Pierre Servent, writer and military expert, daily analyzes the war in Ukraine in the French media. This retired colonel, author of numerous books, including Cinquante nuances de guerre (2018), thinks that the mobilization of reservists is "a flight forward" and that Putin "continues to dig his own grave". On the threat of using weapons of mass destruction, Servent fears a chemical attack more than a nuclear one.
What will change after the announcement of the mobilization of three hundred thousand reservists?
It will not change the essential, that the Russian army is structurally deficient, rigid, unable to maneuver with agility. It will be difficult to equip and integrate them into the military device. It will allow, yes, to put more cannon fodder on the ground, but it is a flight forward. It is an illusion of the Kremlin, a very Soviet illusion, that idea that with the cannons and a mass of soldiers the situation on the ground can be reversed. I do not believe it. Putin keeps digging his grave, because the more men he sends, the bigger the losses will be, and he will have to negotiate that with the families who will receive the coffins. It is thus the behavior of a lying poker player.
And the nuclear threat returns.
Putin does it every time he suffers a setback. Now he is a little more worrisome because with the annexation referendums, which are an artifice, those four provinces will be part of the Russian state, and if Ukraine attacks them, it would be like attacking Russia. Then the nuclear could come into play.
A tactical nuke?
We must be careful, but I do not believe in a tactical nuclear weapon because it would be extraordinarily devastating, with radioactivity that is not controllable. Beside him, Chernobyl would be child's play. The Russians have troops in the area and also pro-Russian Ukrainians in the Donbass. Could they drop a tactical nuclear weapon on Kyiv, wipe it off the map, with its several million people? I don't think so, especially since Kyiv is close to Belarus, an ally of Russia, and has already suffered from Chernobyl. They wouldn't be too happy about a nuclear launch this close. On the contrary, Putin could do like his ally Assad in Syria in 2012, use the chemical weapon, but make believe that it was the Ukrainians who wanted to use them and exploded them.
How?
The Russians could tap into stocks of chemical fertilizers. Ukraine is a large agricultural country and has a lot of fertilizers that contain highly explosive products. It is what devastated the port of Beirut. Putin could be tempted by a special operation, of the secret services, for a chemical attack of which he would blame the Ukrainians. Only his allies would believe it. But he already told the UN that there were US chemical weapons laboratories in Ukraine. He could mount such a covert operation.
In addition to the weapons that the West supplies to Ukraine, how important is the help in information, in intelligence?
The United States and all the European countries, including some small ones, such as the Netherlands, provide satellite information, wiretaps, and the Ukrainians add human information, with the partisans infiltrating the areas controlled by the Russians. When all those intelligence media are crossed, the Ukrainian General Staff gets a very accurate picture of Russian strengths and weaknesses.
Why has the Russian ground army been so weak? Is it a matter of quantity, quality, training, morale?
of all these elements. From the beginning I said, and I was not the only one, that an expeditionary force of 200,000 men was not enough. If you discount those who deal with mechanics, fuel, food or health, even if all this is done poorly in the Russian army, the attack force considerably decreases, which should have been about 160,000 men at the beginning. Later it became known, after the withdrawal from Kyiv, that there were many members of the national guard and the police, because they planned to invade Kyiv very quickly and foresaw an occupation force. They were not combat units. There was a structural problem. Putin miscalculated the number of troops.
And that affected morale?
Yes, when you have the feeling that you are too weak and only able to crush the Ukrainians with artillery and not to conquer, that is not very good for morale. Also, the Russian military is hybrid. There is modern material and other very old, from the Soviet era. We also see the effect of corruption. There are vehicles that break down, tires that burst due to defects. The Moskova sank because her protection radar was not working. It is not known if due to negligence or because she was not repaired.
What are they strong at?
In artillery pieces, although they are quite imprecise. They do saturation attacks. And they also have a lot of long-distance, cruise missiles, although they have used up some of the stock. They use it now to hit power plants, to punish the Ukrainians. But that's not enough to hold ground and resist solid offenses.
What chance do the Ukrainians have of consolidating their recent offensive?
The Ukrainians are in a dynamic position. They have reached the Luhansk province, which they lost two months ago. But they have two problems. Being on offense, they need at a given moment to rest, resupply, repair the material. And the terrain is tricky. There are many rivers. The Russians have a certain advantage there in a defensive position. The Ukrainians need a lot of logistics, engineers, sappers, to build bridges, to demine. It will not be easy.
