The pros and cons for Putin of a big push at Ukraine’s Sumy front

Donald Trump, when asked about reports that Russia is gearing up for a large-scale offensive in Ukraine’s Sumy Region, told the media earlier in the week: “We’ll see what happens. I’m watching it very closely.”

This follows the Wall Street Journal’s report alleging that Russia has assembled 50,000 troops in preparation for that. A Russian security source denied such plans in comments to TASS, however, and instead described the aforesaid claims as part of a GUR disinfo campaign to fearmonger about Russia.

TASS’s source, while also claiming that Ukraine also does indeed have quite a few border fortifications there unlike what the WSJ wrote, also put forth the hypothesis that GUR wants to discredit the Defense Ministry in general and Commander-in-Chief Alexander Syrsky in particular.

Whatever the truth may be, what’s known for sure is that the Sumy region falls within the “buffer zone” that Putin spoke about carving out in late May, the strategy of which was analyzed here at the time.

The larger context concerns the realization that “The Russian-Ukrainian Talks Are At An Impasse That Only The US Or Brute Force Can Break.” Absent any serious efforts by Trump to coerce Zelensky into the concessions that Putin demands for peace, Russia might thus continue resorting to brute force to ensure its security interests, especially given the window of opportunity that reportedly just opened up. This is connected to Politico’s recent report about the Pentagon halting some promised munitions to Ukraine.

According to Politico’s sources, this includes “missiles for Patriot air defense systems, precision artillery rounds, Hellfire and other missiles that Ukraine launches from its F-16 fighters and drones.”

The decision was reportedly made in early June, so shortly before Israel launched its sneak attack against Iran on day 61 of Trump’s 60-day deadline for agreeing to a new nuclear deal. The timing consequently suggests that this aid that was promised to Ukraine during the Biden era might have instead been redirected to Israel.

This makes sense seeing as how Trump knew about Bibi’s plans ahead of time and likely would have ordered the Pentagon to prepare for the possibility of a large-scale conflict erupting in the aftermath. The US stockpiles were already running low even before the 12-day war that followed, in which the US directly participated by bombing three Iranian nuclear facilities – so it was inevitable in hindsight that the United States’ prioritization of Israel’s security needs would come at Ukraine’s expense.

All of this sets the stage for that large-scale offensive that Ukraine claims Russia is gearing up for while Russia denies it and the US is closely monitoring just in case. On the one hand, Russia could try to take advantage of the reduction in US military aid to Ukraine to push its buffer zone deeper into Sumy Region. On the other hand, it might not be the walk in the park that the WSJ claimed, and Trump could overreact to any major Russian gains by “escalating to de-escalate” at the risk of ruining the fragile peace process.

From Trump’s viewpoint, the optics of Russia gaining lots of ground right at the moment when the US curtailed crucial military aid to Ukraine could lend false credence to conspiracy theories about collusion between him and Putin, while his legacy would be tarnished if the US then “lost Ukraine” as a result. These perceptions raise the chance that he’d overreact to that scenario. Therefore, Putin, to avoid jeopardizing talks with Trump, might disapprove of carrying through with such military plans if he even had those plans to begin with.