Zakharchenko warns Poroshenko: Don't expect to gain military superiority

Kiev should not expect to gain military superiority over the militias of the people's republics, Aleksandr Zakharchenko said on Monday.

"If Poroshenko thinks that his army can compete with ours, let him see how quickly we took Uglegorsk," said Poroshenko, appearing before journalists together with the head of the LPR, Igor Plotnitskiy.

"They are throwing into battle untrained reservists who can't even tell the business end of a rifle. We have high morale, we have lived here, we live here now, and will continue to do so, this is our land," added Zakharchenko.

He reminded that, in view of another wave of Ukrainian mobilization, DPR and LPR made a decision to start the recruitment of volunteers into the militia, and called on the people of Ukraine to turn against the unnecessary war.

Translator's Note: Zakharchenko is not one to make offhanded comments, so the combination of the reminder how swiftly Uglegorsk was taken (the storming of Nikishino in another part of the Debaltsevo salient may have been intended to show Uglegorsk was nota fluke) and the announcement of the voluntary mobilization suggest that the days of standing pat and engaging in positional tit-for-tat may be coming to an end. Zakharchenko may be following the same negotiating strategy as Putin, which is "we can negotiate now, or we can negotiate later, under conditions less favorable to you." One should keep in mind that the first thing Zakharchenko did after the liberation of the Donetsk Airport was to...invite Poroshenko to meet him there, with the proviso that should that invitation be declined, another would eventually be tendered, but from a location closer to Kiev. The recent reports of the LPR combat aircraft being used for the first time similarly point to a possible transition to an offensive posture.

Now, the problem here is that Poroshenko is playing a so-called "two-level game", which is the equivalent of a chess player facing two opponents, on two different chessboards, and has to make the same move on each board. Given that chess is a strategy game, winning on one board all but guarantees losing on the other, which implies having to make a choice which board is the more important one. The players Poroshenko faces are Novorossia on one hand and the Right Sector/Kolomoysky/TerrBats on the other. However, there is no sign that Poroshenko had picked which game he is willing to sacrifice. But by shifting from one board to another, by trying to win both against Novorossia and against the Right Sector, he is actually increasing the possibility that he will lose both games. The unwillingness to fully close the Debaltsevo salient and transform it into a pocket may have been motivated by the desire to give Poroshenko the opportunity to put down the Right Sector decisively by using the UAF units in the salient. However, if Poroshenko is unwilling to use that opportunity and is continuing to treat Novorossia as an enemy comparable to the Right Sector, Novorossia may well return the favor.

Comment: As the Fort Russ editors have pointed out, the NAF has demonstrated some remarkable military prowess in the past month, a far cry from claims that they simply rely on artillery to scare Ukrainian troops into abandoning their positions. The Donetsk Airport, Peski, Popasnaya, Nikishino, Uglegorsk show what the NAF is capable of, and why Poroshenko should probably listen before it's too late. Here's the latest military update from South Front:

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