In a new article titled “U.S. Warms to Helping Ukraine Target Crimea,” the New York Times reports that the Biden administration now believes Kyiv may need to launch an offensive on the territory that Moscow has considered a part of the Russian Federation since 2014, “even if such a move increases the risk of escalation.”
Citing unnamed US officials, The New York Times says “the Biden administration does not think that Ukraine can take Crimea militarily,” but that “Russia needs to believe that Crimea is at risk, in part to strengthen Ukraine’s position in any future negotiations.”
It’s hard to imagine a full-scale assault on geostrategically crucial territory long considered a part of the Russian homeland not causing a major escalation. And as Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp notes, smaller attacks on Crimea have indeed seen significant escalations from Moscow, contrary to claims laid out in the NYT article:
The New York Times report quoted Dara Massicot, a researcher from the RAND Corporation, who claimed that “Crimea has already been hit many times without a massive escalation from the Kremlin.” But Massicot’s claim is false as Russia began launching missile strikes on vital Ukrainian infrastructure in response to the October truck bombing of the Crimean Bridge.
Before the bridge bombing, Russia didn’t launch large-scale attacks on infrastructure in Ukraine, but now such bombardments have become routine, and millions of Ukrainians are struggling to power and heat their homes.
It’s been widely accepted among foreign policy analysts that Crimea is among the reddest of all of Russia’s red lines in this standoff. Back in October, Responsible Statecraft’s Anatol Lieven discussed the difference in Russia’s perspective between Crimea and every other territory that Ukraine lays claim to in an assessment of the possibility of this conflict leading to nuclear war:
If Ukraine wins more victories and recovers the territories that Russia has occupied since February, Putin will in my view probably be forced to resign, but Russia would likely not use nuclear weapons. If however Ukraine goes on to try to reconquer Crimea, which the overwhelming majority of Russians regard as simply Russian territory, the chances of an escalation to nuclear war become extremely high.
Decamp writes that “The lessening concern about Putin resorting to nukes appears to be based only on the fact that he hasn’t used any up to this point.” But this is as logical as believing that it is safe and wise to jump even harder on the sleeping bear you’ve been jumping on just because the bear hasn’t woken up yet.
The assumption that because a disaster has not happened in the past it will not happen in the future is a type of fallacious reasoning known as normalcy bias. The assumption that because a disaster has not happened in the past it will not happen in the future, even though you keep doing things to make it increasingly likely, is just being a fucking idiot. It’s like Wile E Coyote jumping up and down on the land mine until it explodes because it didn’t explode when the Roadrunner ran over it.
Insanely reckless from the Biden administration, and yet more signs we're barrelling into something disastrous. Numerous experts have said putting Russian control of Crimea in danger may be the most likely scenario for nuclear escalation. https://t.co/LoSV3esuLE
Moscow considers Crimea to be Russian. A year after Russia’s 2014 annexation, western sources acknowledged that Crimeans feel the same way. But it’s actually immaterial whether you agree with Moscow or with the Crimeans over the issue of whether Crimea should be a hot red line which could spark an insanely dangerous escalation, because your opinions about this issue will not prevent a nuclear war. Your disagreements with the Kremlin about Crimea will not protect you from nuclear fallout, and they will not protect anyone else.
Nuclear warheads don’t care about your feelings.
Any assertion that Russia will not use nukes under such-and-such a circumstance must squarely address this question: “Are you willing to gamble the life of every terrestrial organism on that claim being true?” If you can’t answer this question, your claim isn’t serious or valid.
Are US officials willing to bet the life of every terrestrial organism that the course of action they’re considering won’t trigger a chain of events leading to the end of the world? This needs to be addressed fully, head-on, with all the weight it entails, because otherwise they’re just not weighing the risks responsibly.
And something tells me that they are not.
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This is a dispatch from our ongoing series by Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin Johnstoneis a brave journalist, political junkie, relentless feminist, champion of the 99 percent. And a powerful counter-propaganda tactician.
The title of this article is a quote by the famous Chinese general, strategist, philosopher, and writer Sun Tzu who lived 2500 years ago. And while it is true that warfare has dramatically changed over the past millennia (for example, operational art was added as an intermediate level between tactics and strategy), the fundamental logic of Sun Tzu still applies. To grossly oversimplify this issue, you could say that tactics are the means toward an end that has to be defined and the definition of that end goal is strategy. Again, this is ridiculously oversimplified, but for our purposes that is good enough.
The above is highly pertinent to the situation in the Ukraine. But first, a crucial reminder: the Ukrainian military was pretty much destroyed in the first month of the war. Both Andrei Martyanov and I have written about this many times, but if you want to hear that from another source, I recommend this article by Big Serge on Substack (a good website that I recommend to all). Or listen to the Macgregor videos. And there are plenty more out there (Moon of Alabama is another good one).
During that first month of the war, the West was so busy trying to present the Russian incursion towards Gostmel as both:
A major Russian defeat and
A major Russian massacre of civilians
that the western media was focusing on that nonesense, while what was completely lost in this propaganda war was the destruction of the Ukronazi armed forces.
The Ukronazis, however, understood what was happening and agreed to negotiations. As we all know, the AngloZionists sent Bojo to Kiev to stop what looked like an imminent end to the war.
Anyway, let’s look at the goals of each side in the early phase of the war:
The Ukronazis were ready to attack the Donbass with the hope of repeating what NATO did to the disarmed Serbian “protection areas” in the Krajinas (operation Storm).
The Russians preempted that attack, but not by directly attacking the Ukronazi force in the Donbass, but by basically destroying the Ukronazi armed forces in the entire Ukraine.
By any standard of common sense the war should have ended in March. Why? Because, again, the entire Ukronazi military was basically destroyed and disorganized. Then the “geniuses” in the West came up with a very simply solution:
Send all of the former Warsaw Treaty Organization (not, it was never called a “pact”) equipment from all the former WTO countries to the Ukraine.
Send more Ukrainian soldiers to the frontlines
Initially, that approach looked very promising, but that did not last very long.
That 2nd iteration of the Ukronazi was also destroyed by Russia, albeit at a much slower pace because the Russians were faced with some very thorny problems:
A lot of the ex-WTO hardware was very effective, not only because Soviet kit generally is, but because much of it had been modernized.
The Ukronazis were more than willing to incur major losses if that could delay Russian advances.
The Russians simply did not have the kind of manpower needed for either static defense or even to control the entire line of contact.
And since the Russians chose a economy of force type of maneuver/mobile defense (which was their only option anyway since the Ukronazis vastly outnumbered Russians) they could not hold ground and that, in turn, meant that the local Ukrainians could not count on the Russians staying and protecting them.
The entire NATO C4ISR capabilities were gradually made available to the Ukronazis which seriously complicated Russian operations while greatly aiding the Ukrainian artillery and air force (hundred of ex-WTO aircraft were also delivered).
The Ukronazi forces in the Donbass were *very* seriously dug in (they had 8 years and an infinite amount of western money to build defenses!), and the Russians were not willing to sacrifice their soldiers in bloody frontal attacks. Using heavy weaponry was also not an option, because Ukronazis were hiding inside towns and cities and thus flattening the Ukronazi defenses would have meant killing thousands of civilians.
Yet, in spite of it all, Russia succeeded in destroying most of the ex-WTO hardware and forcing the Ukronazis into exchanging “bodies for artillery shells” – a crazy, immoral and futile tactic which simply could not be sustainable. As a result, the Ukrainian KIA/MIA figures further skyrocketed, but nobody in the West cared in the least.
What is important here is that not only did the Ukronazis lose a lot of hardware and soldiers, but they lost a lot of their *best* soldiers (entire brigades, and the best ones, were lost around Bakhmut!). That means that while NATO could tell Kiev to mobilize more and more men to send to the front, most of those which were mobilized and hastily trained could not really compensate for the huge Ukronazi losses. Training Ukrainian soldiers in the Ukraine was dangerous (the Russians missile strikes meant that nowhere in the Ukraine was there a safe location to do the training), and training the Ukrainians abroad was safer, but also required a much bigger effort for a much smaller force.
And, inevitably, the ex-WTO hardware delivered to the regime in Kiev in HUGE numbers was also gradually destroyed in Russian strikes.
Furthermore, geography is a bitch and, in our case, the entire Donbass is one huge cauldron, open only on the western side, which makes it rather tricky to plan anything more than small, local, attacks. For the Russians, however, this means that they can attack from any one of these axes: from the north, the East and the South or even any combination therefore. By now, following the partial mobilization, Russia does have the figures needed to chose any option she wants.
Pretty soon, the West ran out of ex-WTO weapons.
The West responded by sending wave after wave of “volunteers”, PMCs, even “deserters” (like this US Navy SEAL). Recruitment offices where hastily organized worldwide and the Russian side began hearing more and more radio transmissions not on Russian or Ukrainian, but in Polish and English (and even Arabic!).
The problem now is hardware.
First, NATO cannot replace “one for one” ex-WTO MBTs, IFV/APCs, SAM, etc. Not only is NATO hardware expensive, there are simply not enough stores to fully compensate for the huge losses inflicted by the Russians.
Second, WTO hardware was not only familiar to the Ukrainians, but it was much easier to secure the kind of supply/maintenance flows needed to operate it than would be the case with NATO hardware (which is mostly inferior to ex-WTO kit, with a few exceptions).
Third, most of NATO hardware performed terribly. None of the promised Wunderwaffen made any real difference, at least in military terms. In terms of murdered civilians, the Russians have now reported that since the delivery of long range munitions to the NATO forces in the Ukraine (because that is what they are), the number of civilian victims murdered by NATO has increased by a factor of four!
But, of course, nobody in the West cares about that.
Initially, the West responded by sending all its own surplus gear, old stocks, especially against a promise by the USA to compensate for these systems sent to the Ukraine with much newer systems. Pretty quickly those stocks ended up chewed-up by the Russian meat grinder too.
In other words, the Russians also destroyed this 3rd iteration of the “Ukrainian” military (in reality NATO military).
Which brings us to today’s situation.
The Empire is now facing a simple and extremely dangerous dilemma: NATO forces in the Ukraine are running out of both hardware and personnel.
If the West sends, say, a company or even a battalion of MBTs to Lvov and several Patriot batteries to protect Kiev, that will make no military difference on the ground. Yes, quantity does have a qualitative dimension and such limited deliveries of weapon systems and personnel might make for great “noise” (in Sun Tzu’s sense), but make no difference.
And if the West sends a large enough force to make a difference, that would inevitably result in a major continental war NATO cannot win.
This all begs the question: what is the West’s true goal in the Ukraine?
Let me suggest a few:
Prevent a Ukronazi/NATO defeat
Make the war as costly as possible for Russia
Save face
There are problems with all three of these goals, the main one being that none of them qualify as “strategy” (they are too vague to begin with). The second problem is that the West does not have the means to achieve any of these goals. And the third is by sticking to such utterly unrealistic goals will make the inevitable defeat and subsequent loss of face for the entire West even worse.
So what can the US/NATO bring to the table?
A world-class C4ISR (very useful, but also potentially very vulnerable)
A world-class submarine force (useful only to fire cruise missiles)
A large amount of subsonic and mostly outdated cruise missiles
A comparatively small ground force (with no real air defenses)
Air forces that have no experience operating in a *very* dangerous environment.
A very robust nuclear triad
Since we know from Sun Tzu that “tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat” we can immediately see that none of these capabilities has any chance to avoid a NATO defeat. In other words, US commanders will soon have to face an even worse choice: defeat or nuclear war.
I submit that the West currently has neither (real, meaningful) tactics nor any strategy.
None.
All I see is magical thinking, narcissistic delusions, a mindset shaped by centuries of relative impunity and an over-arching, blind, hatred of Russia and everything Russian.
Hardly the ingredients for a victory (under any definition thereof) against the most powerful continental warfare military on the planet.
—Andrei
ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCE
Andrei Raevsky (The Saker) is the founding editor of the eponymous-named sites dedicated to geopolitical analyses of the clash between the collective West and Russia.
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Thank God that the “ex-IMF chief” is no longer in charge of the IMF. I am not sure if the man is really this stupid or a shill who will say anything to support the failing Western meme about Russia.
Russia’s people face “incredible poverty” following Western sanctions in response to Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, according to the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.
Harvard professor Kenneth Rogoff said the country is headed towards being a new Cuba, Venezuela or “a giant Iran”.
Equating Russia’s economy with those of Cuba, Venezuela and Iran exposes Rogoff as an incompetent economist (Parents, don’t send you kids to Harvard). Let me present some facts:
If you have trouble with math let me help you out. Russia’s GDP is greater than Cuba, Venezuela and Iran combined (949.42 billion). But GDP says nothing about the underlying strength of any economy. Iran and Venezuela share something in common with Russia — all three are major oil producers, but Russia surpasses them. In 2022, Russia’s oil output increased by 2% despite onerous international sanctions. That is because Russia is not dependent on selling oil to the United States and Europe. Countries outside the Western sphere of influence — China and India in particular — have stepped up their purchases of Russian oil.
The nation is a leading producer of coal, diamonds, aluminum, asbestos, gemstones, diamonds, lime, lead, gypsum, iron ore, bauxite, gallium, boron, mica, natural gas, potash, platinum, oil, rare earth metals, pig iron, peat, nitrogen, cadmium, arsenic, magnesium, molybdenum, phosphate, sulfur, titanium sponge, silicon, uranium, tellurium, vanadium, tungsten, cobalt, graphite, silver, vermiculite, selenium, rhenium, copper, and gold.
These resources guarantee that Russia will not suffer the fate of Cuba, Venezuela or Iran. Russia is not dependent on trading with the United States and Europe. In fact, it appears that the United States and Europe need what Russia produces in order to keep their economies chugging along.
Here some video evidence that Russia today is light-years away from the old Soviet Union:
What the failed economist Rogoff fails to grasp is that the decision of the West to try to sanction and destroy Russia is precipitating the collapse of the post-World War II financial era dominated by the United States. One indicator of that is Saudi Arabia’s decision to entertain accepting payments in other currencies:
Saudi Arabia opens to settling trade in other currencies than the US dollar Saudi Arabia is open to discussions about trade in currencies other than the US dollar, according to the kingdom’s finance minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan, informs Bloomberg.
This is the start of a new world economic order. Maybe that is what haunts Rogoff.
Next up, Charles Lipson, who is “Peter B. Ritzma professor of political science emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he founded the Program on International Politics, Economics and Security, and a Spectator contributing writer.” Pretty impressive. Just more prima facie evidence supporting Andrei Martyanov’s scathing denunciation of “political science” as a fraudulent academic field. Lipson just wrote the following:
What’s happening on the battlefield itself? The fight has slowed over the past two months because of early winter weather. Now, as the ground freezes solid, Ukraine’s tanks and artillery are beginning to move again. The soft ground didn’t affect Russia, which relies on human-wave attacks by expendable soldiers and air attacks by Iranian-made drones. What has slowed them is the dwindling supply of precision weapons and conscripts. Putin can’t do much about the weapons, but he can do something about the manpower. He has secretly begun another round of mobilization, despite the political dangers. It’s one thing for him to round up men from outlying areas. It’s quite another to drag them off the streets in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the political heart of the country. Putin would only do that if he thinks losing the war would be even more dangerous. That is exactly the prospect he is facing if Ukraine continues its gains this spring and summer, and especially if it threatens to retake Crimea.
Right now, Russia is continuing its unsuccessful — and extremely costly — effort to take the cities of Bakhmut and nearby Soledar, as part of their failing attempt to consolidate control of the Donbas. Meanwhile, Ukraine is slowly advancing on two cities further north: Kreminna and Svatove. Those cities and the highway connecting them represent the next steps eastward after Ukraine’s capture of Lyman in October.
Ignore the fact the Russia has stepped up its missile strikes on key infrastructure during the past two months. If Ukraine’s tanks are moving and the Russians are losing, according to Lipson, then why does Ukraine desperately need hundreds of tanks from the West? If Ukraine is winning and Russia is being defeated on the battlefield, why is the West not preparing its victory party? Cobbling together a failed NATO summit in Ramstein this past week is not a sign that the West is confident of Ukraine’s military prospects.
Poor Professor Lipson apparently is not keeping up with current events and does not realize that not only has Russia captured Soledar (and some American soldiers in the process) but it has tactically encircled Bakhmut and is making rapid advances in Zaporhyzhia.
Lipson is repeating the propaganda from Kiev that Ukrainian attacks on Kreminna and Svatove are strategically important. Nothing could be further from the truth. Russia has now established fire control over the only lines of communication that provide supplies to the Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut. True to form, Russia is not divulging its plans, but the current movement of troops and artillery and air attacks strongly suggest that Russia is going to cut off Ukrainian forces east of the Dnieper River from resupply. Shades of Operation Uranus (i.e., the Soviet cauldron that encircled and destroyed the Nazi’s 6th Army at Stalingrad).
Let me conclude by posing a question — will the western cheerleaders for Ukraine ever admit that Ukraine is losing?
The title of the article asks “why” but the conclusion asks “will they admit”.
Let’s answer both:
1. Why? The west has devoured itself, destroyed all its industries and convinced itself that it is the s*it. Due to the newly acquired arrogance, it thought it can crush Russia but it backfired spectacularly. Like any good gambler at a casino, it will keep doubling down to zero. In addition to that, most people in the know understand that we lost and that Russia. China and BRICS are the new innovators and producers and that we are the dependent losers hooked on cheap junk, bored and decadent and picking arguments on social media over garbage that nobody considered just 10 years ago. Being weak and knowing it – is bound to make one jealous and sore losers who know they cannot win in a fight – run their mouths….
2. Will they admit defeat? No. The west is in an echo chamber (or more graphically – the ostrich with the head in the sand). It can also keep running up debt for a few more years until the combination of increasing debt/taxation intersects with the decrease in services provided for said taxation to its citizenry plus loss of USD as reserve currency, at which point riots will begin. Two possibilities: a) double down fast all the way to nuclear confrontation – some may subscribe to the theory that a festering gangrenous leg needs to be simply cut off instead of trying to save it or b) set up some situation where it looks like Ukrainians will be blamed for the failure of this confrontation and hope to prolong the coming economic decline and agony for a few more years.
Sorry if I sound like a pessimist but reality is what it is.
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Newly re-elected three-time Brazilian leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who’s popularly known as Lula, just shattered the foreign policy expectations of his multipolar base by becoming the first BRICS leader to publicly condemn Russia’s special operation. Unlike his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro who refused to do so and thus received a lot of flak in the US-led Western Mainstream Media (MSM) for his pragmatism, Lula crossed the line and even compared Russia’s involvement in Ukraine to the US’ in Venezuela.
In remarks that he made while in Buenos Aires on Monday, one of the literal founders of BRICS shockingly declared that “In the same way that I am against territorial occupation, as Russia did to Ukraine, I am against too much interference in the Venezuelan process.” Quite clearly, he was implying that Russia’s military efforts to restore the integrity of its national security red lines in Ukraine after NATO crossed them there are morally equivalent to the US’ unprovoked aggression against Venezuela.
SCO-led Global South of which Russia is a part. That said, so too do observers also have the right to critique his unexpectedly sharp attack against Moscow’s special operation, especially since it betrays the expectations of his multipolar base at home and abroad.
Brazil should seek to pragmatically balance between both de facto New Cold War blocs following the path pioneered by fellow BRICS member India over the past year instead of its leader inserting himself into the debate like Lula just did to make a hyper-partisan statement that’ll obviously offend his Russian counterpart. There’s little doubt that Lula is domestically aligned with the US’ ruling Democrats’ liberal-globalist ideology, but he still at least publicly claims to share Russia’s multipolarinternationalone too.
He could have expressed a much more balanced approach towards this conflict if he wanted to exactly as his counterparts in fellow BRICS members China, India, and South Africa have done over the past year. Instead, the same man who’s famous for his masterful use of words chose to compare Russia’s special operation in Ukraine to the US’ HybridWar on Venezuela, which makes one wonder whether this was a rare faux pas from that famous public speaker or a deliberately unfriendly statement.
Whatever his true intentions might have been, there’s no denying that his remark sends mixed signals, especially since it came on the same day that he declared Brazil’s interest in creating a common currency for BRICS. He’ll soon be headed for the US early next month though to rub shoulders with his country’s “frenemy” with whom it’s locked in a relationship of complex economic and military interdependence and which was responsible for his jailing a few years back.
It's indeed possible that Brazil can pragmatically balance between the US-led West’s Golden Billion and the jointly BRICS- and SCO-led Global South of which it’s a part just like India has successfully done, but for that to happen, then Lula’s rhetoric should replicate Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s wherein he declines to publicly condemn Russia’s special operation, let alone compare it to naked US imperialism. Hopefully this was just a rare faux pas by Lula and not a signal of what’s to come with his foreign policy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCE
Andrew Korybko is a Moscow-based American political analyst specializing in the global systemic transition to multipolarity.
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Analyses of the Ukraine War don't come much better than this.
SinceRussia’s surprise decision to voluntarily withdraw from the west bank of Kherson in the first week of November, there has been little in the way of dramatic changes to the frontlines in Ukraine. In part, this reflects the predictable late autumn weather in Eastern Europe, which leaves battlefields waterlogged and clogged with mud and greatly inhibits mobility. For hundreds of years, November has been a bad month for attempting to move armies any sort of significant distance, and like clockwork we started to see videos of vehicles stuck in the mud in Ukraine.
The return of static positional warfare, however, also reflects the synergistic effect of increasing Ukrainian exhaustion along with a Russian commitment to patiently attriting and denuding Ukraine’s remaining combat capability. They have found an ideal place to achieve this in the Donbas.
It has gradually become apparent that Russia is committed to a positional attritional war, as this maximizes the asymmetry of their advantage in ranged fires. There is an ongoing degradation of Ukraine’s warmaking ability which is allowing Russia to patiently maintain the current tempo, while it organizes its newly mobilized forces for offensive action in the coming year, setting the stage for cascading and unsustainable Ukrainian losses.
In Ernest Hemingway’s novel, The Sun Also Rises, a formerly wealthy, now down on his luck character is asked how he went bankrupt. “Two ways”, he replies, “gradually and then suddenly.” Someday we may ask how Ukraine lost the war and receive much the same answer.
Verdun Redux
It is safe to say that western regime media has set a very low standard for reporting on the war in Ukraine, given the extent to which the mainstream narrative is disconnected from reality. Even given these low standards, the way the ongoing battle in Bakhmut is being presented to the population is truly ludicrous. The Bakhmut axis is being spun to western audiences as a perfect synthesis of all the tropes of Russian failure: in a nutshell, Russia is suffering horrible casualties as it struggles to capture a small town with negligible operational importance. British officials, in particular, have been highly vocal in recent weeks insisting that Bakhmut has little to no operational value.
The truth is the literal opposite of this story: Bakhmut is an operationally critical keystone position in the Ukrainian defense, and Russia has transformed it into a death pit which compels the Ukrainians to sacrifice exorbitant numbers of men in order to hold the position as long as possible. In fact, the insistence that Bakhmut is not operationally significant is mildly insulting to the audience, both because a quick glance at a map clearly shows it at the heart of the regional road network, and because Ukraine has thrown a huge number of units into the front there.
Let’s take a step back and consider Bakhmut in the context of Ukraine’s overall position in the east. Ukraine began the war with four operable defensive lines in the Donbas, built up over the last 8 years both as part and parcel of the simmering war with the LNR and DNR, but also in preparation for potential war with Russia. These lines are structured around urban agglomerations with road and rail links between each other, and can be roughly enumerated as follows:
video from the Avdiivka axis demonstrates the extent of Ukrainian fortifications.
So, let’s review the state of these defensive belts. The first belt, which ran roughly from Severodonetsk and Lysychansk to Popasna, was broken in the summer by Russian forces. Russia achieved a major breakthrough at Popasna and was able to begin the full rollup of this line, with Lysychansk falling at the beginning of July.
At this point, the frontline sits directly on what I have labeled as the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian defensive belts, and both of these belts are now heavily bleeding.
The capture of Soledar by Wagner forces has severed the connection between Bakhmut and Siversk, while around Donetsk, the heavily fortified suburb of Marinka has been almost completely cleared of Ukrainian troops, and the infamous keystone Ukrainian position in Avdiivka (the place from which they shell Donetsk city’s civilian population) is being flanked from both directions.
These positions are absolutely critical for Ukraine to hold. The loss of Bakhmut will mean the collapse of the last defensive line standing in the way of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, which means Ukraine’s eastern position will rapidly contract to its fourth (and weakest) defensive belt.
The Slavyansk agglomeration is a far worse position for Ukraine to defend than the other belts, for several reasons. First and foremost, as the belt farthest to the west (and thus the farthest from the February 2022 start lines), it is the least improved and least fortified of the belts. Secondly, lots of the, shall we just say “good stuff” around Slavyansk is to the east of the city, including both the dominating high ground and the major highways.
All this to say, Ukraine has been very anxious to hold the Bakhmut line, as this is a vastly preferable position to hold, and accordingly they have been pouring units into the sector. The absurd levels of Ukrainian force commitment in this area have been well noted, but just as a quick refresher, publicly available Ukrainian sources locate at least 34 brigade or equivalent units that have been deployed in the Bakhmut area. Many of these were deployed months ago and are already shattered, but over the full span of the ongoing battle this represents an astonishing commitment.
Russian forces, primarily Wagner PMC and LNR units, have been slowly but surely collapsing this Ukrainian stronghold by making liberal use of artillery. In November, now former Zelensky advisor Oleksiy Arestovych admitted that Russian artillery on the Bakhmut axis enjoyed roughly a 9 to 1 tube advantage, which is turning Bakhmut into a death pit.
The battle is being presented in the west as one where Russians - usually stereotyped as convict soldiers employed by Wagner - launch frontal assaults on Ukrainian defenses and take horrible casualties attempting to overwhelm the defense with pure numbers. The opposite is much closer to the truth. Russia is moving slowly because it irons out Ukrainian defenses with artillery, then pushes forward cautiously into these pulverized defenses.
The Dnieper River almost bisects Ukraine.
Ukraine, meanwhile, continues to funnel units in to more or less refill the trenches with fresh defenders. A Wall Street Journal piece about the battle, while trying to present a story of Russian incompetence, accidentally included an admission from a Ukrainian commander on the ground who said: “So far, the exchange rate of trading our lives for theirs favors the Russians. If this goes on like this, we could run out.”
The comparisons have been liberally made (and I cannot take credit for them) to one of the most infamous battles of World War One - the bloody catastrophe at Verdun. While it does not do to exaggerate the predictive value of military history (in the sense that a thorough knowledge of the first world war does not allow one to predict events in Ukraine), I am, however, a great fan of history as analogy, and the German scheme at Verdun is a useful analogy for what’s happening in Bakhmut.
The Battle of Verdun was conceived by the German high command as a way to cripple the French army by drawing them into a preconfigured meatgrinder. The notion was to attack and seize crucial defensive high ground - ground so important that France would be forced to counterattack and attempt to recapture it. The Germans hoped that France would commit their strategic reserves to this counterattack so that they could be destroyed. While Verdun failed to completely sap French combat power, it did become one of the most bloody battles in world history. A German coin commemorating the battle depicted a skeleton pumping blood out of the earth - a chilling but apt visual metaphor.
Something similar has indeed occurred in Bakhmut, in the sense that Russia is pressing on one of the most sensitive points on the front line, drawing Ukrainian units in to be killed. A few months ago, on the heels of Russia’s withdrawal from west bank Kherson, the Ukrainians talked ecstatically of continuing their offensive efforts with a strike southward in Zaparozhia to cut the land bridge to Crimea, along with continued efforts to break through into northern Lugansk. Instead, forces from both of these axes have been redirected to Bakhmut, to the point where this axis is actively draining Ukrainian combat strength in other areas. Ukrainian sources, previously full of optimism, now unequivocally agree that there will be no Ukrainian offensives in the near future. As we speak, Ukraine continues to funnel forces into the Bakhmut axis.
At the present moment, Ukraine’s position around Bakhmut has badly deteriorated, with Russian forces (largely Wagner infantry supported by Russian army artillery) making substantial progress on both of the city’s flanks. On the northern flank, the capture of Soledar pushed Russian lines to within spitting distance of the north-south highways, while the near simultaneous capture of Klishchiivka on the southern flank has propelled the frontlines to the dootstep of Chasiv Yar (firmly in Bakhmut’s operational rear).
The Ukrainians are not presently encircled, but the continued creep of Russian positions ever closer to the remaining highways is easily discernable. Currently, Russian forces have positions within two miles of all the remaining highways. Even more importantly, Russia now controls the high ground to both the north and south of Bakhmut (the city itself sits in a depression surrounded by hills) giving Russia fire control over much of the battle space.
I am currently anticipating that Russia will clear the Bakhmut-Siversk defensive line by late March. Meanwhile, the denuding of Ukrainian forces on other axes raises the prospect of decisive Russian offensives elsewhere.
At the moment, the front roughly consists of four main axes (the plural of axis, not the bladed implement), with substantial agglomerations of Ukrainian troops. These consist, from south to north, of the Zaporozhia, Donetsk, Bakhmut, and Svatove Axes (see map below). The effort to reinforce the Bakhmut sector has noticeably diluted Ukrainian strength on these other sectors. On the Zaporozhia front, for example, there are potentially as few as five Ukrainian brigades on the line at the moment.
At the moment, the majority of Russian combat power is uncommitted, and both western and Ukrainian sources are (belatedly) becoming increasingly alarmed about the prospect for a Russian offensive in the coming weeks. Currently, the entire Ukrainian position in the east is vulnerable because it is, in effect, an enormous salient, vulnerable to attack from three directions.
Two operational depth objectives in particular have the potential to shatter Ukrainian logistics and sustainment. These are, respectively, Izyum in the north and Pavlograd in the South. A Russian thrust down the west bank of the Oskil river towards Izyum would simultaneously threaten to cut off and destroy the Ukrainian grouping on the Svatove axis (S on the map) and sever the vital M03 highway from Kharkov. Reaching Pavlograd, on the other hand, would completely isolate the Ukrainian forces around Donetsk and sever much of Ukraine’s transit across the Dnieper.
Both Izyum and Pavlograd are roughly 70 miles from the start lines of a prospective Russian offensive, and thus offer a very tempting combination - being both operationally significant and in relatively manageable reach. Beginning yesterday, we started to see Russian advances on the Zaporozhia axis. While these consist, at the moment, mainly of reconnaissance in force pushing into the “grey zone” (that ambiguous interstitial frontage), RUMoD did claim several settlements taken, which could presage a genuine offensive push in this direction. The key tell would be a Russian assault on Orikhiv, which is a large town with a genuine Ukrainian garrison in it. A Russian attack here would indicate that something more than a probing attack is underway.
It is difficult sometimes to parse out the difference between what we predict will happen and what we want to happen. This, certainly, is what I would choose if I was in charge of Russian planning - a drive south along the west bank of the Oskil river on the Kupyansk-Izyum axis, and a simultanious attack northward past Zaporozhia towards Pavlograd. In this case, I believe simply screening Zaporozhia in the short term is preferable to getting bogged down in an urban battle there.
Whether Russia will actually attempt this, we do not know. Russian operational security is much better than either Ukraine’s or their proxy forces (Wagner and the LNR/DNR Milita), so we know significantly less about Russia’s deployments than we do about Ukraine’s. Regardless, we know that Russia enjoys a strong preponderance of combat power right know, and there are juicy operational targets within range.
Please Sir, I Want Some More
The bird’s eye view of this conflict reveals a fascinating meta-structure to the war. In the above section, I argue for a view of the front structured around Russia progressively breaking through sequential Ukrainian defensive belts. I think that a similar sort of progressive narrative structure applies to the force generation aspect of this war, with Russia destroying a sequence of Ukrainian armies.
Let me be a bit more concrete. While the Ukrainian military exists at least partially as a continuous institution, its combat power has been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times at this point through western assistance. Multiple phases - life cycles, if you will - can be identified:
In the opening months of the war, the extant Ukrainian army was mostly wiped out. The Russians destroyed much of Ukraine’s indigenous supplies of heavy weaponry and shattered many cadres at the core of Ukraine’s professional army.
In the wake of this initial shattering, Ukrainian combat strength was shored up by transferring virtually all of the Soviet vintage weaponry in the stockpiles of former Warsaw Pact countries. This transferred Soviet vehicles and ammunition, compatible with existing Ukrainian capabilities, from countries like Poland and the Czech Republic, and was mostly complete by the end of spring, 2022. In early June, for example, western sources were admitting that Soviet stockpiles were drained.
With Warsaw Pact stockpiles exhausted, NATO began replacing destroyed Ukrainian capabilities with western equivalents in a process that began during the summer. Of particular note were howitzers like the American M777 and the French Caesar.
Russia has essentially fought multiple iterations of the Ukrainian Army - destroying the pre-war force in the opening months, then fighting units that were refilled from Warsaw Pact stockpiles, and is now degrading a force which is largely reliant on western systems.
This led to General Zaluzhny’s now-famous interview with the economist in which he asked for many hundreds of Main Battle Tanks, Infantry Fighting Vehicles, and artillery pieces. In effect, he asked for yet another army, as the Russians seem to keep destroying the ones he has.
I want to note a few particular areas where Ukraine’s capabilities are clearly degraded beyond acceptable levels, and observe how this relates to NATO’s effort to sustain the Ukrainian war-making effort.
First, artillery.
Russia has been prioritizing counterbattery action for many weeks now, and seems to be having great success hunting and destroying Ukrainian artillery.
It seems that this partially coincides with the deployment of new “Penicillin” counterbattery detection systems. This is a rather neat new tool in the Russian arsenal. Counterbattery warfare generally consists of a dangerous tango of guns and radar systems. Counterbattery radar is tasked with detecting and locating the enemy’s guns, so they can be destroyed by one’s own tubes - the game is roughly analogous to enemy teams of snipers (the artillery) and spotters (the radar) attempting to hunt each other - and of course, it makes good sense to shoot the other side’s radar systems as well, to blind them, as it were.
The Penicillin system offers potent new capabilities to Russia’s counterbattery campaign because it detects enemy artillery batteries not with radar, but with acoustic locating. It sends up a listening boom which, in coordination with a few ground componants, is able to locate enemy guns through seismic and acoustic detection. The advantage of this system is that, unlike a counterbattery radar, which emits radio waves that give away its position, the Penicillin system is passive - it simply sits still and listens, which means it does not offer an easy way for the enemy to locate it. As a result, in the counterbattery war, Ukraine currently lacks a good way to blind (or rather, deafen) the Russians. Furthermore, Russian counterbattery abilities have been augmented by increased use of the Lancet drone against heavy weapons.
All that to say, Russia has been destroying quite a bit of Ukrainian artillery lately. the Russian Ministry of Defense has made a point of highlighting counterbattery success. Now, I know at this point you’re thinking, “why would you trust the Russian Ministry of Defense?” Fair enough - let’s trust but verify.
On January 20, NATO convened a meeting at Ramstein Airbase in Germany, against a backdrop of a massive new aid package being put together for Ukraine. This aid package contains, lo and behold, a huge amount of artillery pieces. By my count, the aid announced this week includes nearly 200 artillery tubes. Multiple countries, including Denmark and Estonia, are sending Ukraine literally all of their howitzers. Call me crazy, but I seriously doubt that several countries would just spontaneously decide, at the exact same time, to send Ukraine their entire inventory of artillery pieces were Ukraine not facing crisis levels of artillery losses.
Let’s review the evidence here, and see if we can make a reasonable conclusion:
Ukrainian officials admit that their artillery is outgunned by 9 to 1 in critical sectors of the front.
Russia deploys a cutting edge counterbattery system and increased numbers of Lancet drones.
The Russian MoD claims that they have been hunting and destroying Ukrainian artillery systems in large numbers.
NATO has hurried to put together a massive package of artillery systems for Ukraine.
The United States is raiding critical forward-deployed stockpiles to supply Ukraine with shells.
I personally think it is reasonable, given all of this, to assume that Ukraine’s artillery arm has been largely shattered, and NATO is attempting to rebuild it yet again.
My kingdom for a tank
The main point of contention in recent weeks has been whether or not NATO will give Ukraine Main Battle Tanks. Zaluzhny hinted at a badly depleted Ukrainian tank park in his interview with the Economist, in which he pleaded for hundreds of MBTs. NATO has attempted to provide a stopgap solution by giving Ukraine various armored vehicles like the Bradley IFV and the Stryker, which do restore some mobility, but we must unequivocally say that these are in no way substitutes for MBTs, and they fall far short in both protection and firepower. Attempting to use Bradleys, for example, in the MBT role is not going to work.
Thus far, it appears that Ukraine is going to receive a small handful of Challenger tanks from Britain, but there is also talk of donating Leopards (German make), Abrams (American), and Leclercs (French). As usual, the battlefield impact of Ukraine receiving tanks is being both greatly overstated (by both Ukrainian shills and pessimistic Russians) and understated (by Russian triumphalists). I suggest a middle ground.
The number of tanks that can be reasonably given to Ukraine is relatively low, simply because of the training and sustainment burden. All of these tanks use different ammunition, special parts, and require specialized training. They are not the sort of systems that can simply be driven off the lot and directly into combat by untrained crew. The ideal solution for Ukraine would be to receive only Leopard A24s, as these might be available in decent numbers (perhaps a couple hundred), and at least they would be standardized.
We should also note, of course, that these western tanks are not likely to be game changers on the battlefield. The Leopard already showed its limitations in Syria under Turkish operation. Note the following quote from this 2018 article:
“Given that the tanks are widely operated by NATO members - including Canada, the Netherlands, Denmark, Greece and Norway - it is particularly embarrassing to see them so easily destroyed by Syrian terrorists when they are expected to match the Russian Army.”
Ultimately, the Leopard is a fairly mundane MBT designed in the 1970’s outclassed by the Russian T-90. It’s not a terrible piece of equipment, but it’s hardly a battlefield terror. They will take losses and be attrited just like Ukraine’s prewar tank park was. However, that doesn’t change the fact that a Ukrainian army with a few companies of leopards will be more potent than one without them.
I think it’s fair to say that the following three statements are all true:
Receiving a mixed bag of western tanks will create a difficult training, maintenance, and sustainment burden for Ukraine.
Western tanks like the Leopard have limited combat value and will be destroyed like any other tank.
Western tanks will raise the combat power of the Ukrainian army as long as they are in the field.
Now, with that being said, at this point it does not appear that NATO wants to give Ukraine main battle tanks. At first it was suggested that tanks from storage could be dusted off and given to Kiev, but the manufacturer has stated that these vehicles are not in working order and would not be ready for combat until 2024. That leaves only the possibility of dipping directly into NATO’s own tank parks, which thus far they are reticent to do.
Why? My suggestion would simply be that NATO does not believe in Ukrainian victory. Ukraine cannot even dream of dislodging Russia from its position without an adequate tank force, and so the reticence to hand over tanks suggests that NATO thinks that this is only a dream anyway. Instead, they continue to prioritize weaponry that sustains Ukraine’s ability to fight a static defense (hence, the hundreds of artillery pieces) without indulging in flights of fancy about a great Ukrainian armored thrust into Crimea.
However, given the intense war fever that has built up in the west, it’s possible that political momentum imposes the choice upon us. It is possible that we have reached the point where the tail wags the dog, that NATO is trapped in its own rhetoric of unequivocal support until Ukraine wins a total victory, and we may yet see Leopard 2A4s burning on the steppe.
Summary: The Death of a State
Ukraine’s military is extremely degraded, having taken exorbitant losses in both men and heavy weaponry. I believe Ukrainian KIA are approaching 150,000 at this point, and it is clear that their inventories of both artillery tubes, shells, and armored vehicles are largely exhausted.
I expect the Bakhmut-Siversk defensive line to be cleared before April, after which Russia will push towards the final (and weakest) defensive belt around Slavyansk. Meanwhile, Russia has significant combat power in reserve, which can be used to reopen the northern front on the west bank of the Oskil and restart offensive operations in Zaporozhia, placing Ukrainian logistics in critical danger.
This war will be fought to its conclusion on the battlefield and end in a favorable decision for Russia.
Coda: A Note about Coups
Feel free to ignore this segment, as it’s a little more nebulous and not concretely related to events in Ukraine or Russia.
We’ve seen lots of fun rumors about coups in both countries - Putin has foot cancer and his government will collapse, Zelensky is going to be replaced with Zaluzhny, on and on it goes. Patriots in control and all that good stuff.
In any case, I thought I would just generally write about why coups and revolutions never seem to lead to nice and cuddly democratic regimes, but instead almost always lead to political control passing to the military and security services.
The answer, you might think, is simply that these men have the guns and the power to access the important rooms where decisions are made, but it is not only that. It also relates to a concept in game theory called Schelling points.
A Schelling point (named after the gentleman that introduced the concept, an economist named Thomas Schelling) refers to the solution that parties choose given a state of uncertainty and no ability to communicate. One of the classic examples to illustrate the concept is a coordination game. Suppose that you and another person are each shown four squares - three are blue and one is red. You are each asked to choose a square. If you both select the same square, you receive a monetary prize - but you are unable to talk to one another about your choices. How do you choose? Well, most people rationally choose the red square, simply because it is conspicuous - it stands out, and you therefore presume that your partner will also choose this square. The red square isn’t better, per se, it’s just obvious.
In a state of political turmoil, or even anarchy, the system works itself towards Schelling points - obvious figures and institutions that radiate authority, and are therefore the conspicuous choice to assume power and issue commands.
The Bolsheviks, for example, understood this very well. Immediately after declaring their new government in 1917, they dispatched commissars to the various office buildings in Saint Petersburg where the Tsarist bureaucracies were headquartered. Trotsky famously turned up at the foreign affairs ministry building one morning and simply announced that he was the new Foreign Minister. The employees laughed at him - who was he? how did he presume to be in charge? - but for Trotsky the point was to insinuate himself on a Schelling point. In the state of anarchy that began to spread in Russia, people naturally look for some obvious focal point of authority, and the Bolsheviks had cleverly positioned themselves as such by claiming control over the bureaucratic offices and titles. On the other side of the civil conflict, political opposition to the Bolsheviks clustered around Tsarist army officers, because they too were Schelling points, in that they already had titles and position within an existing hierarchy.
All of this is to say that in the event of a coup or state collapse, new governments are virtually never formed sui generis - they always arise from preexisting institutions and hierarchies. Why, when the Soviet Union fell, did political authority devolve to the Republics? Because these Republics were Schelling points - branches that one can grab for safety in a chaotic river.
I simply say this because I am tired of phantasmagorical stories about liquidation of the regime in Russia and even territorial dissolution. The fall of Putin’s government will not and cannot lead to an acquiescent, western-adjacent regime, because there are no institutions of real power in Russia that are thus disposed. Power would fall to the security services, because they are Schelling points, and that’s where power goes.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCE
Big Serge is a Russian military analyst who prefers to use his nom de guerre at this point.
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Oddo says
21 January 2023 at 23:04
The title of the article asks “why” but the conclusion asks “will they admit”.
Let’s answer both:
1. Why? The west has devoured itself, destroyed all its industries and convinced itself that it is the s*it. Due to the newly acquired arrogance, it thought it can crush Russia but it backfired spectacularly. Like any good gambler at a casino, it will keep doubling down to zero. In addition to that, most people in the know understand that we lost and that Russia. China and BRICS are the new innovators and producers and that we are the dependent losers hooked on cheap junk, bored and decadent and picking arguments on social media over garbage that nobody considered just 10 years ago. Being weak and knowing it – is bound to make one jealous and sore losers who know they cannot win in a fight – run their mouths….
2. Will they admit defeat? No. The west is in an echo chamber (or more graphically – the ostrich with the head in the sand). It can also keep running up debt for a few more years until the combination of increasing debt/taxation intersects with the decrease in services provided for said taxation to its citizenry plus loss of USD as reserve currency, at which point riots will begin.
Two possibilities: a) double down fast all the way to nuclear confrontation – some may subscribe to the theory that a festering gangrenous leg needs to be simply cut off instead of trying to save it or b) set up some situation where it looks like Ukrainians will be blamed for the failure of this confrontation and hope to prolong the coming economic decline and agony for a few more years.
Sorry if I sound like a pessimist but reality is what it is.