The alleged plot to destroy various Italian targets — including a police station — appears to be the first attempted terror attack in Western Europe linked to Ukraine’s official Nazi military formations.
Police in Italy arrested four suspected neo-Nazis with links to Ukraine’s notorious Azov Battalion who were accused of plotting to carry out “violent acts” against both civilians and police, according to local media.
Photos released by police show the Nazi paraphernalia seized in around 30 raids on members of the “Order of Hagal” throughout the country included photos of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, and t-shirts bearing the logo of Ukraine’s official Nazi regiment, the Azov Battalion.
“According to the investigators, the objective identified by the members of the Order of Hagal was the Marigliano [police] barracks,” Italian outlet Today Chronicle wrote Tuesday.
According to the Italian publication, one of the suspects wanted by police “disappeared” before he could be apprehended – a 27-year-old Ukrainian national named Anton Radomosky, who the outlet reported “would have offered his ‘intermediation’ between the Order of Hagal and neo-Nazi groups such as the Azov Battalion,” which they note “is particularly active in the context of the War in Donbass.”
Information published by ANSA, Italy’s leading news agency, indicates that Radomosky “is currently in Ukraine, and the investigation showed that he was in contact with the Azov Battalion.”
According to another Italian source, the “Ukrainian accomplice… wanted to cause an explosion in a shopping center.” Corriere Del Mezzogiorno indicated “the cell had contacts” with not only “Ukrainian ultranationalist formations such as the Azov Battalion,” but also the notorious Ukrainian “Right Sector” nazi militia.
The EU and Interpol have been fretting for months about the likelihood that weapons being shipped to Ukraine amid NATO’s proxy war on Russia will end up in criminal hands. As Interpol chief Jurgen Stock explained in early June, “Once the guns fall silent [in Ukraine], the illegal weapons will come. We know this from many other theaters of conflict. The criminals are even now, as we speak, focusing on them.”
The single largest contingent of readers of my essays is in the United States, and it is for their particular benefit that I open today’s piece with some concrete facts on how Europe’s self-imposed energy crisis resulting from the ban on import of Russian hydrocarbons is making it impossible for your average citizen of France, Belgium and many other countries in the EU to make ends meet. I hasten to add that the unworkable arithmetic of monthly household finance is day by day, week by week bringing us to the social unrest and political instability that I and others have been predicting ever since the trend lines on cost of living became clear some months ago.
I will not introduce official statistics, because when the going gets tough they tend to be presented in a very selective manner by the authorities. My ‘anecdotal’ evidence comes from the energy bills I am now receiving at my home in Brussels and from what friends and acquaintances in this country and in France tell me about their personal situations.
A couple of weeks ago, I received from Engie, the French based energy giant that owns Electrabel, the formerly independent Belgian electricity generator and distributor, a report on my annual electricity consumption for their accounting year ending on 7 October 2022. The total charges were 1807 euros, meaning 150 euros per month. In the same communication, they informed me that the new rates applied to the coming year will require a 285 euro debit from my bank each month. Presto, my electricity bill doubles!
Meanwhile, my latest delivery of 1,000 liters of heating oil for our house was invoiced at 1,500 euros, which is also virtually double what I paid for oil one year ago. And I consider myself lucky that I did not follow the advice of various heating specialists who visited my home a year ago for maintenance work on our furnace. They had suggested that we go ‘modern’ and convert from oil to natural gas, because for seniors like myself that spares us the necessity of monitoring the level of mazout remaining in our basement tank so as to place a delivery order on time. If you order too early, the minimum quantity of 1,000 liters will not fit and you are charged a premium for the delivery of a short order. If you order too late, the sludge at the bottom of the tank may feed into the system, blocking the filter on the way to the point of ignition and you have to bring in a repair man at the cost of several hundred euros. Natural gas, I was told, would spare us these inconveniences. Of course, today gas heating is not double but triple or more the cost it was a year ago, and friends who ‘went modern’ rue that decision. If there will be gas shortages this winter, which remains a possibility depending on the severity of the frosts ahead, these friends will also regret the inconvenience of heating cut-offs leaving them in the cold, literally and figuratively.
Again, to make sense of the heating oil figures, the 1,000 liters mentioned above heats my home for a period of 4 to 6 weeks in autumn, winter and early spring depending on how low the air temperature outside descends. So far this year, we have been very lucky temperature-wise in Western Europe this fall. But a nice drop to zero at night for a week or more later in this year can reduce substantially the staying power of 1,000 liters.
Lest my mention of these new costs sound like whining, let me assure the gentle reader that I personally have no problems meeting the costs. Now that the euro has fallen like a stone this year due to the shaky economy driven by the energy crisis and inflation, my U.S. social security checks each month are worth 20% more in local currency and my new additional energy costs are largely covered. My highlighting these figures and new ratios of cost is to bring to the fore how they affect the great majority of this country’s working population.
It would be fair to say that the monthly take-home pay of 70% of Belgians after the 50% income tax is withheld comes to about 1,500 euros. Just for comparison, if this figure seems unduly low, the state pensions of many Belgians come to just a few hundred euros; and you have to have been very successful in your working career to receive a pension equivalent to those same 1,500 euros.
Let us assume that my electricity and heating costs are well above average because of the size of my home and the unimproved state of our insulation. Let us assume that these same 70% of the population have total energy costs now of 900 euros a month, or half of what I will be paying in effect. In a household where there is only one breadwinner, this would leave just 600 euros a month for food, apartment rent or mortgage payments and all other expenses. The arithmetic just doesn’t work. Your household budget will be in sharp deficit each month.
I have taken Belgium as my example, but I assure the reader that the numbers for income and outgo of the majority of the populations in neighboring European countries are not much different. That is true even in Germany despite its seeming prosperity. So what will the people do about it? At what point does public indignation and growing poverty spill over into social and political unrest?
In past essays, I pointed to France as a country with a long tradition of political volatility, a country where workers will go out on strike at the drop of the hat. Indeed, when Macron raised the tax on petrol in November 2018 we saw the voluble and politically threatening emergence of the gilets jaunes or Yellow Vests, a movement which for a couple of years stubbornly resisted all of the government’s measures at suppression. Today, after losing its parliamentary majority in the last elections, the Macron government is much weaker and understands that it cannot fight strike movements head on even if it briefly threatened to bring in the army and to forcibly send workers back to their jobs in the refineries and petrol distribution network. Accordingly, Macron has folded and now resorts to buying off strikers and other protesters. Their demands for salary hikes are not met, but they are quietly being given ‘premiums’ of several months pay to go back to work and shut up. So far that has been effective, but it is running up the ongoing budget deficits and may soon be unsustainable. It also places France in great dependence on Germany’s looking a blind eye at the fiscal irresponsibility of Paris and its violation of EU finance rules.
And so street demonstrations by tens of thousands of irate citizens against untenable increases in cost of living have arisen elsewhere in Europe. Even The Financial Times is today giving extensive coverage to yesterday’s march in downtown Rome which brought together the economic issue of unsustainable rises in energy costs and the political issue of the ongoing war in Ukraine and Europe’s failed policies in that regard. The banners read “End to Violence” and the overriding message was that Italy must work to bring the warring parties to the negotiating table, not feed the conflict by further deliveries of arms to Kiev. This is a movement that is sure to turn up in many other European cities in the coming weeks, and the European governments will be unable to ignore it.
Even in the United States, the worsening financial position of the government will likely force an abrupt change of policy on Ukraine after the Midterm Elections deprive the Democrats of control over Congress. Humanitarian instincts, concern for the growing death toll of Ukrainian males on the field of battle will have no role whatsoever in this revaluation of policy. It will be driven and it will be justified by the high and rising cost of federal government borrowing in pace with the rises in the prime rate to tame inflation, inflation that is in large part due to distortions in the global oil and gas markets that the sanctions on Russian energy are causing.
For the powers that be, in Europe and the United States, the only ‘bright spot’ in the immediate future may be that the Russians solve their problems for them by winning the war with lightning speed.
Zelensky is reported today in Western media as saying that 3 million people may be forced to evacuate Kiev if the Russian assault on the electricity generation and distribution proceeds at its current pace. Ukrainian authorities responsible for the national grid, say it may collapse in the near future. And so we may envision two developments that lead to the same conclusion of Kiev suing for peace: the flight of 9 million or more citizens to Western Europe where they threaten to overwhelm capacity of reception centers and so precipitate an armed push-back; and the disintegration of the Ukrainian fighting forces in the midst of national black-out.
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it received 345 pages of records from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), a component of the U.S. Department of Defense, revealing that the United States funded anthrax laboratory activities in a Ukrainian biolab in 2018. Dozens of pages are completely redacted, and many others are heavily redacted. The records show over $11 million in funding for the Ukraine biolabs program in 2019.
The records were obtained in response to a February 28, 2022, Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency for records regarding the funding of Black & Veatch involving work of any manner with biosafety laboratories in the country of Ukraine.
Three phases of work are discussed in the records, several of which are indicated to have occurred “on site” at the Ukrainian labs.
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency provided a report titled “PACS [Pathogen Asset Control System] at the [redacted (b)(3), which exempts information from disclosure when a foreign government or international organization requests the withholding, or the national security official concerned has specified in regulations that the information’s release would have an adverse effect on the U.S. government’s ability to obtain similar information in the future] Phase 2 On-the-Job Training Report, December 11-13/December 26, 2018” The Executive Summary includes information regarding “on-site” activities, likely referring to a Ukrainian biolab:
PACS [Pathogen Asset Control System] on-the-job training was conducted for users of the [redacted (b)(3)] on December 11-13, under Phase 2 implementation activities, Anthrax Laboratory activities were conducted on December 28, 2018.
PACS existing configuration and customization were checked jointly with the on-site PACS Working Group
Phase 1 implementation activities including progress and current status were reviewed; issues and problems discussed and resolved;
Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for PACS use at [redacted (b)(3)] was updated to include Subculturing Operation process – the updated SOP submitted to the on-site Working Group.
The report provides a list of titles of “OJT [on-the-job training] Participants” with all participants names from Black & Veatch redacted, citing exemptions (b)(6) for personal privacy and (b)(3).
Senior Researcher Laboratory of Anacrobic Infections
Leading Researcher Laboratory of Anacrobic Infections
Senior Researcher Laboratory of Anacrobic Infections
Researcher Laboratory of Anacrobic Infections
Leading Veternarian Laboratory of Anacrobic Infections
Senior Researcher Laboratory of Bacterial Animal Diseases
Head of Anthrax Laboratory
Researcher Anthrax Laboratory
Senior Research Scientist Laboratory of Mycotoxicology
Leading Veternarian Laboratory of Mycotoxicology
Junior Researcher Laboratory of Leptospirosis
Laboratory Assistant Neuroinfection Laboratory
Research Scientist Sector of International Relationships and Geoinformation
A section titled “Future Activities” notes: “Phase 3 implementation agreed for March 2019.”
Included in the records is an Order for Supplies or Services dated August 1, 2019, is issued by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to Black and Veatch Special Projects Corp. The total amount of the contract award is $11,289,142.00. The order contains approximately 35 contract line items set forth in a statement of work (SOW), dated March 5, 2019, titled: “Electronic Integrated Disease Surveillance (EIDSS) and Pathogen Asset Control (PACS) Implementation” The statement of work, consisting of 24 pages, was not provided, nor was there an explanation for the withholding.
A report titled “PACS [Pathogen Asset Control] Implementation at the [redacted (b)(3)]. Phase 3 On-the-Job Training Report, November 28-29.2018” states in its Executive Summary:
B&V has completed the final stage of PACS implementation at the [redacted (b)(3)]. The site has been fully commissioned in operations of PACS functionality.
PACS on-the-job training and on-site activities were conducted for users on November 28-29, 2018 under Phase 3 implementation activities
PACS existing configuration and customization were checked jointly with the on-site PACS Working Group
Phase 2 implementation activities were reviewed; issues and problems discussed and resolved;
A report titled “PACS [Pathogen Asset Control] Implementation at the [redacted (b)(3)]. Phase 3 On-the-Job Training Report, April 3-5, 2019” has its Executive Summary and other portions redacted, citing FOIA exemptions (b)(4) trade secrets, (b)(5) interagency or intra-agency communications and/or attorney-client privilege.
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency also provided a 2018 report titled “PACS [Pathogen Asset Control System] Implementation Plan at [redacted (b)(3)]. Phase 2 On-the-Job Training Report, September 25-27, 2018.” The Executive Summary includes: “PACS on-the-job training was conducted for users of the [redacted (b)(3)] on September 25-27, 2018, under Phase 2 implementation activities.”
A list of “OJT [on-the-job-training] Participants” from contractor Black & Veatch includes job descriptions but all names have been redacted through exemptions (b)(6) personal privacy and (b)(3). Some of those job descriptions include:
Head of Laboratory Virology
Department of Molecular Diagnostics and Control
Researcher of Pigs Diseases Research Laboratory
Scientist of Laboratory of Virology
Department of Avian Diseases
Researcher of Department of Avian Diseases
Laboratory for Biosafety, Quality Management
Engineer of the Laboratory for Biosafety, Quality Management
Laboratory of Biotechnology
Researcher of the Laboratory of Biotechnology
Head of the Brucellosis Laboratory
Senior Researcher of the Brucellosis Laboratory
Head of the Molecular Diagnostics and Control
Head of the Tuberculosis Laboratory
Researcher of Tuberculosis Laboratory
Researcher of the Laboratory of Virology
The report also contains a section titled “Future Activities:”
“In the Kherson direction, today at 5 o’clock in the morning Moscow time, the transfer of units of Russian troops to the left bank of the Dnieper River was completed. No units or military equipment and weapons were left on the right bank. All Russian soldiers crossed to the left bank of the Dnieper,” read the announcement of the Russian Ministry of Defense on Friday, November 11, 2022 – the anniversary of World War I Armistice Day, 1918.
The amount of misinformation and sheer nonsense about the Russian withdrawal from Kherson published since the time of the announcement “wouldn’t fit on a cow’s hide” (geht auf keine Kuhhaut), said a German military intelligence officer based at Grafenwöhr, Bavaria, where Bundeswehr trainers advise Ukrainian soldiers in the use of advanced artillery equipment.
(It’s on parchment made of cowhide that the devil keeps a record of people’s sins qualifying for time in hell or purgatory.)
As has become commonplace, the blödsinn (“utter rubbish”) was mainly purveyed by the Washington, DC–based Institute for the Study of War (ISW), founded and headed by Kimberly Kagan, wife of Frederick Kagan, head of the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project, brother of neocon guru Robert Kagan, husband of the US undersecretary of state for political affairs, Victoria “Tori” Nuland, spiritus rector (“guiding spirit”) of the 2014 Maidan Orange uprising that deposed elected Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.
Nuland became notorious for her “F**k the EU” outburst, published from a covert tape recording.
What the ISW may have left out by way of rubbish and propaganda was filled in by Britain’s Ministry of Truth – pardon, Ministry of Defense (UK MoD) – and duly amplified by the echo chamber of the Western press.
The Anglo-American echo chamber predicted 1) a bloodbath, with the mass slaughter of panicked, fleeing Russian soldiers; 2) retaliation for the defeat at Kherson by a Russian electromagnetic pulse (EMP) strike by a low-yield nuclear detonation in space, causing a total blackout and shut down of unprotected electronic devices in the city of Kiev, a fairytale circulated by the ISW; 3) blowing up the Kakhovka dam with thousands of civilian casualties (UK MoD).
The accusation that destroying a dam constituted a war crime was especially ripe coming from London; British forces invented this sort of war on the night of May 16-17, 1943. “Operation Chastise,” the mass bombing attack on six major German dams, destroyed two of the targets and killed 2,400 people.
To date, nothing of the sort has happened – though we won’t rule out that Ukrainian or Russian fire might damage or destroy the dam at Nova Kakhovka in the future.
What has happened, instead, is an orderly retreat of Russian forces from the west bank of the Dnieper River with virtually no reported casualties and no serious effort by Ukrainian forces to exploit the retreat.
Those facts and the resulting new military situation constitute one of two factors that point toward a ceasefire, possibly leading to a formal armistice. US Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered his professional judgment to this effect in a November 11 speech to the Economic Club of New York. Milley did not hedge.
“There has to be a mutual recognition that military victory is probably, in the true sense of the word, not achievable through military means, and therefore.… When there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize it,” he said.
The other factor is the economic situation of Ukraine and its Western European supporters. Ukraine says its economic output is down 35% year on year. That is nowhere near the truth. The country has neither the labor nor the capital to sustain itself at any level.
It is entirely dependent on foreign donations for its ability to conduct the current war and keep its dwindling population fed and clothed. Western Europe, in turn, has reached the limits of coping with the influx of Ukrainian refugees as well as continuing immigrant flows from Africa.
The military situation
On October 8, after the bombing of the strategic Kerch Strait bridge connecting Crimea and Russia’s Taman Peninsula, Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed Army General Sergey Surovikin as the new overall commander of operations of the war.
Surovikin, 56, has ample combat experience in Afghanistan and Syria. He took his time – one month, to be precise – to assess the military situation. And he made a decision for which he may well be vilified: to withdraw all Russian forces from the right bank of the Dnieper to defensible positions with much shorter interior lines on the left bank, requiring fewer troops to defend.
Any defensive evacuation of substantial numbers of troops (approximately 30,000) with a major river at your back is a high-risk operation. Based on net assessment, Surovikin regarded it as necessary and got it sorted. The map below shows the current alignments and military options of both sides.
A Ukrainian attack across the river would face major problems, including guarding against the possibility of a Kakhovka dam burst and flooding of the lower Kherson regions.
Ukrainian attacks from the areas east of the city of Zaporizhzhia in the direction of Melitopol and further east of Mariupol are possible, but would require significant massing of forces, potentially denuding Ukrainian positions opposite the city of Donetsk. The danger for Ukraine there lies in the possibility of a Russian counterattack in the direction of the city of Pokrovsk near the western border of Donetsk Oblast.
The hardest current fighting is taking place in the Bakhmut-Soledar area. The area around the transportation hub of Bakhmut guards entry to the Popasna-Luhansk corridor. Neither side can afford to abandon these key positions.
Last, further north, the focus is on the parallelogram southeast of Kharkov. But the Ukrainian offensive there is literally stuck in the mud. It is difficult to see how much progress can be made by the Ukrainians, notably because of the closeness of Russian territory.
Bottom line: Surovikin’s move out of Kherson City and points northwest of the city has created a strategic stalemate.
Time is not on Ukraine’s side. Larger-scale efforts to regain more territory than achieved in Kharkov and Kherson would require not only the continued large flow of NATO arms, but a buildup of manpower.
The 15,000-20,000 troops currently being trained in Poland, Germany and Ukraine will not suffice even if they are twice as capable as the Russian reservists being brought in.
General Milley’s assessment was based on this simple body count. Ukraine is no longer a country of 42 million people, but more likely a country of 10 million fewer than that.
American military intelligence assessments assume about equal numbers of Ukrainian and Russian casualties of about 100,000 since the start of the war. That does not bode well for the country with currently just one-fifth of Russia’s population.
Armistice assessment
General Milley’s assessment that neither Ukraine nor Russia can achieve their maximum goals is widely shared by other NATO militaries.
German and French assessments are more pessimistic, assuming that even parity will not last long and that now is the optimal time for Ukraine to start talking.
There can be little doubt that this is what prompted US national security adviser Jake Sullivan to tell Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that, yes, we fully support you, but, hey, maybe start negotiations.
Sullivan reportedly told Zelensky that it would be easier to maintain Western support if it were “perceived as being willing” to engage in diplomacy.
Kriegsmūdigkeit (war-weariness) is strongest in Germany among Ukraine’s NATO backers; 78% of the population want to see negotiations, and a similar number believe Germany has done enough to support Ukraine.
An estimated 1.3 million Ukrainian refugees have arrived in Germany and receive immediate social security, free health care and emergency shelter. The capital city Berlin, which has processed 400,000 refugees, has declared a humanitarian emergency.
Militarily and economically, conditions for a Denkpause, a pause to think things over, are ripe.
As reported on November 14, US Central Intelligence Agency director William Burns – the former US ambassador to Russia who warned about NATO’s eastern expansion – met in Istanbul on Monday with his Russian counterpart Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service.
Burns, the story goes, went to Istanbul to warn Naryshkin against the use of nuclear weapons. Really? And Naryshkin complied obediently and went there to talk about that?
There is little doubt that their meeting was a follow-up to the Sullivan’s and Milley’s probes about ending the fighting.
And why Istanbul? Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has offered to play peacemaker.
The US and the wider West are attacking Russia “almost without limits,” prompting a natural defensive reaction, Erdogan said on November 12 while returning from a summit of Turkic nations in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. But he also reminded reporters that he had brokered a grain export deal with Ukraine and signaled that he is available to broker a wider deal.
The major caveat regarding an early ceasefire is strictly political. President Putin is under attack from his nationalist right. President Zelensky would have to answer the questions from his own population as to why he would negotiate a truce now when the only outcome will be the status quo ante – before the deaths of tens of thousands, the displacement of millions and the wholesale destruction of the country.
In January, 1944, the newly reconstituted German Sixth Army found itself in an operationally cataclysmic situation in the southern bend of the Dnieper River, in the area of Krivoi Rog and Nikopol. The Germans occupied a dangerous salient, jutting out precariously into the Red Army’s lines. Vulnerable on two awkward flanks, and facing an enemy with superiority in manpower and firepower, any general worth his salt would have sought to withdraw as soon as possible. In this case, however, Hitler insisted that the Wehrmacht hold the salient, because the region was Germany’s last remaining source of manganese – a mineral crucial for making high quality steel.
A year prior, in the opening weeks of 1943, Hitler had intervened in another, more famous battle, forbidding the previous incarnation of the Sixth Army from breaking out of a pocket forming around it at Stalingrad. Prohibited from withdrawing, the Sixth was annihilated wholesale.
In both of these cases, there was a clash between pure military prudence and broader political aims and needs. In 1943, there was neither a compelling military nor political reason to keep the 6th Army in the pocket at Stalingrad – political intervention in military decision making was both senseless and disasterous. In 1944, however, Hitler (however difficult it is to admit it) had a valid argument. Without manganese from the Nikopol area, German war production was doomed. In this case, political intervention was perhaps warranted. Leaving an army in a vulnerable salient is bad, but so is running out of manganese.
These two tragic fates of the Sixth Army illustrate the salient issue today: how do we parse the difference between military and political decision making? More specifically, to what do we attribute the shocking Russian decision to withdraw from the west bank of the Dnieper in Kherson oblast, after annexing it just a few months ago?
I would like to parse through this issue. First off, one cannot deny that the withdrawal is politically a significant humiliation for Russia. The question becomes, however, whether this sacrifice was necessary on military or political grounds, and what it may signify about the future course of the conflict.
As I see it, the withdrawal from west bank Kherson must be driven by one of the four following possibilities:
1. The Ukrainian Army has defeated the Russian Army on the west bank and driven it back across the river.
2. Russia is setting a trap in Kherson.
3. A secret peace agreement (or at least ceasefire) has been negotiated which includes giving Kherson back to Ukraine.
4. Russia has made a politically embarrassing but militarily prudent operational choice.
Let us simply run through these four and examine them in sequence.
Possibility 1: Military Defeat
The recapture of Kherson is being fairly celebrated by Ukrainians as a victory. The question is just what kind of victory it is – political/optical, or military? It becomes trivially obvious that it is the first sort. Let’s examine a few facts.
First off, as recently as the morning of November 9 – hours before the withdrawal was announced – some Russian war correspondents were expressing skepticism about the withdrawal rumors because Russia’s forward defensive lines were completely intact. There was no semblance of crisis among Russian forces in the region.
Secondly, Ukraine was not executing any intense offensive efforts in the region at the time the withdrawal began, and Ukrainian officials expressed skepticism that the withdrawal was even real. Indeed, the idea that Russia was laying a trap originates with Ukrainian officials who were apparently caught off guard by the withdrawal. Ukraine was not prepared to pursue or exploit, and advanced cautiously into the void after Russian soldiers were gone. Even with Russia withdrawing, they were clearly scared to advance, because their last few attempts to push through the defenses in the area became mass casualty events.
Overall, Russia’s withdrawal was implemented very quickly with minimal pressure from the Ukrainians – this very fact is the basis of the idea that it is either a trap or the result of a backroom deal that’s been concluded. In either case, Russia simply slipped back across the river without pursuit by the Ukrainians, taking negligible losses and getting virtually all of their equipment out (so far, a broken down T90 is the only Ukrainian capture of note). The net score on the Kherson Front remains a strong casualty imbalance in favor of Russia, and they once again withdraw without suffering a battlefield defeat and with their forces intact.
Possibility 2: It’s a Trap
This theory cropped up very soon after the withdrawal was announced. It originated with Ukrainian officials who were caught off guard by the announcement, and was then picked up (ironically) by Russian supporters who were hoping that 4D chess was being played – it is not. Russia is playing standard 2D chess, which is the only kind of chess there is, but more about that later.
It’s unclear what exactly “trap” is supposed to mean, but I’ll try to fill in the blanks. There are two possible interpretations of this: 1) a conventional battlefield maneuver involving a timely counterattack, and 2) some sort of unconventional move like a tactical nuclear weapon or a cascading dam failure.
It’s clear that there’s no battlefield counter in the offing, for the simple reason that Russia blew the bridges behind them. With no Russian forces left on the west bank and the bridges wrecked, there is no immediate capacity for either army to attack the other in force. Of course, they can shell each other across the river, but the actual line of contact is frozen for the time being.
That leaves the possibility that Russia intends to do something unconventional, like use a low yield nuke.
The idea that Russia lured Ukraine into Kherson to set off a nuke is… stupid.
If Russia wanted to use a nuclear weapon against Ukraine (which they don’t, for reasons I articulated in a previous article) there’s no sensible reason why they would choose a regional capital that they annexed as the site to do it. Russia has no shortage of delivery systems. If they wanted to nuke Ukraine, very simply, they wouldn’t bother abandoning their own city and making that the blast site. They would simply nuke Ukraine. It’s not a trap.
Possibility 3: Secret Deal
This was sparked by the news that US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has been in contact with his Russian counterpart, and specifically the sense that the White House has been pushing for the negotiations. Under one rumored variant of the “Sullivan Deal”, Ukraine would acknowledge Russia’s annexations east of the Dnieper, while west bank Kherson would revert back to Kiev’s control.
I find this unlikely for a variety of reasons. First off, such a deal would represent an extremely pyrrhic Russian victory – while it would achieve the liberation of the Donbas (one of the explicit goals of the SMO) it would leave Ukraine largely intact and strong enough to be a perennial thorn in the side, as an inimical anti-Russian state. There would be the problem of probable further Ukrainian integration into NATO, and above all, the open surrender of an annexed regional capital.
On the Ukrainian side, the issue is that the recovery of Kherson only enhances the (false) perception in Kiev that total victory is possible, and that Crimea and the Donbas can be recovered entirely. Ukraine is enjoying a string of territorial advances, and feels that it is pushing its window of opportunity.
Ultimate, there seems to be no deal that satisfies both sides, and this reflects that the innate hostility between the two nations must be resolved on the battlefield. Only Ares can adjudicate this dispute.
As for Ares, he has been hard at work in Pavlovka.
While the world was fixated on the relatively bloodless change of hands in Kherson, Russia and Ukraine fought a bloody battle for Pavlovka, and Russia won. Ukraine also attempted to break Russia’s defenses in the Svatove axis, and was repulsed with heavy casualties. Ultimately, the main reason to doubt news of a secret deal is the fact that the war is continuing on all the other fronts – and Ukraine is losing. This leaves only one option.
Possibility 4: A Difficult Operational Choice
This withdrawal was subtly signaled shortly after General Surovikin was put in charge of the operation in Ukraine. In his first press conference, he signaled dissatisfaction with the Kherson front, calling the situation “tense and difficult” and alluding to the threat of Ukraine blowing dams on the Dnieper and flooding the area. Shortly thereafter, the process of evacuating civilians from Kherson began.
Here is what I think Surovikin decided about Kherson.
Kherson was becoming an inefficient front for Russia because of the logistical strain of supplying forces across the river with limited bridge and road capacity. Russia demonstrated that it was capable of shouldering this sustainment burden (keeping troops supplied all through Ukraine’s summer offensives), but the question becomes 1) to what purpose, and 2) for how long.
Ideally, the bridgehead becomes the launching point for offensive action against Nikolayev, but launching an offensive would require strengthening the force grouping in Kherson, which correspondingly raises the logistical burden of projecting force across the river. With a very long front to play with, Kherson is clearly one of the most logistically intensive axes. My guess is that Surovikin took charge and almost immediately decided he did not want to increase the sustainment burden by trying to push on Nikolayev.
Therefore, if an offensive is not going to be launched from the Kherson position, the question becomes – why hold the position at all? Politically, it is important to defend a regional capital, but militarily the position becomes meaningless if one is not going to go on the offensive in the south.
Let’s be even more explicit: unless an offensive towards Nikolayev is planned, the Kherson bridgehead is militarily counterproductive.
While holding the bridgehead in Kherson, the Dnieper River becomes a negative force multiplier – increasing the sustainment and logistics burden and ever threatening to leave forces cut off if Ukraine succeeds in destroying the bridges or bursting the dam. Projecting force across the river becomes a heavy burden with no obvious benefit. But by withdrawing to the east bank, the river becomes a positive force multiplier by serving as a defensive barrier.
In the broader operational sense, Surovikin seems to be declining battle in the south while preparing in the north and in the Donbas. It is clear that he made this decision shortly after taking command of the operation – he has been hinting at it for weeks, and the speed and cleanliness of the withdrawal suggests that it was well planned , long in advance. Withdrawing across the river increases the combat effectiveness of the army significantly and decreases the logistical burden, freeing resources for other sectors.
This fits the overall Russian pattern of making harsh choices about resource allocation, fighting this war under the simple framework of optimizing the loss ratios and building the perfect meatgrinder. Unlike the German Army in the second world war, the Russian army seems to be freed from political interference to make rational military decisions.
In this way, the withdrawal from Kherson can be seen as a sort of anti-Stalingrad. Instead of political interference hamstringing the military, we have the military freed to make operational choices even at the cost of embarrassing the political figures. And this, ultimately, is the more intelligent – if optically humiliating – way to fight a war.
