Ukraine’s top military expert has said that Kyiv has to make a “strategic, principal decision” on how to benefit from the unfolding turmoil in Russia.
One such move could be an order to invade western Russia to bypass massive defence installations on the 1,000-kilometre-long (620-mile-long) front line in eastern and southern Ukraine, according to Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko.
“Those who make unorthodox decisions and implement them will succeed,” the former deputy chief of Ukraine’s general staff of armed forces told Al Jazeera, adding that it was time to strike Russian forces in the back.
Such a plan looked like a “fairy tale” just a day ago, but the panic and disarray in Russia as troops of the Wagner private military contractor march on Moscow may provide Kyiv with a perfect opportunity to deliver the least expected blow, he said.
Ukraine’s Western backers will, however, inevitably step in to dissuade Kyiv from such decisions to avoid Moscow’s use of nuclear weapons, Romanenko added.
“Of course, our allies will meddle, will try to influence it somehow, in the ‘let’s-not-let-something-bad-happen’ way, to avoid escalation, the use of the weapons of mass destruction,” he said.
The path to western Russia has already been paved.
The Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC), a group of fugitive Russian ultra-nationalists fighting for Ukraine, has conducted three incursions into western Russian regions.
They were backed by former Russian war prisoners who fight for Ukraine, as well as by volunteers from neighbouring Poland and Belarus.
On June 1, they crossed into the western Russian region of Belgorod to attack Shebekino, a city of 40,000, and seize the village of Novaya Tavolzhanka. (AlJazeera)