Russia Matters, 10/15/24

1. “There is talk behind closed doors” in Western capitals of a deal in which “Moscow retains de facto control over… one-fifth of Ukraine it has occupied—though Russia’s sovereignty is not recognized—while the rest of the country is allowed to join NATO or given equivalent security guarantees,” according to FT editors. “Under that umbrella, it could rebuild and integrate with the EU, akin to West Germany in the Cold War,” they write. Some of these discussions are echoed in Kyiv, according to Der Spiegel. “For the first time since the Russian invasion in February 2022, the Ukrainian capital is seriously discussing scenarios in which the country foregoes the complete reconquest of its occupied territories, almost 20% of Ukrainian territory, for the time being,” this German outlet reports. According to Robert Kagan of Brookings, however, a stable peaceful resolution of the conflict is unlikely because Putin will assume that the West will keep arming Ukraine even if a deal is reached. “Unless something dramatic changes, this is a war that, like most wars, will be won or lost on the battlefield… Americans need to decide soon whether they are prepared to let Ukraine lose,” Kagan writes in WP.
2. Requests for more weapons and security guarantees by the West, which Volodymyr Zelenskyy is to refer to when briefing the Rada leadership on his victory plan on Oct. 16, have so far received a tepid response by the Biden administration, according to WSJ. In their comments on the plan, U.S. officials have pointed out that it repackages some of Ukraine’s earlier requests for arms and noted that members of NATO are divided about whether to offer Ukraine a formal invitation to join, WSJ reported. Ukrainians are increasingly exhausted by the war, and polls show an incremental increase in the number of Ukrainians prepared for negotiations, according to this U.S. newspaper.
3. The fall of Pokrovsk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region would leave the Ukrainian military without a key logistics hub for operations in eastern Ukraine, and it could serve as Russia’s gateway to conquering the rest of that region, according to Keith Johnson of FP. Moreover, “Pokrovsk’s fall could have an even more insidious impact on Ukraine’s ability to keep fighting: The city is the source of most of the coal used for the country’s steel and iron industry” which is the second-largest sector of the Ukrainian economy, according to Johnson. Without Pokrovsk’s mine, “the country’s remaining steel industry will be crippled,” according to The Economist.
4. “Russian forces proved more flexible and effective in the conduct of defensive operations in 2023 through a combination of maneuver and positional defense,” according to Michael Kofman of CEIP. Despite these adaptations, however, the Russian army’s assaults on Ukraine’s prepared defenses led to grinding battles. “The net effect was incremental Russian gains at high cost, as Russian forces proved unable to attain operationally significant breakthroughs when possessing quantitative advantages in manpower, materiel and munition,” according to Kofman. However, “[w]hat was true in 2023 may not hold for 2024, and beyond,” this leading expert on the Russian military finds in his CEIP piece, “Assessing Russian Military Adaptation in 2023.” Looking beyond 2023, Kofman finds Ukraine’s fall 2024 incursion into Russia’s Kursk region to be a success on the tactical level, but not “that successful” on the operational level “because if the primary goal was to shift significant Russian forces from their advances” in eastern Ukraine, “this did not take place,” Kofman told NYMag.
5. Since the first Western restrictions on Russian oil exports were introduced in 2022, Moscow has assembled a fleet of more than 400 tankers that are currently moving some 4 million barrels of oil a day beyond the reach of sanctions, according to FT’s investigation. Presently nearly 70% of the Kremlin’s oil is being transported on these shadow tankers, according to a separate investigation conducted by the Kyiv School of Economics Institute and reported by NYT. Russia has invested about $10 billion in developing its fleet of such shadow tankers. Commenting on the FT investigation, Harvard professor and RM principal investigator Graham Allison wrote on his X account: “For those who still imagine that Western sanctions are strangling Russia’s economy, the FT’s Big Read… masterfully illuminates how Russia is out-playing the US at the cat and mouse game of economic sanctions.”*
6. Without dedicated reintegration programs in Western countries for fighters returning from Ukraine, the risk of radicalization and violence appears “rather high,” according to Jean-François Ratelle of the University of Ottawa in his PONARS commentary. Western governments may think that most such fighters will not pose a security threat, but that view seems “short-sighted… because it… puts the focus on ideology rather than the broader context of the war and postwar experience,” Ratelle warns.