happen if the offensive were to be reduced to another bloody stalemate? Some analysts have envisaged the transformation of this mobility war into a conflict of attrition, such as the one that has characterized the clashes between the forces of Kiev and the separatists for the past eight years.
At that point, the closest diplomatic outcome would be the turning of the war into a frozen conflictone of the many “frozen conflicts” scattered in the post-Soviet space.
These “neither war nor peace” situations, in which the fighting is stopped due to simple cease-fires, have for decades prevented a true political resolution of numerous ethnic (and non-ethnic) conflicts in the Russian neighborhood, having as positive feedback a objective reduction of deaths.
Stop the slaughter, get diplomacy to work and participate in potentially endless negotiations in which, without the pressure of a high-intensity conflict, neither side would feel compelled to give up their political principles: it would not be surprising if, even in the West, many leaders politicians and commentators welcomed this modus vivendi. According to some definitions, this was precisely the situation in which relations between Ukraine, Russia and NATO were in between 2014 and 2022: while skirmishes were taking place on the line of contact between loyalists and the separatist republics, the great powers tried to advance the Minsk agenda 2, repeatedly clashing with known diplomatic disagreements.
Meanwhile, Europe and Russia continued to trade and live together as if nothing had happened, intentionally ignoring the degeneration of the Moscow regime.
Undoubtedly, this scenario looks tempting compared to the other scenarios accessible to the Kremlin. If the offensive were to fail, and arbitrarily ruling out the potential use of strategic or nuclear weapons, then freezing the conflict would be a way to buffer and losses without admitting defeat. At the same time, even a possible victory could induce the Kremlin to maintain its maximalist goals and target the rest of Ukraine.
The arrival of new Western weapons in Kiev would suggest the need to act as quickly as possible and prevent the Ukrainian military from becoming an even more formidable adversary. That said, it is highly unlikely that Russian forces will have the strength to continue the offensive beyond the Dnieper without a prolonged pause to resupply and regroup. In this perspective, a situation “neither of war nor of peace” would represent the best of both options: a halt to high-intensity fighting that maintains military pressure on Ukraine.
Perhaps it is grotesque to think about the Russian motivations for a frozen conflict precisely in these hours, when the conflict is far from frozen and the fall of Mariupol is imminent. However, a fundamental exercise remains: the difficult negotiations between Ukraine and Russia and the high rate of losses make this prospect plausible, as well as tempting for those decision-makers in the West who would like to wash their hands of the war without investing political capital in its resolution and strengthening. of the government of Kiev. Accepting this perspective would be dangerous for two reasons, one related to the unsustainability of the conflict and the other to the advantage that the Russians could derive from the situation.
First, talk about frozen conflict it is, from some points of view, a misnomer. It suggests that the disruption of large-scale operations also equates to a halt to civilian and military casualties, as well as an end to the conflict that lacks only formal confirmation. In this case it is wrong: looking at the Donbass, for example, the Ukrainian authorities estimate that between 2014 and May 2021 the conflict killed about 13,000 people. Further east, the cyclical flare-ups of violence in Nagorno-Karabakh show that without a political resolution, “frozen” wars tend to become even more complex, intractable, and spread.
Secondly, the very tendency of these conflicts to suddenly unfreeze can be exploited politically by the Russians. Russian military doctrine has no specific principles regarding i frozen conflictrather, considering them a continuation of hostilities by other means and a way of alternating military and political measures.
Indeed, between 2014 and 2022 Moscow imposed the stalemate as an asymmetrical deterrence against Kiev, exploiting the political and legal ambiguity of the conflict to prevent Ukraine’s greater integration into the West without however interrupting relations with Ukraine. European Union.
The constant threat of being able to reignite the conflict, which materialized in late February, is one way in which the Kremlin can impose concessions on NATO during diplomatic negotiations, minimizing its political costs and thus monetizing its military superiority on the ground.
Paradoxically, as often happens in Russian military policy, this way of acting derives precisely from a distorted reading of American intentions, to which Moscow believes it must respond symmetrically.
As reported by Voennaja Mysl (Military Thought, the main scientific journal of the Russian army): “In Ukraine it is advantageous for the United States to maintain a frozen conflict, in the Donbass to constantly strengthen their positions along the perimeter of the south-western borders of Russia ». To this end “hybrid conflicts are conducted under the slogan” no war, no peace “(for example in Ukraine with the systematic strengthening of its military power by NATO countries), waiting for the right moment to escalate”.
It is evident that in Russian military thought a frozen conflict it is always and only a temporary situation. Returning to a state of latent intimidation would be unbearable; even more dangerous would be to accept Moscow’s offer to establish a situation of relative superiority on the ground and give the Kremlin the privilege of deciding when and how to resume the conflict.
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