July 27th, 2022
Captain Darling: Look, this is the amount of
land we've recaptured since yesterday.
General Melchett: Oh, excellent.
Um, what is the actual scale of this map, Darling? –
Captain Darling: Um, one-to-one, sir.
General Melchett: Come again?
Captain
Darling: Er, the map is actually life-size, sir. It's superbly detailed. Look,
there's a little worm.
General
Melchett: Oh, yes. So the actual amount of land retaken is?
Captain
Darling: Excuse me, sir. Seventeen square feet, sir.
General
Melchett: Excellent.
Blackadder
Goes Forth
Situation on the ground
Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Ben Hodges is
correct. The Russian Army has reached culminating point. It is no longer capable of mounting large
scale offensives which is why President Putin has ordered an ‘operational
pause’. At the same time, Ukrainian forces is incapable of inflicting a
decisive defeat on Russian forces.
Therefore, unless the West collectively is prepared to go beyond simply delivering
some advanced weapons systems to the Ukrainians it is unlikely Kyiv will be
able to recover the 25% of its territory it has already lost to the Russians. The direct involvement of Western forces is
extremely unlikely, and even the indirect involvement through the imposition of
a no fly zone is also very unlikely.
Richard Moore, Head of Britain’s
Secret Intelligence Service, confirmed the sorry state of Russia’s armed forces
at a speech to the Aspen Security Conference during which he said the Russian
Army is exhausted, although London remains bullish about the possibility of
further Ukrainian gains if properly supported. London also estimates that some 15,000 Russian
troops have been killed in action since February 24th, roughly the
same number lost during Moscow’s disastrous campaign in Afghanistan between
1979 and 1988. However, whilst most democracies struggle to balance time, space
and casualties in a war, the Russian way of war is to partly offset
incompetence by out-lasting an enemy by trading time and space for casualties.
Hence the high death toll each hard yard (seventeen square feet) is exacting on
both sides. The US intelligence community believes that Putin remains committed
to a long war and his ambitions remain the seizure of much of eastern and
southern Ukraine, control over all of Ukraine’s grain producing regions to the
west of the River Dnipro. From north to south these are the Cherniv, Sumy,
Poltova, Kharkiv, fifty percent or so of Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia, Kherson,
Mykolaiv and Odessa in addition to Donetsk and Luhansk.
The Ukrainians are fighting as clever
as they can, by maintaining a significant counter-attack on Kherson in the
south west of the strategically-critical River Dnipro and Russian forces in the
area are at increasing risk of destruction, partly due to new long-range
weapons systems, such as HIMARS and Harpoon.
However, Ukrainian forces have also paid a grievous price blocking
repeated Russian attacks and for President Putin the Ukraine War is the
culmination of his life work and must be seen as an extended campaign, not a
battle. President Putin has to given up on his ambitions of re-creating
Novorossiya. Henceforth, Russia will resort to grinding its way forward over
space and time.
President Putin also faces
several dilemmas. In Ukraine, Russian commanders face a difficult choice
between attempting to maintain the stuttering offensive in the Donbas or
defending the territory they have seized in the south and west which is also subject
to increased partisan activity. This
explains the relatively small-scale of the Russian offensive along the
Lyschansk-Bakhmut-Donetsk axis. Putin also has to decide what level of
mobilisation he is prepared to resort to given the weaknesses from which the
Russian Army are suffering, particularly manpower. It may be that Moscow is no
longer able to sustain the Russian way of war without over time facing a
mounting threat to the survival of the regime. Russia would need at least
500,000 reasonably-capable troops to secure Moscow’s stated war aims which is
unlikely whilst the advanced age and poor quality of many of those being
recruited lends further credence to Moore’s thesis. A leaked closed poll last
week conducted by the Kremlin suggested some 33% of Russians want an immediate
halt to the war. The likely level of discontent is probably higher, although
this is unlikely to lead to any major policy change in Moscow in the short term
and Putin’s approval ratings are still robust.
Geopolitical appreciation
The geopolitical backdrop to the
Ukraine War has not been given sufficient attention. Last week at a meeting in
Tehran Putin met with President Erdogan of Turkey (henceforth, apparently, to
be known as Turkiye) and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini. Putin’s immediate purpose was to seduce
Turkey into an anti-Western grouping and thus ease Ankara’s support for Kyiv.
Over the medium-term Putin would like to join with Iran and Turkey to divide up
both the Black Sea Region and the Caspian Sea Region into three spheres of
respective influence.
If Putin could engineer such a
grouping that had more political substance than a photo op it would not only
mean trouble for NATO and the West. During
the Tehran meeting Erdogan threatened to ‘freeze’ the accession of Finland and
Sweden to NATO. It seems ‘Turkiye’ is open to the highest
bidder. It would also give further
impetus to Putin’s real war aims in Ukraine which are threefold: the
re-establishment of Novorossiya; control of the Ukrainian bread-basket west of
the River Dnipro; and the political subjugation of Kyiv. Novorossiya looms
large in Putin’s Peter the Great fantasies of a greater Russia. In fact it was Catherine
the Great who in 1764 conquered the lands of what is now southern Ukraine from the
Donbas to the Moldovan border following the defeat of the Crimean Khanate and the
fading Ottoman Empire.
On Friday, Russia and Ukraine signed
a UN-brokered deal in Istanbul to enable Kyiv to resume grain exports from
blockaded Ukrainian ports. The deal should not be seen as a sign that Russia is
moderating its position, rather than Moscow demonstrating that it is Russia
which decides when Ukraine can export food vital to the people of the
developing world, and when not. Russia
is the largest exporter of grain in the world controlling some 18% of the
market. If Russia can control Ukrainian
grain exports it would command some 25.4% of the world market. Given the importance of this grain to many
poorer countries control of Ukrainian grain has for Russia a geopolitical value
that far outweighs any market value.
The rest of Europe? Last month Russia
closed the Nordstream 1 gas pipeline
again for further ‘maintenance’ and it is still only operating at 40% capacity.
The message to Berlin, the only European capital that matters to Moscow that
Russia can close down much of the German economy and much of the rest of Europe.
The real price of the folly of Merkel’s Ostpolitik
is only now becoming truly apparent. The real struggle will begin in November
as temperatures fall and Berlin has to decide which is more important –
powering industry or heating homes. For
example, the main BASF plant at Ludwigshafen burns half as much gas as Denmark
each day. Given such pressures Putin does not believe that Germany, or indeed, France
are deeply committed to Ukraine’s struggle or that much of Western Europe’s
population would be willing to endure gas rationing for the sake of Ukraine.
Evidence suggests he may be right. Germany’s
support for Ukraine has been at best very lukewarm whilst France’s call for Russia
not be ‘humiliated’ in Ukraine is in fact a metaphor for appeasement. Consequently, for all the wishful thinking in
parts of Western media Putin believes time is on his side and that he will not need
to begin negotiations until mid-2023 at the earliest, when the
regional-strategic situation will tilt in his favour.
Conclusion and assessment
The West faces a difficult
dilemma if the fragile coalition that has supported Ukraine since February 24th
is to survive the winter. Indeed, if
there is a West it needs to collectively decide what would hurt Russia without
blowing the coalition apart. The US decision to supply US supply F-16s to
Poland so that Warsaw can transfer Mig-29s to Ukraine is an important step
forward and is to be welcomed if confirmed. To re-state, supplying advanced
weapons systems is vital for enabling Kyiv to stay in the fight. However, there
are limits to how much can be supplied and what effect they will have, not
least due to the degrading of weapon stocks vital to Allied forces.
What would further hurt Russia? At
the very least, the West must reinforce its unity of purpose and effort and
significantly increase the costs to Russia for its actions. If the West is not
going to engage directly in the war then in addition to arms shipments and
force training far tougher sanctions will be needed, together with far more
assertive diplomatic action. Sanctions
on electronic components are already preventing Russia from increasing the
production of advanced weapons systems. Critically, the Chinese have not funded
any new infrastructure projects in Russia for several months. Not only is Beijing dealing with a pandemic-induced
economic crisis but many Chinese businesses (and thus the Chinese state) seem
concerned they will suffer from secondary sanctions introduced against
Moscow. For all the rhetoric about the
Chinese-Russian strategic partnership it is the democratic world that makes
China rich and powerful, not Russia. Current diplomatic efforts to convince
African and Middle Eastern countries to condemn the invasion also need to be
stepped up in conjunction with a strategy to ease the reliance of many of them
on Russian and Ukrainian grain.
Above all, if Western Europeans
really are serious about their support for the Ukrainian people then their
respective leaders will need to properly prepare Europe’s peoples for the
coming hardships whilst their respective leaders ween their respective
economies off Russian oil and gas supplies. If not, then the ‘most’ that can be
expected is a kind of ‘frozen warflict’ in Ukraine which in time will lead to
something not unlike the 38th Parallel and the division of the two
Koreas. Such a division would suit
Moscow as it is almost certain that Berlin and Paris would also over time first
afford Russia de facto recognition of
its conquests, and in time possibly de
jure recognition.
For those Europeans who talk
endlessly about values and a values-based foreign policy it is thus a seminal
moment. In the face of Russia’s
monumental breach of international law many who espouse such a creed seem
dangerously close at times to tacitly accepting the Realpolitik of Russia’s
actions even if they publicly condemn them. In which case, to quote The Who, meet
the new boss, just like the old boss!
The quote from Blackadder Goes Forth was not meant as
truculence, but rather to capture the essence of warfare when a military
culminating point has been reached, but there is no political solution in
sight. Ukraine could still win this war but the real question is not what
President Zelensky might settle for, but just how much does the ‘West’ want
Ukraine to win, and how far collectively ‘we’ are willing to go and suffer in
support.
Julian Lindley-French
