The Donbass apparently is no longer enough.
Russia is now targeting other territories after 149 days of a war that began on February 24.
“It is no longer just the people's republics of Donetsk and Luhansk (the separatist territories in eastern Ukraine, editor's note), it is also the regions of Kherson and Zaporizhia (in the south) and a series of other territories ” that the Russian army has in the crosshairs, affirmed Sergueï Lavrov, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wednesday, July 20.
A conquering posture that may surprise.
Admittedly, Russia has made progress in the Donbass: at the beginning of July it claimed to control the entire Luhansk oblast (the border region with Russia in the south-east of Ukraine), which the Institute for the Study confirms. of War, an independent American institute for military analysis.
But it's not the same story in Donetsk, the other part of Donbass.
Important cities in the north of this region such as Kramatorsk or Sloviansk still escape Russian rule.
“Russia is progressing slowly, and we see that it is suffering significant losses, especially in equipment and material,” summarizes Sim Tack, a military analyst for Forces Analysis, a conflict monitoring company.
Preparing the ground for “rigged” self-determination referendums
A situation on the ground which therefore seems incompatible with the ambitions displayed by Sergei Lavrov.
Except to consider that the Minister of Foreign Affairs “is in reality only announcing objectives already achieved”, suggests Sim Tack.
The Russian diplomat would play on the ambiguities of geographical names.
He evokes, in fact, Kherson - a city already under Russian control - and Zaporijjia.
The latter is not yet occupied by the Russians, but "part of the oblast (Ukrainian administrative region) of Zaporizhia - which notably includes the port city of Mariupol - is already occupied", recalls Sim Tack.
In this hypothesis, "Sergei Lavrov's declarations would serve to prepare the ground to justify an attempt at future annexation of these regions currently controlled by Russia", estimates Jeff Hawn, specialist in Russian military questions and external consultant for the New Lines Institute. , an American geopolitical research center.
An analysis shared by John Kirby, the spokesman for the United States Department of Defense, who accused Moscow, on Wednesday July 20, of preparing "rigged" self-determination referendums in the Kherson and Zaporizhia region to confer the illusion of popular support for joining Russia.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, had already used the same method in 2014 to justify the annexation of Crimea.
Moscow has also launched a campaign to motivate teachers and other civil servants to work in occupied areas in Ukraine to begin to establish the beginnings of a Russian administration there, says the Washington Post, which has been able to obtain job offers. accompanied by generous salaries for anyone willing to relocate to Kherson.
Odessa 220 km from the front line
But, "it is quite possible that the Russian General Staff really plans to push the offensive even further west", underlines Jeff Hawn.
Sergueï Lavrov has moreover left this door open by ending his enumeration of “new” Russian objectives with an allusion to “other territories”.
220 km west of the front line is the very strategic port city of Odessa.
But "even if we talk about it regularly, in the current state of the conflict, the capture of this city seems to be a very difficult objective to achieve," said Jeff Hawn.
The Ukrainians are becoming increasingly effective at bombarding Russian supply lines, thanks to weapons supplied by the West - beginning with the American Himar-type multiple rocket launchers.
“The Russians are struggling to quickly replace the equipment lost on the front and have to move very carefully,” explains Sim Tack.
For this expert, the Russian army could extend its front line to the west, but this would further strip the defense of vital supply lines.
Such an offensive would therefore “necessarily have a very high human and logistical cost, especially if the Ukrainians succeed in cutting the supply lines”, affirms this analyst.
Moscow should therefore be ready to make significant sacrifices if only to get closer to Odessa.
And then the Russian army would not have done the hard part yet.
"This war has shown that whenever it comes to taking an important city - like kyiv or Kharkiv for example, Russia fails or has a lot of trouble", recalls Sim Tack.
A pretext to continue fighting
This is why, for him, “one must use a reading grid that is more political than military to understand Sergei Lavrov's declarations”.
It would be less a description of the battle plan than “a speech intended to present a conquering face to Russian public opinion, so as to perpetuate the myth of a victorious army”, deciphers Sim Tack.
The timing of this speech is, in this respect, not insignificant.
“These statements can be perceived as the Russian response to the proliferation of articles and statements relating to the impact of the Himars on the course of the war”, notes Sim Tack.
It is, in fact, the first time that a Russian official has referred to these American weapons.
Sergei Lavrov's bluster is a way of claiming that these rocket launchers in no way slow down the Russian advance in Ukraine, quite the contrary, since Moscow has now added new territories to these objectives.
“It is also interesting to note that Sergei Lavrov justifies the extension of the war objectives by the arrival of these Himars on the Ukrainian front”, adds Jeff Hawn.
The Russian minister indeed affirmed that the army would have to push towards the west in order to kick these rocket launchers out of a territory bordering with Russia because their presence on Ukrainian soil would present a threat to Russian national security.
This justification would show “that Russia no longer knows what its war objectives are and clings to this kind of pretext to continue fighting”, underlines Jeff Hawn.
And this is perhaps the most worrying for the continuation of the conflict because without clear objectives to fulfill, there is also no end of the war on the horizon.
Sergei Lavrov's statements are, for Jeff Hawn, proof that Moscow does not know how to get out of this conflict and has chosen the easy solution - continuing the fighting - which is also the most deadly.
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