KIEV

- A month after the start of the war, and for the second week in a row, political and military officials in Ukraine confirm that the Russian forces are "incapable" of advancing further into the depths of the country, and talk about logistical difficulties they are facing in their locations.

In this regard, the General Staff of the Ukrainian forces said on Wednesday that "the Russian forces in Ukraine have enough food, ammunition and fuel for only 3 days."

For his part, the adviser to the Ukrainian President, Oleksiy Aristovich, expected that the operations of the intrusive Russian military forces would stop completely within 3 or 4 weeks, and said that "they will have nothing to fight with."

Members of the pro-Russian forces in the besieged city of Mariupol (Reuters)

Moving “Revenge” to “Plan B”

Here, there is talk in Ukrainian political and military circles about Russia's transition to "Plan B" after the "failure" of its main plans.

It is a "revenge" plan, according to those circles, which includes a siege of intractable cities, the use of prohibited weapons, and intense violent bombing from afar, targeting military, vital and civilian sites.

Indeed, the siege is mentioned when talking about the city of Mariupol in the southeast of the country, where the fiercest battles are taking place, and about the cities of Sumy and Chernihiv in the north, which are witnessing violent bombardments, which the mayor of Chernihiv described as "random", as well as Kherson in the south, which Russia took control of. But it is witnessing demonstrations condemning the "occupation".

The common denominator between these cities, according to their local officials, is the size of the Ukrainian resistance in them, and the refusal of the majority of the population to migrate to adjacent Russian regions, in addition to their unwillingness to accept the Russian presence on their lands.

In this context, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry confirms that "Russia is holding 3,000 Ukrainians in camps it has as hostages of war", and considers this to be "Russia's transition to a new level of terrorism."

In the same context, the head of the Human Rights Committee of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Ludmila Denisova, notes that "Russia has forcibly displaced 402 thousand Ukrainians to its territory, including 84,000 children."


Bombing from afar and prohibited munitions

During the past week, military officials spoke that Russia is relying mainly on its planes and long-range missiles for "retaliatory" bombing operations, especially on "hypersonic missiles" (higher than the speed of sound) that are difficult to intercept, and are launched from the air and the ground. Russian and Belarusian, and from the Caspian and Black Seas, in addition to the Crimea.

During the past 48 hours, local officials repeatedly confirmed the use of internationally prohibited phosphorous munitions by Russian forces in the cities of Irbin, northwest of Kyiv, and Kramatorsk in the southeastern Donetsk region, as well as in 6 cities and towns in the neighboring Lugansk region.

The Ukrainians assert that "most of the bombing operations are carried out during the night hours to terrorize the population, and on non-military targets, including residential buildings, commercial centers and vital public places."

Western officials, including the European Union's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, did not rule out Russia's use of chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, similar to what the Assad regime did and did in Syria;

NATO also pledged to provide Ukraine with weapons and equipment, apparently in anticipation of this dangerous development.

Russian and Belarusian forces in joint exercises last February (French)

Waiting for a Belarusian post

Also included in Plan B is the entry of Belarus to the front line alongside Russia, despite Minsk's repeated assurances that this is unlikely.

Along with a stronger advance of the Russian forces towards Kyiv in the north, from the Crimea in the south.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian forces spoke of "monitoring new Russian-Belarusian military movements inside Belarusian territory and Crimea", and the Defense Ministry considered this an indication of Minsk's intention to participate in the war by Moscow.

According to the ministry, the entry of Belarusian forces into the field of war may be from the axis of the Volyn region in the far northwest of the country, and from there to Kyiv, or to other western regions.

The military expert at the Strategic Defense Center, Victor Kevlyuk, believes that "the entry of the Belarusian forces is really unlikely, because the Belarusian army does not want this war, especially after it saw that it does not go according to the time and combat plans of the Russian side."

Kevlyuk added that "entering the war will cost the leadership of Belarus more international isolation, and heavy military and economic losses, which its army and people do not want to repeat, as happened in Russia."

But it seems that the Ukrainian authorities are taking this possibility seriously, and believe that it may aim at a more effective advance towards Kyiv, after the Russian forces failed to do so for a month.