Jean-Paul Paloméros, a former high-ranking officer in the French army and NATO, also sees this attack as a “way to achieve the morale of Ukrainians. As for Putin’s statements that he claims to have “revenged” for Ukraine’s use of American ATACMS missiles, the expert qualifies: “The Russian president will use this, but in any case, he would have carried out this massive attack no matter what. This is part of its major strategic axes: to press on the Donbass front, to continue to terrorize and strike vital Ukrainian installations, particularly energy ones, to continue to terrorize European populations with the threat of the use of nuclear weapons and to try to get closer to the Trump team.
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Should the West really be worried about the “Orechnik” experimental missile?
Our two experts both agree that the cluster bombs used by Russia on Thursday are effective. “When they explode in the air, rather than hitting a single location, these bombs distribute a number of locations. Then there are cluster munitions which can lay mines for example. (which poses problems for Ukrainians who have to repair the damage caused to infrastructure, Editor’s note). And then there are those which have small bombs and cause great damage over large areas.comments Dominique Trinquand.
Vladimir Putin also threatened to strike kyiv with his powerful experimental missile “Orechnik”. But can the Russian president carry out this threat? For the French general, the answer to the question is “yes”: “The Russian president has already used it once recently but without charge. It was an inert missile.”. Jean-Paul Paloméros is more cautious. “It’s a weapon that seems quite experimental to me, a missile that has been ‘tinkered with’. I know that there are analyzes being carried out on debris that have been recovered. So I don’t know, we’ll see in the near future if it reuses this type of weaponry.”
For the expert, one thing is clear: “This allows Putin to raise the nuclear threat. And that’s his goal. And that affects European populations more particularly than the Ukrainians themselves who see all kinds of bombs falling on them anyway.”
Should Europe therefore be afraid for its security? For Dominique Trinquand, Vladimir Putin is not ready for war with Europe. “If everyone says that this famous Orechnik missile could devastate Europe, the Russian president cannot afford such an escalation. By affecting a European country, it is attacking NATO and it does not have the means to confront it. For almost 3 years, Putin has managed to conquer just 20% of Ukraine. And the Ukrainian army is still holding out. As for him, he loses 30,000 men per month. He is not in a winning position. He is certainly in a position to gradually gain ground by weakening Ukraine – which he seeks to do on the front and in depth – but he himself is suffering big losses.” An opinion shared by Jean-Paul Paloméros who believes that the Russian army is already “overemployed in Ukraine”. The latter further adds that the Russian economy is “subjected to a severe test, even out of breath.“
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The Russians are advancing on the ground but…
On the ground, the Russians have made significant progress in recent weeks, notably getting closer to the strategic town of Kurakhove (in the Donetsk oblast). Dominique Trinquant tends to put things into perspective: “The Russians have been gradually getting closer to cities that are said to be strategic for months. When they took Bakhmout a year ago, it was strategic. But they did not go beyond Bakhmut…” Jean-Paul Paloméros recognizes the advance of the Russians but salutes the strength and intelligence of the Ukrainians: “They seem to see the real strategic issues. They are not going to fight for the sake of fighting. Perhaps they will accept that the Russians continue to advance slowly as long as they cannot advance towards big cities like Kramatorsk…”
On the other hand, our two experts agree on one point: Putin is likely to work harder soon. “Having as much land as possible when Trump comes to power is his goal.”confides Dominique Trinquand. “He declared that four oblasts would be annexed to Russia in September 2022. He does not want to see the end of January (and Trump’s takeover, Editor’s note) without these four oblasts being occupied by Russia. Otherwise, in some way, it will be a failure for him.”
Jean-Paul Paloméros goes in the same direction: “It is certain that Putin is trying to accelerate the movement for two reasons: because there is winter on the one hand, and above all he would like to be in an extremely favorable situation when Donald Trump takes power.”
