Putin’s recent reshuffle of Russian military commanders signals his determination to continue the attritional war to its “logical conclusion” while maintaining control over strategy and rejecting internal pressure for radical changes.

Russia is intensifying pressure on Ukraine through sustained missile strikes and battlefield gains, exploiting Ukraine’s dwindling air-defence stocks and signs of demoralisation after high-level military and defence reshuffles in Kyiv.

Despite renewed US diplomatic contacts, fundamental disagreements remain; Moscow is unlikely to accept current Ukrainian/US terms without significant battlefield advantage and political change in Kyiv, keeping the conflict in a cycle of escalation.

The Russian President Vladimir Putin fired the political equivalent of Oroshnik hypersonic missile Wednesday to scatter the recent pot shots by hawkish factions at the Russian ‘power vertical’, never a unified construct actually, over the future directions of Ukraine war. 

Putin coolly announced at a Kremlin meeting Wednesday with the Defense Ministry leadership a major reshuffle of Russian commandersin the special military operation zone asserting that he has his own mind about tactic and strategy and intends to continue with the special military operation to its logical conclusion, while retaining the structural patterns. 

Simply put, Russia’s Bismarck does not want to be remembered by posterity as someone who wantonly sacrificed the lives of his country’s youth to conquer foreign lands for self-glorification.  

It is a noble decision — pragmatic and tactical but also strategic. This will mean Russia’s attritional war will continue but a paradigm shift to put maximum pressure on the leadership of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is to be expected. Indeed, the massive missile strikes at Kyivin recent days are no longer meeting with missile interceptors, as Americans do not have surplus stocks to spare. 

Put differently, there has been a paradigm shift as Russian forces gaining ground all across the frontline........

© Eurasia Review