3 October 2022
When analysts were hinting at a Ukrainian counter offensive in Kherson Oblast in the south all of the summer, as a final push before winter this year, the AFU was actually planning offensives in the East as it turns out now. This is now apparent from how the Russians have reacted to both offensives in Kharkiv and Donetsk with initial swift withdrawals before AFU could engage in an encirclement of Russian positions in these contested areas. Why Lyman is important is because it opens the door to Sievierodonetsk and Kreminna which were taken by Russians after heavy fighting three months back and mark the major landmarks in Donetsk Republic, a region that along with three others joined Russia after a referendum last week. So as per the reports now Lyman stands cleared off Russian troops after Moscow announced complete withdrawal and Kyiv claimed complete victory.
The Kharkiv victories that were christened Blitzkrieg by Western media saw Ukraine claim a 3000 sq km territorial advance along the entire frontage of this region with notable victories over Kupyansk and Izyium which are adjoining and nodal for Russian logistics train emerging out of Belgorod. Likewise Lyman is claimed as a major transportation hub in Donetsk for onward movement toward the South, especially Kherson. What these setbacks to Russia show is that even at this stage in the war, the Russians can be surprised, and probing attacks in Kherson managed to to keep them engaged there even now. Russians are yet to rejig their forces after despatching most of their combat units ahead to Kherson in anticipation of the Ukrainian counteroffensive there and an assessment in Moscow that AFU would not stretch so far up north and east as Kharkiv. Now through the opening in Kharkiv the AFU have turned south from Izyium, probing their way and laid siege to Lyman. That Lyman was lightly held with less than 5000 troops was known and hence the facile victory there by AFU which was advancing along the axial roads that opened up Donetsk and further onward to Luhansk.
In this backdrop, President Putin has made two very informed decisions. The first was to conduct the referendum in these provinces and accept their annexation into the Russian Federation. Now Moscow has to defend these newly integrated provinces with all the power she can command. The military mandate for this has now a legal status as part of this process. Second was the call for partial mobilisation which could raise the numbers under arms to more than 300000 men. This enables Moscow to place an additional equal of the present force composite that is operating within Ukraine as part of the Special Military Operations from February 2022. The General Staff in Kremlin have worked out clearly that this strength of more than half a million personnel would be required to be stationed in the areas of Donbas, and the coastal arc that presently extends unto Kherson and which Moscow plans to pull right up to and including Odessa in the near future.
The evidence of units that were held back along the Polish border now being fully committed by Kyiv suggests that this present campaign is an act of desperation, pulling out all reserves that it has, to show the West that is aiding Kyiv that it is capable of more than a fight. It is a performance President Zelenskyy has made which has evinced interest even in Germany, with her Defence Minister visiting Kyiv in last 48 hours including a stop over in Odessa for several hours. During this visit, President Zelenskyy apparently made a desperate pitch for German tanks to be given to the AFU, an induction that Chancellor Scholz has been withholding all along. Now it appears that France, UK, Germany and USA will commit more of their mechanised inventory to Ukraine and that will go beyond artillery and rocket systems to more lethal MBTs and APCs. Shipping elements of an Armoured Assault Division would alter the play of forces within Ukraine and could actually encourage Kyiv to launch more audacious advances that militarily could make Russian positions in central and eastern Ukraine untenable. So the race now, is literally to the swift. How soon Moscow is able to get these mobilised troops and tanks to Donbas and Zaporizhzhia, and when the counter offensive to evict AFU currently in Lyman, Izyium frontage back to the pre August positions would determine how Moscow is able to enforce her mandate post referendums. Likewise, while the Ukrainian momentum is on in the East as in Kharkiv and extending now into Donetsk, if the NATO is able to offer this force level of a few Armoured Brigades that Kyiv has been sounding about, this would ensure that Ukraine can continue to surprise and unsettle the Russian 'Novorus' in the making.
It is in this context, one must read the remarks of Chechen leader Kadyrov. In a first, Kadyrov actually slammed the commanding general in Donetsk Colonel General Alexander Lapin calling his leadership mediocre for not anticipating the Ukrainians at Lyman and for meekly surrendering there. The Chechen warlord called for use of tactical nukes or low yield weapons to shock and awe the AFU even! In terms of Russia's politics, Kadyrov weighs outsized because he is a Chechen and he is outspoken, fore fronting the Caucasian Support for Putin's Ukraine Campaign. One must also take Putin's comparison of the current campaign of the West against Russia to the Indian struggle against colonialism of the British Dutch and French colonials in the 18th Century, as a deft unsettling argument against the current narrative of the West. When Putin made the case for Russia to do all it took to prevent the West from succeeding in its game-plan in Ukraine, Putin's case of India struck a strong chord with third world countries across the globe at the level of the curious citizen. It also offered the canvas of Russian calculus and compulsions a halo that placed Moscow's strategic narrative in the larger epoch of Imperialism and Colonialism in which Moscow has a unique distinction of never colonising any African or Asian country nor participating in slave trade, one that offers Moscow a legacy solidarity that makes it difficult for these continental capitals to condemn her actions outright.
On ground, the presence of AFU in the Kharkiv regions where it had advanced seems to have halting and thinning effect. There is little news about further advance beyond Izyium and even in Sydorove, Russian artillery continues to harass AFU positions by direct shelling. The entire of the AFU involving up wards of one Army Group have now been committed here and that deployment appears to be stretching along a wide front from Kupyansk to Izyium to now Lyman, which is a semicircular arc of several hundred kilometres. There is still a sneaking feeling that Russians are preying upon these unsuspecting AFU divisions and will probably cut them down at some point by overwhelming firepower from air and artillery that they still command while rolling down newly minted armoured reserves from the East where they are amassing in Luhansk.
Is NATO present in Ukraine. This is answered by what one understands as NATO. The money, the inventory and the logistics support for AFU is from NATO no doubt. The issue of manpower as in boots on ground is one that is under the umbrella of plausible deniability. Till now hundreds of Western fighters have been captured by troops under or loyal to Moscow, including the militia operated by Luhansk and Donetsk Republics. There are many of them who are now counted as missing in action or KIA as well. However, till date for obvious reasons, there has been no acceptance by a NATO country of such deployment. The estimate of foreign presence in AFU is from upwards of 25000 to even 100000. Military observers are largely silent on what such presence could mean for NATO while such a possible presence could offer reasons for sudden capabilities of the AFU including its spectacular advances in the Kharkiv and its undertaking of sabotage activities in Crimea. Then there is the Nordstrom pipe explosions that took place undersea in the Baltics, preliminary investigation suggests blasts at three or four sites, using explosives that weighed unto 700 kgs. Russians claim this as handiwork of CIA. Americans and British claim this to be Russian sabotage. However, Nordstrom pipes Russian gas which is a source of hard currency for Moscow now, to EU countries, especially Germany. So logically, it makes more sense for the Americans to blow up the pipeline and present a fait accompli to energy starved EU to import LNG from American Atlantic Ports. This would also place EU under American logistic control for energy security, especially at a time when approaching winter and huge heating subsidies offered by UK and Germany have created fiscal turbulence in their domestic budgets. If EU switches to costlier shale from Russian natural gas, America will emerge a strategic and economic winner. Further it could dilute the current Russian position of preeminence in the energy market.
So when we see the declarations of President Putin and how they tailor make the Ukrainian situation, we can also see how the conflict there may have attained a critical mass, a momentum of its own toward an end. For Moscow that end would be Novorus holding the swathe of Ukraine from Odessa to Kharkiv which would run through Mikolaiev, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro and which would leave Ukraine landlocked and contained in the West. With Belarus now strategically much more closer to Moscow, the encirclement of this truncated Ukraine would ensure that it will not bother Moscow. This Ukraine would then settle into separatism and insurgency which will be Moscow's payback for atrocities of the Azovs in Donbas and perhaps launch pads for restive actions into Poland.
For Washington, a stalemate with AFU beating the Russians back to their pre February 2022 lines in Donbas and harassments across Kherson Dnipro Zaporizhzhia Oblasts would mean placing Moscow on perpetual boil. Then the economic sanctions and ostracisation of Moscow would reduce Russia from a European level economically advanced country to a more third world level and push for domestic unrest there. Ukraine would become the new Korea with a big difference that unlike the 1950s, the proxy attritional campaign would be cyclical with each wave being marked by induction of fresh batch of trained Ukrainians taking to the battle fields. Should that happen, Asian giants India and China would be forced to abandon their current neutrality and dump Moscow, making them more dependent on the West. The American control of Petroleum is not just through petrodollars as it is through a series of client states from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman and by controlling OPEC. That could happen in this Cold War 2 only if Russia is eliminated from the fuel basket of major economies.
So far President Biden's leadership has been astute. There is no official US presence in Ukraine and still America is biggest beneficiary by way of arms sales and loans granted to Ukraine. Biden had promised to get Europe back into NATO after four Trump years of threatening disruption and he has delivered. The departure of Angela Merkel in Germany who was a votary for Russian role in European security architecture and the arrival of more RW governments across Europe including the latest in Italy have aided Mr Biden's cause.
It is clearly cross roads time for outcomes in Ukraine. The head versus heart estimates suggests a toss up between the Western Camp led by Mr Biden and Russian Camp led by Mr Putin. The consequences of a retreat by Moscow would be tectonic for Asia. The consequences of a withdrawal by Washington would be tectonic for the Anglican West. That's how momentous these days and months are while Ukraine seemingly sees a seesaw of military fortunes!
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