Vladimir Putin invested between 70 and 75 percent of his war potential in the invasion of Ukraine, but the force at stake was still contained by Kiev, he said during a hearing of the Senate Armed Forces Commission on Tuesday. General Tod Wolters , who heads the European command of the US army and serves as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.
And it is probable that the withdrawal from the capital towards the eastern areas is a choice dictated not by second thoughts or a desire for peace, but rather by the awareness that the front would not have broken through and therefore it would have been better to dedicate oneself to other areas before sitting down seriously at the table. negotiation.
So much so that Russia continues to show off and will to conquer and advertise its military capabilities, parts of a propaganda that also includes specific elements such as hypersonic missiles fired “repeatedly” at Ukrainian targets, the American official said. . Yesterday it seems that three of these bombs were launched on the region of Odessa, a city in the south-west that would be decisive for the continuation of the conflict.
General Wolters added that launching those missiles which are theoretically impossible to stop was meant to “frighten the hearts of Ukrainians”. “Most of these attacks were designed for specific military objectives”, but the meaning is above all to intimidate the population about Russian war superiority and probably broaden the message to Europe, where citizens should be led to fear potential reactions of Moscow in the face of tough positions adopted by their governments on the situation.
An exercise that serves to create chaos within the public debates of Russian rivals / interlocutors and which has found hold in various parts of the world: for example, several commentators have launched into explaining that perhaps Kiev should have surrendered to the supposed prevailing force of Putin. Assumption that then gradually diminished over time, because now, with six weeks of proactive Ukrainian resistance, this line is difficult to maintain reasonably and in good faith.
Moscow revealed on March 19 that it had used hypersonic “Kinzhal” missiles to destroy a large arms depot in Ukraine’s western Ivano-Frankivsk region, among other targets, making Russia the first nation to deploy such missiles in the war phase. Then he used them other times, as Wolters recalled, and according to some reconstructions they could also have made target errors.
On the other hand, according to Pebtagono, 60 percent of the cruise missiles fired by Russia in Ukraine (we are talking about a few hundred) have fallen off target or have had problems in operation. Among these, the Kinzhal of Ivano-Frankvisk could have ended up on a farm and on another non-military and not important building, have reconstructed the war experts of The Drive site (among the best in circulation). Even the assumption is that in that specific situation it was not a hypersonic missile, despite the Kremlin’s sensationalism.
The Kinzhal, which in Russian means dagger, is also known as “Dagger” and has the fundamental characteristic in the ability to fly at Mach 5, ie five times the speed of sound, in some versions and in others up to Mach 10. It can load a 1000 kg conventional bomb or a nuclear warhead and has a firing range of up to 2 or 3 thousand kilometers, depending on whether they are launched by a Mig31 or a Tu22M; therefore theoretically it could penetrate the European air defenses and hit Berlin or Rome, in a maneuverable way and this would allow it to be even more difficult to intercept by the NATO air defense systems.
“The missile maneuvers at speeds several times faster than the speed of sound allow it to reliably bypass all existing or developing air defense and anti-ballistic systems,” explained the commander-in-chief of the Russian aerospace force, Sergei Surovikin in 2018. , when the Kremlin began disseminating information – for propaganda, deterrence, advertising purposes – on its new hypersonic weapons.
“They have to take into account a new reality and that this is not a hoax,” said Vladimir Putinwhen four years ago he presented the weapon aimed at Western governments. The symbolic role that the Putinian narrative entrusts to the Russian strategic missile forces can be represented with the idea of the Kremlin to demonstrate its military capabilities in the Yasnensky exercise, in the Orenburg region, near the border with Kazakhstan, carried out days ago, that is in the middle of the Ukrainian war – again with the aim of sending a frightening message to Kiev and NATO.
The Kinzhal and other Russian hypersonic missiles are still in an experimental stage, and use in Ukraine is also needed in this. Moscow tests certain new weapons in the field, and each test is useful for improving them. Production is still limited, but the Russian goal – in addition to impressing Western public opinion – could also be to fix technical aspects. Hence: it is possible that employment in the Ukrainian conflict also serves as an excellent form of advertising, potential customers watch carefully (reviving the military industry will serve to recover from the weight of the weight of the war).
