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The Ukrainian authorities did not hide their relief on Monday evening. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, like the mayor of the municipality, thus announced the reprise d’Irpin, in the northwestern outskirts of kyiv, from the hands of Russian forces. A victory all the more important at first glance as Irpin appears as a lock opening on the capital.
However, on BFMTV this Tuesday, our experts nuanced this triumphalism, seeing in this undeniable success of the Ukrainian army an element more likely to galvanize local resistance than to carry the military decision.
kyiv breathes better
Nothing destined Irpin, a medium-sized town of 60,000 inhabitants – and today deserted of its civilian population – located about twenty kilometers northwest of kyiv, to international fame. But, lost to the Russians in the early days of l’offensive launched on February 24, it now embodies the new impetus that animates the Ukrainian troops. On Monday, the authorities thus welcomed its recovery.
In a televised address, Volodymyr Zelensky launched in the evening: “The occupiers have been pushed out of Irpin and kyiv.” “But it is too early to say that the place is now safe, the fighting continues. Russian troops control the northern region of kyiv,” he added.
Joined by BFMTV on Tuesday, Oleksandr Markouchyne, the mayor of Irpin, was jubilant. “Since yesterday the city is 100% Ukrainian”.
“Today we are doing everything to check that there are no more Russian soldiers,” he added. 876450610001_6302143264001
In the press around the world, we evoke on this occasion the return to the Ukrainian fold of a decisive municipality, a “lock” controlling access to kyiv. Sign of the interest shown by Irpin, the local soldiers – then in full retreat – had taken care at the end of February to destroy the bridge connecting it to the capital when they were forced to abandon it.
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“A bit like Cergy-Pontoise for Paris”
General Jérôme Pellistrandi, BFMTV’s consultant for military affairs, resituated: “To have an order of ideas and for viewers to understand, Irpin for kyiv is a bit like Cergy-Pontoise for Paris in terms of distance. It’s both near and very far.” The officer learned from the news of his recovery a first lesson: “The Russians realize that in the current state of their forces, they are no longer in a condition to conquer kyiv.”
“This announcement shows that the Russians can no longer make progress. However, the capture of kyiv was the priority on February 24,” he observed.
A “mini-Stalingrad” which should not change the game
But how to analyze this Russian retreat a few days after the Kremlin said it now intended concentrate one’s war effort in the east of the country, and more specifically the Donbass? “We must be wary of both the great victory of the Ukrainians and a complete retreat of the Russians, who no longer intended to engage in the battle of kyiv in the short term”, remarked the editorialist of BFMTV for international issues. , Patrick Sauce who, paraphrasing the playwright Jean Giraudouxadvanced:
“The kyiv war will not take place”.
For him, it is now a question of dissociating “two elements” – of unequal values - after this recovery of Irpin which he underlined that it was still “within reach of the Russian artillery”: “The symbolic , which is still very strong, the strategic element which is still a little less so”. “For the Ukrainians, it’s a mini-Stalingrad: they succeeded in pushing back the Russians”, compared Patrick Sauce.
“It means that not only is kyiv holding but that the noose is loosening,” he added.
Concretely, however, the turn of the fighting should not be radically changed. After all, if Irpin was such a lock on the road to kyiv, the Russians should have had the opportunity to take advantage of the weeks when the city was in their possession. However, they never managed to penetrate the opposing capital.
“The Russians wanted to open up the royal road, the northwest road to kyiv and for two weeks they saw that it was not working. That’s why we stayed on this front line”, supports our columnist.
The southern route
Moreover, the loss of Irpin and Moscow’s renunciation of the fall of kyiv does not mean that the Russians do not intend to linger in the region and hinder their enemy’s possible progress.
“We have confirmation that the Russians – with or without Irpin – are burying themselves, building trenches on the outskirts of kyiv, mining passageways and settling in to try to maintain the pressure”, developed General Jérôme Pellistrandi.
Perhaps we should look elsewhere to hope to burst the abscess definitively. The Ukrainians have indeed started the counter-offensive on another theatre: the South-East. And they there are also picking up the hair of the beast in the absence of cities at this stage. “Other cities in the south could be liberated in the coming days, this time with a symbolic and strategic dimension, on the side of Kherson, widely threatened for the Russians”, highlighted Patrick Sauce who even estimated: “It wouldn’t be surprising to see Ukrainians going all the way to the border, that is, Crimea.”
Original article published on BFMTV.com
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