ISW: Defensive lines being built inside Russia are a ‘waste of funds’
In their March 10 daily assessment of Russia’s offensive campaign, analysts with the American think tank Institute for the Study of War discussed recent construction of fortified defensive lines in Russia’s Belgorod and Kursk regions, as well as in Russian-annexed Crimea.
On March 9, Vyacheslav Gladkov, Governor of the Belgorod region, announced the completion of a fortified line along Belgorod’s border with Ukraine. Its construction, according to Gladkov, cost 10 billion rubles (around $132 million). The ISW report calls the expenditure “a likely waste of funds amid questions about Russia’s ability to fund its war effort in Ukraine.” The report also notes that manning defensive lines in Kursk and Belgorod, in areas not likely to see combat, will require more resources in terms of funds and personnel.
Similar defensive installations in Crimea “may suggest that Russian forces are unsure of their ability to hold occupied territories in southern Ukraine in the long term.” But the fortifications in Belgorod and Kursk, the ISW report says, are more likely part of “information operations that aim to portray Ukraine as threatening Russian territory in order to frame the war in Ukraine as existential for Russia.”
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