Avdiivka, Black Sea, and Navalny

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Crisis for Ukraine in Avdiivka

Dima predicts a steady Russian move westwards to a line well beyond Tonenke and Sierverne to places like Prohas, Komichivka, Netilove and Pervovmaiorsk. While there are no significant updates (yet) on other areas of Russian advance such as in and around Novomykhailivka, Staramaiorske, or Robotyne, and noting also the virtual collapse of the Ukrainian adventure in Krynky, the immediate if not longer-term future of Ukraine looks dire. It is even more acute, given that Congress has left for vacation without voting through an arms package for Ukraine. Even if the House of Representatives were to vote for passage of the Biden arms package on their return to Washington in early March (and such a vote currently seems unlikely) the first installment of the package would not arrive until May (not to mention that the chances of the availability of newly produced weapons before the end of the year do not seem high). Germany is talking about giving $7 billion to Ukraine (even though it cannot afford the required 2% of GDP for its NATO dues), an amount which would hardly help Ukraine survive for another six weeks, and exacerbate Germany’s economic crisis. It would be hardly enough to give Ukraine’s RADA the confidence to vote through the mobilization of 500,000. Even Ukrainian analysts are saying that Ukraine cannot afford to deal with the mobilization and training of more than 250,000. All this may incentivize Russia to make what progress as soon as they can, especially in these latter and muddier stages of the Winter. This would likely point to a major advance in Lyman-Kupiansk-Kharkiv areas, especially given the significant concentrations of Russian forces there, and given the context of recent Ukrainian bombings of civilian targets in Belgorod, and the successful Ukrainian hit of the Russian ship, the Caesar Kunikov.

Russian Black Sea Weakness

A number of successful Ukrainian attacks on Russian ships many employing newer generations of maritime drones (including the Magura-5, with a range of 450 nautical miles) in the Black Sea has allowed Zelenskiy to claim significant success, overall, in establishing a Black Sea corridor for Ukrainian exports following the collapse last July of a Turkish-brokered deal (the Black Sea Grain Initiative) with Russia and Ukraine. According to Ukrainian and US sources, 22.6 million tons of Ukrainian cargo have moved through the corridor in the past seven months and more than 700 ships have used the passage to the Bosphorus and beyond to world markets. The same sources say that $1.9 billion worth of Ukrainian exports were shipped by sea (out of a total of $3.4 billion). Some ships have offset the risk by taking up insurance through a scheme called UNITY, created by the Ukrainian government together with a pool of insurance companies. Such shipping has not been subject to Russian attacks (which has chosen, instead, to focus on port and storage infrastructure). One-third of the Black Sea fleet has been disabled or destroyed. Remaining ships rarely venture into the western half of the sea. Following successful Ukrainian missile attacks on Sevastopol last August, Russia withdrew some of the fleet to safer ports on the Russian coast.

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Editor's Note: Every major navy today faces the same problem: the inability to protect its ships from drone, rocket and missile attacks. The Russian navy entered the war with ships that, despite their modernity and capability in deep blue water zones outside the reach of drones, drone attack boats, missiles and rocketry, could not quickly develop efficient (technical and economic) countermeasures against such weapons. To date, no one has. That's why the US Navy, especially its carriers—big floating targets at the mercy of long-range missiles— could do little against Iranian missiles or even Yemeni  rockets. Same applies to US vessels challenging Russian or Chinese cities or installations near their shores. Big war navies are rapidly becoming obsolete due to the rise of these new technologies. —PG

Navalny

Scott Ritter today in an interview with Ania K says of him that he was not a good man, that he was a white supremacist (for example, he called Georgians cockroaches and advocated the shooting of Chechnyan Muslims) that he was a traitor to Russia who, in the 1990s, identified more with the West than with Russia. A lot of his funding came from non-Russian NGOs that were “democracy-promotion” fronts for Western intelligence. Ritter claims that Navalny was groomed, perhaps recruited, by the CIA at Yale (the paperwork that sent Navalny to Yale was signed off on, says Ritter, by then US ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul) with a view to returning him to Russia as an opposition figure whose purpose was to bring down Vladimir Putin. Navalny would have thereby weakened, not strengthened democracy in Russia, given Putin’s commanding position in all polls. Apart from the official Russian account, we dont know exactly how he died, but he had had medical problems for some time, and, when moved to a harsher prison within the Arctic circle (because of enhanced charges brought against him), doubtless found it difficult to adapt.

Satellites

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