TO
lack of more or less With two months to go until the start of the autumn, when the rains and muddy ground in the main battlegrounds in Donbas (Donetsk and Lugansk) and in the Russian region of Kursk, make it difficult to move troops and weapons, everything indicates that the current balance of power could only change depending on who is elected president of the United States, Ukraine’s main supporter.
Whether Democrat Kamala Harris or Republican Donald Trump takes over the White House, regardless of what European countries can or want to contribute, will determine how much financial and armament support Kiev will be able to receive from Washington to confront Moscow’s military attacks. But even if Trump wins, Ukraine does not have to throw in the towel; it will simply return to a situation of shortages of all kinds, similar to the one it had this spring when the six-month delay in the US Congress to authorize the umpteenth aid package facilitated the start of the Russian offensive in the Donbas.
As autumn approaches, it seems clear that Ukrainian troops have stopped the Russians 10 kilometres from Pokrovsk, forming several fortified lines with reinforcements, while the Russian General Staff has been reporting daily for weeks on the capture of insignificant villages on the flanks, which, in a distant perspective, could lead to the tactical strike of surrounding the Ukrainian units defending that area.
And the Ukrainian troops, who a month after crossing the border occupied 1,300 square kilometers of Kursk, an affront to the Kremlin rather than a military victory, cannot, after blowing up the bridges over the Seim River, close the circle around the 2,000 to 3,000 Russian soldiers in the Glushkovo district, because it is very risky to try to do so as long as they do not manage to destroy the six pontoons that Russia has built to maintain the logistics of its troops there.
Realistically, the war will not end when the Russians succeed in occupying Pokrovsk, nor if they are unable to expel the Ukrainians from the Kursk territory they control. Both Moscow and kyiv are waiting for the outcome of the US elections to be able to think about their military operations, with greater or lesser relief, next winter.
