I seldom mention to the military aspect of the war in Ukraine. In addition to being a civilian, even professional preparation here encounters considerable restrictions in the form of an intense information war that goes on in parallel with physical fighting in the field.
This reveals the broader property of our era of information civilization. The emergence of a global, cosmopolitan information network, capable of being operated by all social network, interactive connection with it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week utilizing a smartphone, a bandwidth allowing to communicate not in words, but live images – all of this did not increase the level of information, cognition of most people. On the contrary, erstwhile the lemish "megabit bomb" broke out, the excess of information and "information" makes us know little about reality. And this is the consequence of both naturally arising after the detonation of the "megabit bomb" chaos, as well as conscious treatments of political centres and their executive cameras, trying to direct this chaos and pour it into their heads.
From the position of more than 900 days of war in Ukraine on a large scale (because many indicate that not on a full scale) you can see that the Ukrainian side has achieved a advanced skill in conducting the information war. The future and future historians may answer the question of how the Ukrainians managed to accomplish specified craftsmanship. Whether they had waged an information war alone, or whether they could number on the support of "developed countries" in this regard. possibly we won't really know it from them. How many themes of political games, peculiar operations, or simply intriguing events from the Second planet War are inactive hidden in closets, in folders with “secret” griffin.
However, by observing the state of the Russian army, which inactive functions in contract contract contract contract mode alternatively than mobilization, as well as the state of the Russian society, actively supporting, or at least, in its mass, passively allowing the invasion, it is evident that it was not the Russians who were the victims of the Ukrainian information war. From the position of 2.5 years, it is increasingly evident that the information war waged by the Ukrainians was more effective than the Russians were. Judging by her tools – rhetoric and symbolism, this is how she was planned – to play on the strings of souls of Western people, their ideological views, cultural preferences, emotions. Unfortunately, after more than 900 days of this war, it can be concluded that Poles died the biggest victims of this information war.
Nowhere uncritical religion and reproduction of 1 to 1 Ukrainian communicative on military and political aspects of the conflict were and are not as strong as in Poland. It can be said that until this year our country, among politicians, journalists, publicists, was a message that Ukraine wins the war. Despite the fact that Russia occupied about 20% of Ukrainian territory, not the another way around. The minute erstwhile Ukrainians began their operation in the Kursk Oblast on 6 August, the fact that they occupied respective 100 square kilometres of Russian territory immediately triggered the same reflexes in Poland.
Ukrainians led respective air-supported brigades to attack rapidly breached the weak in the Kursk Oblast, Russian defensive lines encased with borderers and inexperienced conscripts. Last year's rally of Ukrainian forces was aimed at the neighboring region of Belarus. It took the Russians a week to stabilize the situation. Regional authorities were forced to evacuate over 100,000 Russian civilians. The Ukrainians now occupy about 1 30 area of the Kursk region, including 1 regional (powiat) city, respective twelve villages, and it does not appear that the Russians can easy kill them from there.
What's the meaning of this operation? It did not slow down the Russians' advancement in Donbasa. Their forces continued the attacks in the Donetsk Oblast. Their approach to Pokrovska, the logistics hub of the subregional importance and the attack from the Bachmut area is simply a tedious, slow build-up of a position on the approach to Kramatorsk and Slaviansk, without which the Russian slogan of "the liberation of Donbas" cast by the Kremlin at the turn of March and April 2022 remains empty.
It does not seem that the Ukrainian operation in the Kursk Oblast, has struck a plan of Russian concentration and impact elsewhere in the front, or that, on the another hand, it diverts Russian attention from the concentration of Ukrainian forces to an unexpected attack in a place unknown to us. There are no indications that 1 or the another have specified resources, opportunities.
It is more likely that the Ukrainians were referring to people (prisoners) and the land as tokens for a negotiated exchange. This is another signal that the political leadership of Ukraine agrees that the possible of sitting with the Russians at the negotiating table is no longer distant for her. Another thing, or so they see it in the Kremlin. The Kremlin's last messages seem to contradict it.
The territorial gains of the Ukrainians are very moderate, symmetrical about to the slices of the Kharkiv circuit, which Russian forces were able to take up and only partially keep after the May attack. Moscow is easier to quit due to the fact that it never announced their formal annexation.
The business of fragments of the Kursk region did not undermine the morale of the Russians and the social stableness of their country. On the contrary – the Russian media camera utilized it successfully for its communicative that in this war it was truly Russia defending itself. The business of Russian land caused alternatively consolidation of Russians “around the flag”, declarations of shock and loyalism fell even from any emigration Russian opponents.
I get the impression that the main nonsubjective of this Ukrainian military movement was to re-attract the attention of Western societies, tired or little frequently paying attention to the war in Ukraine, including of course Polish. Like last year's attempts at the offensive in the Zaporo region, the military operation was carried out for political reasons and is primarily part of the information war. It is intended to persuade and mobilise the elites and the societies of Western countries to increase the support that already depends on the functioning of all sector of the Ukrainian state, not only military but besides civilian – Ukraine's budget is under a permanent financial drop of its western partners. As it turns out, this, not small, dimension of support is not adequate anymore, and Ukraine is slow breaking under force from Russia. The Ukrainian operation in the Kursk Oblast is to convince us, besides that nothing is lost yet, and Kiev can accomplish its goals. This time the Ukrainians were so much wiser that they did not effort to make the attack a real military offensive, so they did not endure as severe a failure as those which they received in Zaporozh, which, after all, covered their propaganda and parroting Polish media for it.
Too early to yet measure Western reactions. The first signals propose that Kiev has not achieved its goal. Neither the U.S. nor any of its allies has announced anything that would mean an increase in material or operational support. Joe Biden inactive refused to usage U.S. missiles to destruct targets on Russia's internationally recognized territory. Washington even blocked the usage of British Storm Shadow missiles for this purpose, despite London's approval due to the fact that there are American components in these missiles. We may gotta wait for the election and change tenants in the White House. However, it seems that without crucial movements of the fresh U.S. president and a leap-up in the aid dimension for Ukraine, it will crush, faster or slower.
Let's yet ask a fundamental question. What if Russia wins? It will not win in the sense that it will take all Ukraine and Russian tanks to appear under another section of the Polish border, due to the fact that on another episodes with Russia we border straight (the royal circuit), or indirectly (Belarus). Not even in the sense that the Russians will occupy Kiev and in the remainder of Ukrainian territory will establish a satellite republic. This does not seem possible in the foreseeable perspective, besides due to the way Vladimir Putin's war is waged without wanting or not being able to, it is material for another text, announcing general mobilization, since autumn 2022 without even carrying out partial mobilization. But what if Russia wins in the sense that it will accomplish its goal already announced in the fiasco of the first expression of the peculiar Military Operation, the large miscalculation of Putin, who thought that the change of power in Kiev actually required only a demonstration of force, a police operation alternatively than a war operation, what if ‘the release of Donbas’, then Russia's seizure of the remainder of the Donetsk region became a fact? Are we inactive going to believe that this forceful confirmation of Moscow's actions in our part of Europe is her loss?
On the contrary, I believe that occupying the full territory of the Donetsk Oblast will be a Russian victory, which importantly strengthens the legitimacy of Vladimir Putin's rule, namely the durability and consistency of the Russian elite and its apparatus of power, strengthening Russia internally. However, it will above all be a signal received by everyone in the planet (at least those beyond the influence of propaganda, which we reproduce so widely in Poland), a signal of Russian affluence and confirmation of the credibility of its policy, its diplomacy referring to force. specified a signal will be received with certainty in the non-Western world, which fundamentally derailed US trials and their isolation camp of Russia and which ensured the functioning of its economy. Despite this, many in Poland inactive do not realize that this happened due to the fact that the non-West already creates specified a large space of circulation of capital, goods and technology, that 1 can stand on his feet and fight war even erstwhile limiting relations with the West.
The probable capture by Russia of Donbas and the possible frost of conflict in this form will keep Moscow as an unavoidable associate in global relations in Europe. Regardless of the possible continuation by the Western bloc of current mechanisms of its political, economical and social isolation and strategical deterrence.
It must be taken into account that the freezing of war in specified a constellation will trigger calculations to relax relations with Russia, including NATO. Starting with the U.S., which faces the necessity to face a challenge that has never been faced in past – China, they are entrenched in the political scrapie of the mediate East, one more time sucking American attention, resources and social emotions and which are already experiencing symptoms of "imperial drag". There is simply a situation in which Washington, by sending an aircraft carrier group USS Abraham Lincoln to the Arabian Peninsula coasts, is left without 1 aircraft carrier in the Indo-Pacific region, a top-class geopolitical theatre.
If the calculations for treating Russia as a partner can appear in the US, what can be written about Western European countries? And not just Western. After all, in the trend of fresh geopolitical realities Viktor Orbán was the first to sign up, and his Slovak neighbors, after Robert Fico regained power, have already pursued a much more ambitious policy towards Ukraine. What about Germany, France or Italy? Even now, the main European countries are incapable to sacrifice budgetary resources, and thus the current socio-political stabilisation and in the name of reinforcing and mobilising, which, in my view, is simply a condition for Washington to proceed to engage in repulsive policies in east Europe. Nevertheless, in Poland, we believe that they will do so erstwhile Russia reaches its stated goals in Ukraine, thus confirming its strength and perpetuity.
What if Russia wins in this sense? This question in Poland, the biggest victim of the information war, is not asked by anyone in the political and opinion-making elites, which supports writing about the answers to specified a question. And the full Polish policy and debate is going on like this option is completely impossible. The definition of strategical interests and the safety policy of the Polish State has been so closely identified with the interests and victories of Ukraine that in the end Poland began to be perceived in this way besides by another actors of this game. By Russia, I do not request to mention the consequences, but besides by the main Western states, including the US, which distance themselves and hoard initiatives more straight into the war in Ukraine, brought forward by subsequent Polish politicians who seem to be able to wage and win wars on account of the power of another country. This besides has its consequences in the form of diplomatic marginalization of our state – no one, including Western powers, needs in the political process an actor who takes on the function of the second Ukraine. The first 1 is enough. On the current railways of non-alternative policy we will stay on the margin and without cause, in precisely the same way as we were marginalized diplomatically in 2014, erstwhile Ukrainian drama began. Tickets, even tiny ones, will cut Hungary off from its policy alternatively than Poland.
What if Russia wins and stays in Europe? This question remains outside the spectrum of Polish politics and debate.
Krystian Kamiński
The author is simply a associate of the Main Board of the Confederation, he was a associate of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland for the 9th term
