Russia could expand military offensive during Ukraine elections, expert says

Russia could undermine the re-election of Ukrainian
President Poroshenko with an expanded military offensive to capture a strategic
city, Kostiantyn Mashovets, a military journalist with the sprotyv.info news
site, told the apostrophe.ua news site. The Russians could “organize a small,
victorious war” during the election campaign to take control of a city like
Mariupol (population 458,500), Bakhmut (77,000) or Kostiantynivka (76,000), all
in the Donetsk region, he said. “A loss on the front will strongly hurt the
prospects of the current government,” he said. “You can say that a loss on the
front will put an end to current leaders extending their government reign.”

At the same time, such an offensive “might not
influence the positioning of political forces in Ukraine at all, or influence
it in a way that the Kremlin hadn’t intended” if the Russians miscalculate its
scale, Mashovets said. “The fierce the escalation, the higher the mobilization
preparedness of Ukraine’s people to withstand the aggression,” he said. “That
also shouldn’t be excluded from considerations.” Russia currently has
70,000-80,000 soldiers positioned along its Ukrainian border, he said, and 7,000-8,000
soldiers on the occupied territories. The rebel armies aren’t capable of
capturing a Ukrainian city without Russian military backing, he said.
Meanwhile, Russia is not capable of waging a full-scale invasion on all fronts
at the moment.

Russia has entire armies positioned along its
Ukrainian border “to delay the advance of our armies until the advance of
(Russia’s) main forces,” Oleksandr Turchynov, the secretary of the National
Security and Defense Council, told an expert forum in Kyiv on June 7.
Meanwhile, missile complexes positioned in Crimea and the Ukrainian border are
capable of striking any target in Ukraine, he said.

Zenon Zawada: The ideal
outcome in Ukraine for Russian President Putin would be the victory of
Russian-oriented Yuriy Boyko, the head of the Opposition Bloc, in the March
2019 presidential elections. Boyko would offer Putin most of the concessions he
wants in order to halt the war, which a significant minority of Ukrainians
currently supports. Putin would then wash his hands of the occupation while the
European Union would have a free pass to begin relaxing sanctions. Boyko could
even go to extremes and abandon Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic integration course.

Such capitulation to the Russians would enrage a large
portion of Ukrainians, who could resort to armed revolt. This would also play
into Putin’s hands, giving him the pretext he needs to expand his occupation of
Ukraine under the guise of “protecting the democratic choice of Ukrainians.” In
short, Boyko’s election would be a nightmare for Ukraine. If he doesn’t achieve
that, Putin at minimum wants to see a Russian-oriented parliamentary minority
formed after the October 2019 elections, which could become a Russian-oriented
majority eventually. So the war in Donbas continues to be at Putin’s disposal
to generate a desired outcome in Kyiv.

We view the scenario of Russia escalating its
offensive, possibly to occupy a strategic city, as among the more likely. We
have been warning of Putin using the war to influence elections for several months now. Given that there’s no current leader in the
presidential race, it’s entirely possible for Boyko to become elected under
manufactured conditions, such as an expanded offensive that would intimidate
southeastern Ukrainians. As Mashomets pointed out, such an effort could just as
well backfire against Russia. But the polls indicate that southeastern
Ukrainians will be voting for Russian-oriented politicians to renew ties with
Russia, particularly after the failure of the Poroshenko administration to
reform anything meaningful.