By Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Substack, 5/8/24

Apologies for the multiple posts recently but a lot is happening and I’m trying to keep up with it. – Natylie

As indicated in my previous post, Russia has reacted sharply to reports over the weekend that France had already sent troops into Ukraine, was about to send more, while the House leader of the Democratic Party of the US indicated that the US would have to send in troops in the event that Russia broke through Ukrainian fortifications (which it has been doing, regularly).

The Kremlin (1) hauled in French and British abassadors to Moscow for a dressing-down, (2) threatened retaliatory action outside of Ukraine on those who would send weapons to Ukraine that could be used to fire on targets in Russia (which, in effect, has been happening for some time, ond now augmented with the upsurge of Storm Shadows, ATACMS and other long-range missiles, perhaps soo to include German Taurus, in the inventories so kindly provided by the West to Ukraine), and (3) initiated exercises for the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

The Russisan reaction appeared to have some immediate effect. France claimed (either falsely or misleadingly, nor both) not to have any French foreign legionnaires in France, nor any plans to do so. Further it said that it recognized Putin as legitimate leader of Russia (so too did the White House, which has previously said that it does not consider the recent elections free or fair) and even sent its ambassador to the Presidential inauguration ceremony that took place yesterday May 7th. Interestingly, Greece also did, and Malta; Russia’s “NATO” allies, Serbia and Hungary also sent their ambassadors. The USA and Germany called their ambassadors home to avoid having them attend.

Since Macron has been the most aggressive NATO leader in his threats of pushing towards a direct war between NATO and Russia, it was appropriate that Macron did most of the backing down. Dima of the Military Summary Channel sees this less in terms of France backing away from nuclear war and more about negotiation between Russia and France about the prohibition of the Russian flag at the upcoming Olympic Games. Since this would put Russia in a position of weakness, I think the former explanation is by far the more convincing.

The Italian foreign minister has disassociated Italy from Marcon’s tactics saying, even, that it would not send troops to Ukraine. I don’t know about Britiain, other than noting what is now a customary “free” media silence about anything that might remotely embarrass the ever-Churchillian British wannabess of the boomer generation. The Independent, however, did float a story about how destruction of the Kerch bridge was now no longer necessary, given that satellite photos had confirmed that the bridge was no longer being used for military ordnance. Interestingly, and perhaps in anticipation of the alliance’s total collapse in the event of a catastrophic failure in Ukraine, not unlikely, it is reported today that Austria will not be joining NATO.

By Tarik Cyril Amar, Website, 5/6/24

At this moment (and for quite a while already), Russia clearly has the initiative in the war between it, on one side, and Ukraine and – de facto – the West on the other. High Ukrainian officials and military officers – including the commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky and the deputy head of Kiev’s military intelligence service Vadim Skibitsky – are admitting publicly that their country is in deep trouble. Realistic observers in the West, such as Brian Berletic and the Duran’s Alexander Mercouris and Alex Christoforou, correctly point out that the West’s injections of aid cannot turn this situation around, partly because there is no way to compensate for Kiev’s lack of manpower and partly because the West itself does not, actually, have industrial resources to render support at a scale that would make an effective difference.

We also know that Russia has built up large reserves, which it has not yet committed to the fight. Moreover, there has been an intriguing shift in Russian terminology: While the term “offensive” has been avoided for a long time – with Russia categorizing its territorial gains as the result of a strategy of “active defense” – it has now popped up officially. The Russian Minister of Defense is reported to have spoken of the need to step up supplies to the front in order to “maintain the required pace of the offensive.” This may or may not have been a deliberate signal. It could also be a simple way to keep Ukraine and the West guessing. Yet, taken together with recent Russian advances and other operations – such as air strikes on Odessa and Kharkov/Kharkiv – it could mean that Moscow will launch a major offensive either this spring or summer, as many observers are expecting.

In one scenario, then, the war could end this year, with a Russian victory. The extent and precise political shape of that victory cannot be predicted. Capturing all of Ukraine east of the Dnepr/Dnipro River (plus those parts of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions (oblasts) to its west? Seizing major cities such as Odessa and Kharkiv? Another strike at the capital Kiev/Kyiv? Likewise, we can’t forecast what kind of Ukraine would emerge from such a Russian victory: A neutralized and regime-changed rump state? A rump state bent on revenge and continuously subsidized by the West?   

In a highly unlikely – given the West’s persistent refusal to consider a real compromise as a way out – the war could end with a negotiated peace, which, given the realities on the ground, would have to be shaped in Russia’s favor and thus would amount to victory by another name.

But it would be unwise to rule out a third possibility. It is true, that the West does not have the means to make Ukraine win. Yet it is crucial to distinguish between this fact and what Western leaderships are ready to acknowledge. The West, in short, is not rational, and it has displayed an enormous capacity for wishful thinking.

Hence, we should pay close attention to signs that the West is seeking to prolong this unnecessary war for years by any means it can. Recently, in particular, there have been several such worrying signs. Here, I would like to highlight three of them:

First, the Biden administration National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has declared that Ukraine should, in essence, hold out this year, so that in 2025, the West can use it again to launch another offensive against Russia. The Ukrainian president Volodymyr/Vladimir Zelensky has also spoken of trying to attack again, provided his country will receive more Western weapons. Both statements are unrealistic – not a first from either Sullivan or Zelensky – suggestion, but let’s set that aside for a moment. Our question here is what harm policies based on unrealistic assumptions can still do.

Second, the Italian newspaper Republicca has published an article – most likely based on deliberate leaks – that purports to report internal NATO thinking on “red lines” in Ukraine. That is, under what circumstances NATO would intervene directly – and, conversely, under what circumstances it would not do so. In essence, the reported “red lines” – as summarized in the Ukrainian publication Strana.ua boil down to two: NATO, so this article claims, considers intervening directly, if Belarus joins the war on Russia’s side (or if Russia launches another major attack from Belarussian territory) or if Russia goes beyond Ukraine’s borders to attack either a NATO member state (duh, frankly) or Moldova, which is not a member but a target of NATO expansion policy. Once again, let’s not immediately get sidetracked by dismissing these purported NATO “red lines” as nothing but a reflection of NATO’s exaggerated sense of its own capacities. They may well be that, but that does not mean that they are not meant seriously or that they can’t do great damage. As they are, they seem to reflect a desire to keep the war in Ukraine and to deter Russia from one of its most devastating conventional options, namely a fresh strike on Kiev/Kyiv from Belarus. That points to an intention to both “cage the war in” and keep it going.

Third, the USA is continuing its push to confiscate Russian state assets of about 300 billion dollars that are currently frozen in Western banks. It has not yet succeeded in persuading the Europeans to join this operation, and on its own, Washington cannot seize – really, steal – more than a few billion. It is, however, the intention that counts here, and that is to find the equivalent of a fairytale pot of gold to go on paying for the proxy war in Ukraine.

Taken together, such Western signals remain hard to read with confidence: They could be no more than a façade of bluffs, meant to distract Russia from pursuing its clear advantage on the ground to full extent. In that interpretation, this is, in essence, a desperate West trying to cheat its way out of a clear, incontrovertible, and very discrediting defeat.

Yet, despite the fact that all of these ideas are deeply unsound, they could also reflect an earnest intention to drag this war out. Behind this could be an idea that Russia’s successful economic mobilization also has costs and may, in its current form, not be sustainable for years. That is, incidentally, the message of a recent Financial Times article that, we may be confident, does not lack political inspiration. The key fantasy here is, in short, to make the war last long enough so that the West can turn the logic of attrition against Russia.

Once again, the key question – in terms of the harm all of this can do – is not, actually, if it could “work.” It very probably cannot. The key question, instead, is what can happen while the West tries such a policy, and it fails. And there the greatest single risk is that if Moscow should ever come to believe that the West might succeed in applying a new combination of proxy war and long-term attrition, it would be sorely tempted to cut that scheme short, including by a limited nuclear strike to make clear that it will simply not accept such “new rules of the game.”

Once a “small” nuke is used, there is, of course, no telling where the escalation will end. It is a bizarre idea to think that we could end much of humanity because Ukraine needed to have an “open door” to NATO through which, however, it was not really supposed to actually ever walk. 

I started writing this post before I saw a new piece of news: The Russian President has just ordered forces near Ukraine to drill for the launch of tactical nuclear weapons. I cannot say I am surprised. But we should all be very scared indeed. And, ideally, we should finally sit down and negotiate a realistic compromise.

By Mark Episkopos, Responsible Statecraft, 5/7/24

Mark Episkopos is a Eurasia Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is also an Adjunct Professor of History at Marymount University. Episkopos holds a PhD in history from American University and a masters degree in international affairs from Boston University.

The Biden administration’s Ukraine policy, though it lacks a coherent strategy, is at least centered on an explicit guiding principle: Russia must not be allowed to win in Ukraine. This sentiment is widely shared by U.S. allies across the Atlantic. “I have a clear strategic objective,” said French President Emmanuel Macron in a recent interview. “Russia cannot win in Ukraine.”

But, even in this consensus position, there is a major fly in the ointment: there has not been enough serious consideration of what a Russian victory in Ukraine would look like. The discussion has, instead, centered on alarmist predictions that obfuscate more than they reveal about Russian intentions and capabilities. “Who can pretend that Russia will stop there? What security will there be for the other neighboring countries, Moldova, Romania, Poland, Lithuania and the others?” said Macron, echoing the unfounded narrative that Russia’s ultimate goal is to attack NATO states.

While it is true that Russia’s victory in this war broadly contradicts U.S. interests, a closer look at Moscow’s possible endgame scenarios in Ukraine reveals that total victory — even if it were possible — is not in Russia’s interests and is probably no longer expected or desired by the Russian leadership.

Moscow, according to Western officials, can win this war simply by defeating Ukraine’s Armed Forces (AFU) on the battlefield. At first blush, it seems like a reasonable enough interpretation of a belligerent state’s wartime objectives, but this simplistic framing of the conflict quickly falls apart upon further examination.

What would really happen if the AFU’s lines collapsed — a prospect that, though not yet imminent, appears increasingly less distant by the day — and Russian forces found themselves in a position to steamroll Ukraine?

Even if Ukrainian forces are conclusively routed on the frontlines, besieging such Ukrainian strongholds as Kharkiv and Zaporizhia — let alone Kyiv and Odessa — will prove immensely taxing. Months of drawn-out fighting over the much less significant cities of Mariupol and Bakhmut over a small, yet nonetheless harrowing preview of what these sieges would entail.

Occupying all of Ukraine would be prohibitively expensive for Russia even in the short term, let alone for a prolonged or indefinite period. The West would likely do its best to dial up these costs by funding and coordinating partisan activities all across Ukraine, but especially in the country’s western half. There is, after all, ample historical precedent for such activity in the form of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which resisted Soviet authorities for up to five years following the end of World War II.

Prior to Russia’s invasion, commentators urged Western leaders to turn this conflict into “Putin’s Afghanistan,” with Ukrainian partisans playing the role of 1980s mujahideen fighters. These suggestions were tabled because the Ukrainian government did not, in fact, collapse in the fateful weeks following the invasion, but it remains the case that any Russian attempt to control all of Ukraine would likely precipitate a prolonged insurgency campaign and incur terrible costs as a result.

Ukraine’s collapse likewise amplifies the risks of a direct clash between Russia and the West. The establishment of a de facto boundary between eastern Poland and Russian-occupied western Ukraine would create a dangerous flashpoint that, in the absence of meaningful deconfliction channels, could erupt in a shooting war on NATO’s eastern flank.

Nor would such a war necessarily be inadvertent on the part of the West; a total Ukrainian collapse would likely spark calls among the Baltic states and at least several major European powers for direct Western intervention on the ground, whether in the form of a NATO expeditionary force or a coalition of the willing drawn up from individual NATO members. Macron has openly and repeatedly stated that the West should not rule out an intervention along these lines; though his proposal was soundly rejected by the U.S. and Germany, it can be expected that political pressure to “do something” to stop Russia will build in Europe and the United States if Kyiv’s defeat becomes imminent.

The Kremlin is well aware that it cannot unilaterally achieve its wartime goals no matter how well it does on the battlefield. Indeed, its goals extend well beyond Ukraine, though not quite in the way that Macron and the Biden administration believe. There is no evidence that Moscow has any intention of launching wars of conquest against Poland, the Baltics, or other NATO states, but it is certainly seeking to extract a host of strategic concessions from the U.S. and its allies in areas including prohibitions against eastward NATO expansion and limitations on force deployments along NATO’s eastern flank.

The war that Russia is waging in Ukraine is thus a proxy for the Kremlin’s larger coercive strategy against the West, though it is not at all clear that conquering Ukraine will bring Moscow any closer to getting its desired concessions. The AFU’s collapse would certainly induce a state of panic in Western capitals. Yet it is difficult to see how this panic can be translated into a concrete willingness by the Biden administration and other Western leaders to strike the kind of grand security bargain Moscow seeks.

In fact, considering how politically invested current Western governments are in Ukraine’s war effort, there is a chance that Ukrainian collapse could produce the opposite reaction and render Western leaders even less likely to enter into substantive talks with Moscow.

Simply put, Russia has little to gain and much to lose by “winning” in Ukraine, if winning is defined as occupying the entire country. Instead, Russia’s incentive is to use its growing advantages as a lever for negotiating with the West. The Kremlin, in light of these conditions, has previously hinted at establishing demilitarized buffer zones in Ukraine that are not under Russian control.

Regardless of what happens on the battlefield in coming weeks and months, Moscow has started something it cannot unilaterally finish. This gives the U.S. tremendous inherent leverage in shaping the outlines of war termination — Washington and its allies should use it now to bring an end to this war on the best possible terms for the West as well as Ukraine.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, our constitutional rights were undermined particularly those pertaining to privacy and the right to be free of illegal searches and seizures. The recent onslaughts against the first amendment rights to free speech, press and assembly are a natural progression, unfortunately. But that doesn’t make them any less distressing. – Natylie

YouTube link #1 here.

YouTube link #2 here.

YouTube link here.