Putin's "no-exit strategy" gamble

There is a rather fundamental question that needs to be asked about Putin's 'maskirovka' strategy in giving the 'green light' to the releasing of a spate of bombings in Kharkov.

As Simon Shuster reports from Kharkov,

"Soon after midnight on April 1, a separatist group calling itself the Kharkov Partisans issued another one of its video warnings to the Ukrainian government. It claimed that within the next 48 hours a bomb would explode far behind the front lines of the war in eastern Ukraine. “As of now, the earth will begin to burn beneath your feet,” said the group’s spokesman, Filipp Ekozyants, in the message to Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko and his top security officials.

Sure enough, the bomb arrived. Though reports have been conflicting as to the damage it caused, a large explosion rang out in the southwestern part of Kharkov, Ukraine’s second largest city, within 24 hours of the Partisans’ threat." (Time : 10 April, 2015) (my emphasis)

As these bombings are taking place, Melik Kaylan (left) informs us that,

"Russian forces busily resupply for Ukraine ahead of a Spring offensive, according to numerous sources including a former head of Nato.  According to my own sources in Ukraine, where I was two weeks ago, Russian military assets have spread broadly all along Ukraine’s eastern border formed up in three waves in order to stretch and overwhelm Ukrainian defences across an entire front." (Forbes : 10/04/2015)
 
For more than a month it has become more and more apparent that Putin is determined to create a landbridge between Russia and Ukrainian Crimea by invading the strategic city of Mariupol.

Clashes between Putin's rebel proxies and his Russian soldiers have recently increased in both intensity and confrontations with the Ukrainian armed forces.

As Natalia Zinets reports,

"The enemy has significantly intensified firing on our positions from weapons that according to the Minsk agreement are meant to have been withdrawn," Kiev's military spokesman Andriy Lysenko (left) said in a televised briefing, adding that the majority of attacks had taken place around the airport of rebel-held Donetsk." (Reuters : Fri Apr 10, 2015) (my emphasis)

"Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe monitors have come under fire by Kremlin-backed separatist forces in Donetsk Oblast's Shyrokyne, casting more doubt about the durability of a cease-fire reached in February.
A statement issued by the organization's Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine on April 8, said the incident occurred at an improvised roadblock about 20 kilometers east of Mariupol on April 7.", as reported by Allison Quinn. (right) (KyivPost : April 8, 2015) (my emphasis)

Allison Quinn further reports that,

"The Security Service of Ukraine has detained 29 people in Odessa accused of plotting political assassinations as part of a wider scheme to destabilize the region, the head of the agency announced.
"As of today there are 29 people (in custody), most of them are Ukrainian citizens," Valentyn Nalyvaichenko said at a briefing on April 9.
"They were preparing for ordered political killings ... to begin seizing the territory and splitting Odessa off from Ukraine," Nalyvaichenko said, adding that the suspects had planned to kill a local lawmaker and several activists." (KyivPost : April 9, 2015) (my emphasis)

All of these current events point to the fact that Putin has no exit-strategy from his war with Ukraine.

Neither Putin, nor his kleptocratic 'siloviki' clan that surrounds him, can be seen to retreat from his  grandiose 'imperial' aims that his propaganda machine has subjected the minds of the Russians to.

Putin's 'siloviki' clan that now surrounds him

          Fradkov                     Shoigu                    Patruschev                   Kolokoltsev                   Bortnikov

Putin is now throwing everything, short of his 'nuclear' kitchen sink, at ensuring that his imminent invasion of Mariupol is not met with defeat.


A defeat for Putin will spell the end of him. The Russian public will not forgive him. His 'aura' of invincibility, that has been force-fed into the minds of the Russian people by his propaganda machine, will simply dissipate into thin air.

He may try to regain his 'invincibility aura' by continuing to demonise the west, but 'the die will be cast'.

The imminent invasion of Mariupol is the biggest gamble that Putin will be taking in his life. No longer can he view the Ukrainian forces with the contempt with which he viewed them when invading, and ultimately annexing, Ukrainian Crimea.

The Ukrainian forces are now battle-hardened. They have proved themselves to be more than a match for his rebel proxies and Russian soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

His imminent invasion of Mariupol will also be the tipping point at which Obama will have concede to the demands of both the House of Representatives and the Senate that the US supply Ukraine with defensive lethal weaponry.

Added to which, NATO members in Europe, especially the Baltic States and Poland, will be placed on 'high alert' should he invade Mariupol.

Such an invasion by Putin will neither be lost on Lukashenko, the President of Belarus, nor on Nursultan Nazarbayev, the President of Kazakhstan.

We are therefore left with two questions.

(1) Is all this military preparation by Putin for an invasion of Mariupol simply an elaborate
      'masquerade' to directly influence the upcoming meeting of EU leaders on 27 April
      that will address Poroshenko's request for European peacekeepers to help
      monitor the truce between Kiev and pro-Russian rebels, aimed at ending nearly a
      year of fighting?

OR

(2) Is Putin so infused with his KGB training never to double down, fight his way out,
     turn up the pressure, never admit, never retreat, that he will simply step into
     the abyss into an unsuspecting Black Swan event that will be precipitated by his
     invasion of Mariupol?

(to be continued)