The Ukraine breach showed that Russia's defense of its national borders had apparently been neglected for decades because no one expected anyone to attack the world's second-largest military and second-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.
This is what former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Milen Keremedchiev told FOCUS.
This neglect and relaxation of control, he said, has played a bad joke on the Russian side. "It was seen that the Russian borders are clearly very poorly guarded and Russia is vulnerable,” Keremedchiev pointed out.
The attack of the Ukrainian army in the Kursk region has several goals, explained the former deputy minister of foreign affairs. "To show Russia's vulnerability and raise the spirit and morale of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Second – the opportunity to divert as many Russian troops as possible from the battlefield in Ukraine.“
The situation for Russia at the moment is difficult, Keremedchiev believes. According to him, the Russian command made a mistake by sending a regular army of mercenary and insufficiently experienced soldiers to repel the well-organized and precise Ukrainian attack. "After seeing their mistake, they withdrew nearly 10,000 troops from the Ukrainian front, but they are a small fraction of what is needed to repel the already entrenched Ukrainian enemy. To repulse the attack of the Russian army, it needs two to three times more troops than the one that Ukraine has brought into Russia at the moment. According to estimates, between 6 and 10 thousand Ukrainian soldiers are on Russian territory, i.e. Russia should withdraw between 20 and 30 thousand military personnel from its reserves, he explained.
Russia is showing weakness, the former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs is categorical. "We see that Putin is also constantly changing military commanders, appointing more and more close associates. It is obvious that he is dissatisfied and has clearly been misled once again by his senior military, as he was misled two years ago about the state of the Russian army, expecting it to be in a much higher combat capacity,” commented Keremedchiev.
A year after Prigozhin's rebellion, Russia has not learned its lesson, he believes. "That Prigozhin managed, to everyone's shock, to reach almost within Moscow's reach should have been a wake-up call to the military and to Putin's inner circle, and to see where things really went wrong in terms of the defense capabilities of Russian army. Apparently no such lesson was learned. It mainly relies on its nuclear force as a deterrent to an attack on its territory”, commented Milen Keremedchiev.
Vladimir Putin's tour in Chechnya and the North Caucasus regions aims to negotiate support from their side, the diplomat explained. "Chechen fighters will be used in two directions – a serious professional rebuff of the elite Ukrainian units and cutting off the path of panic retreat of the demoralized Russian army”, Keremedchiev also explained.