By Dominic Sansone, The National Interest, 8/4/23

Dominick Sansone is a Ph.D. student at the Hillsdale College Van Andel Graduate School of Statesmanship. Previously a Fulbright recipient to Bulgaria, his writing on politics in the Black Sea region has been published by The National Interest, the Euromaidan Press, The American Conservative, and RealClear Defense, among other publications. He also previously wrote as a contributing columnist focusing on Russia-China relations at The Epoch Times.

Foreign Affairs magazine published an insightful piece in its most recent issue, titled “An Unwinnable War: Washington Needs an Endgame in Ukraine.” Written by RAND Corporation senior political scientist Samuel Charap, it is well argued and presents a number of reasonable proposals that prioritize a diplomatic end to the Ukraine War. Three examples—the Korean armistice, U.S.-Israeli security arrangements, and the Bosnia Contact Group—are drawn upon in order to suggest a roadmap to ceasing hostilities. [https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/unwinnable-war-washington-endgame]

A number of responses were subsequently published in Foreign Affairs online. All take aim with Charap’s assessment that neither side currently holds the capabilities to achieve ultimate victory, defined in this context as establishing control over the disputed territory in Ukraine. Rather, they contend that Ukraine’s triumph is simply a matter of providing more—and deadlier—Western weaponry. Each argument also rests upon the assumption of a tottering Putin regime. They all cite the Prigozhin mutiny (it is mentioned a total of six separate times throughout the various responses) as irrefutable evidence of a latent contingent of discontented Russians that can and will eventually be mobilized to topple the current government. [https://www.foreignaffairs.com/responses/should-america-push-ukraine-negotiate-russia-end-war]

The most extreme perspective comes from Dmytro Natalukha, Chair of the Committee for Economic Affairs of the Parliament of Ukraine and a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Natalukha claims that leaving any territory occupied by Russia will allow Moscow to subsequently use that land as a launch pad for future attacks to capture the rest of the country, as he claims it did after the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015—although he conveniently ignores the fact that it was both Moscow and Kiev who consistently failed to implement the terms of both the Minsk Protocol and Minsk II. Ukraine, Natalukha argues, must therefore wage war until all occupied land is seized back from Russia. What is more, the return of the eastern oblasts and Crimea must then be followed by forcible regime change in Moscow and the installation of a Western-approved leader. This will ensure that “post-Putin Russia will have the consent of Ukraine.”

“Ukraine and its allies must aim to make Russia less anti-Western. Regardless of what happens at the negotiating table, therefore, Putin cannot remain in power,” states Natalukha. He subsequently believes that the civilized world should reach a consensus on confronting Russian leadership, “as they did on Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and Bashar al-Assad in Syria”—examples that should make any honest assessor of U.S. foreign policy in the past thirty years since. The final step after total Russian collapse and the installation of a puppet government would then be to demilitarize the country and destroy its state media i.e., its “propaganda machine.”

The ostensibly less severe proposals also support the contention that Russian armed forces will inevitably be crushed under the weight of well-armed Ukrainian resolve. Alina Polyakova and Daniel Fried are firm in the conviction that all that stands in the way of total victory is a lack of F-16s and long-range missiles. Early battlefield successes around Kiev, Kharkiv, and Kherson, are cited as proof of endemic Russian weakness. The authors also believe that, with the requested weaponry, Ukraine would be able to seize territory in the eastern oblasts. This will obstruct Moscow’s land bridge to Crimea, and “force Russia into an untenable position.” But the likelihood of Russian leadership abating rather than escalating its war effort once the naval base at Sevastopol is under threat of sustained artillery fire is a roll of the dice. The consequences of losing that bet could be catastrophic. Nonetheless, Angela Stent also reassures readers that the risks are worth it. She suggests that Moscow’s war machine is buckling under the weight of its own incompetence, while Kiev is on the cusp of turning a strategic corner. Ukrainian forces remain upbeat in a “battle for national survival”; meanwhile, “Russian troop morale is dwindling”—an assessment that by its nature is one of bias and unreliable speculation.

The eventual ouster of Putin is implicitly assumed in each of the arguments. Polyakova and Fried bring up Russian military losses going back nearly two centuries, all the way to the 1853 Crimean War. “Each defeat provoked domestic stress and upheaval,” the implication being that the same fate awaits the current regime upon its defeat in Ukraine. The Prigozhin mutiny is presented as evidence of pervasive “stress in the Russian ruling circles.” Stent also believes that “Putin’s grip on Russia” is weakening. The key to knocking down the Kremlin house of cards is thus “more and better Western weapons.” While any or all of these contentions may be true, no respondent addresses the very real possibility that an individual as equally committed—or perhaps more committed—to the objectives laid out at the beginning of the war might take power in Moscow upon Putin’s (potentially bloody) departure.

But most importantly, all of the responses fail to address the prospect that Kiev’s counteroffensive could fail to achieve its strategic aims even with Western arms. Ukrainian battlefield invincibility is assumed as an indisputable matter of historical necessity. They ignore the fact that Russian armed forces continue to secure important victories, inching their way westward while inflicting heavy Ukrainian casualties. Instead, all of Moscow’s strategic and tactical successes are handwaved away. Polyakova and Fried claim without explanation that the seizure of territory in the “Bahkmut [sic] offensive has deepened [Putin’s] costly mess.”

Nor do they address the fact that Russian armed forces have of late been very successful in destroying and capturing Western equipment, including the much-vaunted Leopard tank and Bradley fighting vehicle. Moscow also retains control of the skies, a situation that a limited number of F-16s without enough pilots who possess the requisite training will not change. Likewise, a longer war defined by increasing escalation favors both the military-industrial capacity of Russia as well as the much larger resource pool of human capital that it can draw from. The only way to counter this latter fact may eventually be for other nations’ military forces to begin engaging in the fight directly. Natalukha would undoubtedly be in favor of such a prospect, and it seems that the other commentators may be as well.

The hate for the Putin regime that seems to undergird the Western foreign policy establishment is very likely genuine and deep-seated; however, its authenticity does not make it a premise upon which to construct a realistic path for bringing the bloodshed in Ukraine to an end. Charap acknowledges this point and proposes that the U.S. form a governmental group to focus on exploring diplomatic pathways to peace. “There is not a single official in the U.S. government whose full-time job is conflict diplomacy,” he rightly laments. What is needed is a “regular channel of communication regarding the war that includes Ukraine, U.S. allies, and Russia.”

This is undoubtedly the correct approach. Negotiations for a sustainable peace are necessary not merely to de-escalate the situation and avoid a potentially larger conflagration, but perhaps most importantly to stop the wanton death and destruction currently befalling the citizens of Ukraine. As impolitic as it may be to currently say, it should also be our desire to stop Russian lives from needlessly being lost as well.

However, the responses to Charap form a litany of excuses for not engaging with Moscow. Something like the Korean armistice is discounted because North Korea does not occupy any of South Korea’s territory; the Israel situation is not feasible because Tel Aviv possesses nuclear weapons; the example of the Balkan Contact Group is inapplicable because one could do business with the Yeltsin administration.

But Charap presents these as cases to draw lessons from, not as exact models to copy. They illustrate how to adapt means in unique situations to reach the same end: a viable peace agreement amid hostile parties that is reached by way of a negotiated settlement.

The issue at the center of the disagreement is that the respondents do not believe that such an end can be reached unless it proceeds from total Ukrainian victory and the destruction of the current Russian regime. The reason for this is presented as a matter of fact: Russia can simply no longer be treated as a real nation-state. As articulated by Stent, any negotiation with Moscow is impossible because they are liars, and an armistice will inevitably be a “temporary solution while Russia regroups and plans its next attack.” Such a conclusion obviously leads the international community to an impasse in which the only way out is through.

Charap replies in kind to the various responses offered to his original piece. The central premise upon which he bases his rebuttal is straightforward: “My critics seem to see diplomacy as a synonym for surrender rather than as an important tool of statecraft.” This is correct, but understanding the argument behind why his critics view a peace settlement as capitulation is even more important. Russia (with Putin as anthropomorphized regression) has broken the rules-based order in a manner that undermines the end of history thesis. The implication of not rectifying this violation would be to implicitly acknowledge that the world is returning to balance of power geopolitics. This is a sin that cannot be forgiven. For that reason, nothing less than a total Russian collapse is an acceptable outcome to the war.

Link here.

Glad to hear Sachs address how Washington intentionally refused to allow the Soviet Union/Russia the same policies to stabilize its currency, cancel its debt and prevent hyperinflation as it did previously with post-Soviet Poland. My previous research was based on sources that demonized Sachs as a facilitator of the robbing of 90’s Russia by the west. According to his version of events, he strenuously tried to prevent that with his advice to Washington, only to be overruled. – Natylie

Sputnik, 8/15/23

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu earlier touted the conference as “a much-needed venue” to publicly discuss the most pressing global and regional security issues.

The XI Moscow Conference on International Security opened in the town of Kubinka outside Moscow on Tuesday, with an array of senior Russian and foreign officials delivering online speeches at the event, titled “Realities of global security in a multipolar world.”

They included President Vladimir Putin, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia, as well as Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu.

Russian President Putin: Global Community Should Create ‘Contours of the Future’

In his video address to participants, President Putin stressed the importance of conducting global security­-related discussions “in the context of the formation of a multipolar world.”

“Such open, honest, and unbiased discussions are extremely important today, because all of us – the entire international community – will have to create the contours of the future,” the Russian president said.

He stressed that Russia remains a “firm supporter of a multipolar world order based on the priority of the norms and principles of international law, as well as the sovereignty and equality of states, constructive cooperation and trust.”

The Russian head of state recalled that nowadays, both long-standing and new conflicts are being inflated in different regions of the world. The goal of those who fuel these conflicts is to “mercilessly” capitalize on the natural resources of the countries involved in the standoffs, Putin added.

In his vein, he touched upon the Ukraine conflict, pointing to “billions of dollars being pumped into [Kiev’s] neo-Nazi regime, which is also provided with military equipment and ammunition, as well as military advisers and mercenaries.” Putin emphasized that “everything is being done to further ignite this conflict and draw other states into it.”

Separately, the Russian president recalled that NATO countries continue to build up and modernize their offensive capabilities as the US is seeking “to reformat” the system of interstate interaction that has developed in the Asia-Pacific region for the sake of Washington’s interests.

He accused NATO members of trying to transfer military confrontation to outer and information space, and using military and non-military means of pressure. “What’s more, all this is happening against the backdrop of the destruction of the arms control system,” Putin underscored.

Russian Defense Minister Shoigu: Ukraine’s Military Resource ‘Almost Exhausted’

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, for his part, focused on issues related to Russia’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine, which “put an end to the West’s domination in military sphere.” According to him, Western countries can no longer impose their will on other nations.

The Russian defense minister stressed that “Preliminary results of hostilities indicate that Ukraine’s military resource is almost exhausted.”

He made it clear that Russia is ready to share assessments of ineffectiveness of Western technology with its partners, referring to Ukraine’s military equipment that it earlier received from the US and its allies.

“I would like to stress once again that there is nothing unique or indestructible for Russian weapons on the battlefield today. In many cases, even Soviet-made equipment is superior in its combat characteristics to Western models. We have objective monitoring data on the destruction of German tanks, US armored vehicles, UK missiles and other weapon systems,” Shoigu said.

He added that some of Ukraine’s Western-supplied weapons that have been seized by Russian forces are currently on display at the Patriot Park in Kubinka.

Shoigu also dwelt on the “alarming situation” around the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, saying that “Kiev exposes it to regular shelling from heavy weapons.” According to the Russian defense minister, “the actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces can provoke a nuclear catastrophe.”

He also said that as far as the special operation is concerned, Russia has so far refrained from using cluster munitions, but that Moscow may reconsider its decision.

“I would like to draw attention to the fact that we also have cluster munitions in service. Until now, we have refrained from using them for humanitarian reasons. However, this decision can be reconsidered,” Shoigu emphasized, adding that the US is committing a war crime by using cluster munitions in Ukraine.

Speaking of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, he said that Kiev used it as a cover-up for its weapons and ammunition depots to protect them from Russian missile strikes.

“The Kiev regime has shown particular cynicism in the implementation of the Black Sea Grain Initiative. By using it as a cover from Russian missile strikes, Kiev has amassed weapons and ammunition in Odessa and other Black Sea ports, which were routinely delivered to the front line,” the Russian defense minister said.

He separately touched upon relations between Russia and China, which Shoigu said “exceeded the level of strategic partnership in all respects, becoming more than allied ones.”

Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu: Beijing Ready to Bolster Security Work Within SCO

The Russian defense minister was echoed by Chinese counterpart Li Shangfu, who told the Moscow conference that military relations between Beijing and Moscow are not directed against third countries.

Li also signaled his country’s readiness to step up security work within the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and bolster defense cooperation with Iran and Belarus.

“China is willing, as before, to strengthen security work within the SCO, and actively deepen defense cooperation with new SCO country Iran and Belarus, which is joining the organization,” the Chinese defense minister underlined, adding that Beijing is ready to strengthen international cooperation on arms control.

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov: West Tries to Destroy Security Architecture in Asia-Pacific

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in turn, berated Washington, NATO and the EU for providing Ukraine with weapons, which he said might spark a direct military conflict between nuclear powers.

“The United States, NATO and the European Union are pumping Kiev with more modern weapons, fomenting the Ukraine conflict further and provoking the uncontrolled spread of weapons across the world. Their adventurous and irresponsible policy significantly increases the threat of a direct military clash between nuclear powers,” Lavrov pointed out.

He accused Western countries of trying to scrap the security architecture in the Asia-Pacific region and create military blocs there for promoting NATO infrastructure.

“Having proclaimed the indivisibility of the security of the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific region, NATO members crossed out all their previous mantra about the purely defensive nature of the alliance and officially declared that from now on, they will not only protect their territory, but will also promote their dominance in this region, the top Russian diplomat stressed.

Lavrov also said that Russia is concerned over the US’ apparent drive “to derail’ the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, “one of the cornerstone elements of the global security architecture.”

“In particular, we observe that such risks are being created as a result of the US’ clear attempts to withdraw from the procedure of this treaty the Anglo-Saxon nuclear project within the framework of the new military bloc AUKUS,” the Russian foreign minister said.

Belarusian President Lukashenko: International Situation ‘Severely Tense’

In his written address to participants of the Moscow conference, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, for his part, warned that the global political situation remains “severely tense” due to the aggravation of “practically all known challenges and threats.”

He said that “there are growing risks of using weapons of mass destruction, including provocations related to using nuclear and biological weapons.”

“Against this background, […] Minsk along with its partners and within the framework of the Union State of Belarus and Russia, makes every effort to strengthen cooperation in the fight against transnational challenges and threats of various nature “, Lukashenko stressed.

Russian Foreign Intel Service Chief: America Cracks Down on Any Alternative Stance

In his speech at the conference, Sergey Naryshkin, chief of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, in particular, spoke of the West’s biased approach to freedom of expression, referring to “Americans and Europeans cracking down on the spread of any alternative viewpoints that undermine their dominant narrative.”

“Not only the news agencies RT and Sputnik, which have a large audience, but even small media resources that oppose the deceitful Western officialdom are being shut down and sanctioned. In a number of the most rabid Russophobic countries, liability over viewing illegal content has already been introduced,” he emphasized.

By Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, 1945, 8/2/23

This is the final chapter of a four-part series providing a balanced analysis of the good, the bad, and the ugly of Russia’s military performance since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The last installment looked at “the bad” in the tactical record of the Russian armed forces. This final assessment considers “the ugly” performance of Russian’s senior leadership, which if not corrected could prove to be Russia’s undoing.

As detailed in the previous article, Russia built a Potemkin military in the decade prior to the invasion, and the strategy it chose to conduct the invasion was deeply flawed. The two men responsible for building that fragile army and designing the invasion plans were Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Gen. Valery Gerasimov. Both men rose to power in 2012.

When the army Russian President Vladimir Putin thought he had built over the past decade was exposed as a hollow shell, and after the strategy for the invasion imploded, one might have expected Putin to fire these two men. Yet they never faced discipline or demotion. Both remain firmly in place – and since February 2022, they have remained at the center of controversy.

Failure to Prepare for Ukraine’s 2022 Fall Offensives

After the initial invasion plan fell apart, and it became clear that an insufficient number of inadequately prepared troops could not accomplish the Kremlin’s objectives, Russian leaders ordered the withdrawal of tens of thousands of Russian mechanized troops north of Kyiv and Kharkiv. These troops redeployed toward the Kremlin’s main effort, the Donbas region. Given the situation, this was the best move in a basket of bad options.

The Russian army did recover from its disastrous opening round, and through the early summer of 2022 it successfully captured the key cities of Mariupol, Severodonetsk, and Lysychansk. But by early July, the Russian army ran out of steam and effectively stopped its westward drives. The Ukrainian command, meanwhile, sacrificed thousands of its troops and conscripts to slow and then stop the Russian drive westward while building up two offensive formations. Russia knew about one of these, in Kherson Oblast, but the formation in the Kharkiv region escaped Gerasimov’s notice.

While Russian troops were licking their wounds and resting from the summer offensive in the Donbas, they were busy preparing in Kherson for Ukraine’s widely publicized offensive. Initially, Russia’s preparation proved effective, as the Ukrainian Armed Forces made little headway and suffered enormous casualties.

But while Russia myopically focused on Kherson, Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi pulled off the biggest surprise of the war. Zaluzhnyi covertly assembled a large attack force in the Kherson region and unleashed an offensive for which Russian forces in the north were completely unprepared.

That lack of preparedness was yet another failure of Russia’s top commanders. When Russian forces redeployed the bulk of their forces from the northern part of the country in April and May, they left what amounted to a token force to cover tens of thousands of square kilometers. Russian troops there were outnumbered eight to one, but even that doesn’t explain the true discrepancy.

A New York Times investigation into the battle revealed that to defend the vast expanse in Northern Ukraine, Russia’s high command had “relied on bedraggled backup forces, many of them separatist fighters from Ukraine’s long conflict in its divided east, to hold territory as the regular Russian army fought hundreds of miles away.” 

The Russian commanding generals should never have left so much territory to so few and untrained men. Even then, they should have ordered them to build hasty defensive positions and given them the resources to do the job. Otherwise, they should have reduced their holdings and held on to only as much territory as they had men and resources to control.

The Russian command did neither. It lost thousands of troops and thousands of square kilometers in the process. Thus, by the beginning of December 2022, Putin had learned that his top two military leaders had crafted a poorly designed, inadequately resourced, and badly executed invasion. He had seen their subsequent offensive operations throughout the summer founder, and by the fall, he had seen yet another major operational error committed by Gerasimov and Shoigu.

Putin took no action to discipline or remove either man.

Russia’s most senior military leaders still were not done making major mistakes. Perhaps as cover for Shoigu and Gerasimov’s errors, someone had to take the blame for the loss of Kherson. That fell on the commander of Russia’s so-called special military operation, Gen. Sergey Surovikin. Putin not only refused to challenge his top general, but in January, he demoted Surovikin and elevated Gerasimov to commander of all Russian combat forces in the war.

Failure to Prevent Open Rebellion

Just days before the change of commanders, another problem arose, as the violent and emotional leader of the Wagner Group private military company, Yevgeny Prigozhin, went public with harsh and foul-mouthed criticism of Gerasimov. Prigozhin claimed that the Ministry of Defense was intentionally withholding critical ammunition stocks for Wagner’s fight in Bakhmut, causing his troops to suffer greater casualties.

The feud continued into 2023. In February, Prigozhin accused the Russian generals of treason for failing to provide the necessary ammunition. On May 5, Prigozhin threatened to pull his troops out of the fight for Bakhmut if Moscow didn’t provide more artillery ammunition. He delivered an expletive-filled tirade against Shoigu and Gerasimov, accusing them of failing to provide the promised ammunition.

At no point did Gerasimov or Shoigu discipline Prigozhin. At no point did Putin take any public action, either against his top two generals or Prigozhin. The matter was allowed to fester, and on June 24, Prigozhin’s feud with Gerasimov and Shoigu exploded into an armed revolt. Prigozhin drove tanks into Rostov-on-Don, where Gerasimov’s headquarters was located, and occupied the headquarters building. He then ordered other armed columns to start driving to Moscow, to “seek justice” for his men’s losses.

Only when a potential coup was underway did Putin get involved. Prigozhin’s audacious move failed. The Wagner Group was effectively dismantled in Ukraine. Its tanks and other equipment were folded into the regular army, and Prigozhin’s men were sent to Belarus, Syria, or Africa. Gerasimov and Shoigu, however, yet again remained in place. But still, the dysfunction at the top was not over.

Dysfunction between Gerasimov/Shoigu and Top Commanding Generals

Some of Russia’s most experienced and successful generals had similar complaints against the Ministry of Defense and the commander of the armed forces. Instead of heeding the warnings of his combat generals, Putin stood passively by as Shoigu fired the commanding generals of the 58th Army, the 106th Airborne Division, and 7th Airborne Division. In total, eight generals have been fired by Gerasimov and Shoigu in recent days.

Meanwhile, back on the front, the Russian army, after spending between six and nine months building an elaborate and professionally designed system of defensive belts, has been performing admirably. Since June 5, the UAF has been throwing everything it has at the Russians — including hundreds of Western tanks, armored vehicles, and artillery systems — and thus far the Kremlin’s forces have held the line. If Gerasimov and Shoigu deserve blame for the chaos at the top, they also deserve credit for the things that have gone well.

But defense has always been the strongest form of war. Russia’s recent success in blunting Ukraine’s offensive owes as much to enduring fundamentals — and to egregious missteps by Ukrainian leaders that we will discuss in a future analysis — as it does to the plans made by the Kremlin’s leaders. It is what happens next that may determine the war’s outcome.

Russian tactical and operational troops and leaders (platoon through brigade) have accumulated considerable experience since the war began. Some of them have shown commendable capacity in adapting to the conditions of modern war, both offensively and defensively. The longer the war goes, the better many of the mid- to lower-level Russian fighters become. The same has thus far not been true of the highest Russian leaders, and that more than anything may determine the outcome of the war’s next phase.

Ramifications

The Ukrainian offensive currently underway will culminate soon, regardless of any territory Zelensky’s troops recover. The defensive doctrine the Russians have been using since January of this year is straight out of decades-old Soviet manuals. The intent of a Soviet-style defensive is to weaken an opponent’s offensive strength by conducting a mobile, flexible defense. Once the attackers reach a critical level of weakness, the Russians will doctrinally move to launch a major counteroffensive.

That will be the true test of Russia’s senior leaders, and of Putin himself. If Russia is unable to mount an offensive force that captures major cities or at least completes the seizure of all of the Donbas, it will place Putin in an alarming spot. He’s already seen his government suffer a failed rebellion because of problems with senior leaders that Putin put in place and has kept in place. If the plans Gerasimov and Shoigu craft, and Putin authorizes, fail to win the war, and the conflict degenerates into a protracted stalemate with little prospect for victory, Putin may suffer a loss of confidence in the eyes of his most effective field commanders, as well as rank-and-file soldiers. In that case, even Putin’s long-term security might not be assured.

Conclusion

Those who dislike Russia will see the evidence of “bad” and “ugly” in this and the previous publication and conclude that Russia cannot win and Ukraine will ultimately prevail. That is certainly the view of many in Kyiv. But it is too early to reach such conclusions, because mixed in with manifestations of the very ugly — open rebellion is almost as bad as it can get within a country — Russia has also demonstrated a modest amount of “good.”

The defense the Russians have built at the operational level, and have thus far been executing at the tactical level, has been exceptional by any historical military standard. What very much remains to be seen is whether Russia’s strategic leaders have learned enough lessons to translate that success into offensive effectiveness at the operational level. The skills needed to conduct wars on defense and on offense are different.

Yet it is probably not accurate to say that Russia will lose the war if its next offensive does not work. If Putin is able to maintain effective control of the political apparatus in Moscow and manage dissatisfaction among his generals and throughout the ranks, Russia is still likely to prevail in the long run. They have a vastly larger country, millions of military aged males, and an industry that is cranking up to higher and higher levels of production. It is unlikely that Ukraine will ever be able to match Russia’s natural and human resources over time — even with continued NATO contributions, which are not guaranteed.

Ultimately, war remains a chaotic, brutal, and unpredictable affair that is almost always determined by which side has the best leadership, the most resources, and the firmest political staying power. The pressures on each side come from their enemy as much as from their own domestic populations. Only time will tell how this conflict ends, but a cold, balanced assessment doesn’t bode well for Kyiv.

By Stephen Breyer, Asia Times, 8/14/23

Stephen Bryen is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and the Yorktown Institute.

It is still too early to say whether the direction of the Ukraine war has changed, but there is increasing evidence that Ukraine’s inability to penetrate Russian defenses along the southern line, and challenges in the directions of Kupyansk, Lyman and Bakhmut suggests the entire war could be reaching a decisive conclusion.

It is, for that reason, that the Biden administration is asking Congress for $20 billion for Ukraine. The idea seems to be to provide psychological support to both President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian army.

This time, however, Congress may not rubber stamp this outlandish money request. It is not clear why US$20 billion is needed, and sentiment in the US and Europe is starting to shift toward finding a solution to this costly and difficult war.

Concerns range from depleting US strategic reserves to prolonging a conflict that increasingly looks like it will end up badly in a Ukrainian defeat. While opposition is well short of a majority, further battlefield setbacks could lead Congress to change its mind on financial requests that break the bank.

One thing is certain: It is unlikely that any Washington politician can mobilize public support for the war.

Information about Russian operations, particularly in the Kupyansk direction, is hard to find. The Russians are not calling their operations an offensive, although unconfirmed reports say that Russia has mustered 100,000 or more troops for their operation in this area, and have moved in a lot of heavy equipment.

Most revealing was a convoy of BM-21 multiple rocket launchers, seen heading to the area. There also have been reports of Ukrainian units refusing to fight, and while information on such mutinies has been suppressed, it seems to have happened in the past few days.

Zelensky is hoping to retake Bakhmut, his key objective before he lost the city to Wagner forces. At the moment Bakhmut city is not threatened. Instead, the Ukrainians have been trying to take back settlements to the north and south of the city.

The latest information is that early Ukrainian advances in both directions have been repulsed, and that any hope Zelensky may have of creating a victory on the ashes of Bakhmut seems to have failed to materialize. 

The Bakhmut venture, once it is finally sorted out, could create a huge internal problem for Zelensky. He is about to fire his defense minister, the man who fronted for him in getting arms from Europe and the United States. Anticipated replacement candidates are, for the most part, inexperienced and unconnected to the war. 

Oleksiy Reznikov, the sitting defense minister, may be tipped to be sent to the UK as the Ukrainian ambassador. No one can say for sure whether Ukraine’s military still supports Zelensky, but as more and more cracks appear in Kiev, it is a good bet that they may take matters into their own hands. Should that happen, Zelensky will likely be deposed.

Ukraine has brought up reserve units, many NATO-trained, to try and head off any big Russian advance.

But committing these reserves leaves Ukraine with less trained brigades for the future, since Russia’s primary strategy has been to let them come in fairly close and then pound them with artillery, air strikes and aerial mines. It is now reported that Ukraine has ordered a mass evacuation, while at the same time mining bridges and roads to slow a Russian advance.

The Russians have been fairly clever in managing their war front. Few attacks have been made on Kiev, except one more than a month ago on Ukraine’s intelligence center in the city.

Little is said in the Russian press about the top Ukrainian commanders, Valerii Zaluzhny and Oleksandr Syrskyi, other than to note that the Ukrainian army operates professionally. This may suggest the Russian door is open to dialogue with Ukraine’s military.

Meanwhile, reports indicate that the Wagner troops in Belarus are starting to return to Russia. The immediate cause is that Belarus has refused to pay them, leaving them without salaries for their troops or money to purchase equipment.

It is possible that some of them will be shipped off to Africa. While Russia has not supported the coup in Niger, that disclaimer does not necessarily apply to Wagner. The recent decision of ECOWAS to agree to putting together a military operation to “restore democracy in Niger,” offers Russia and Wagner a significant opportunity.

ECOWAS troops are nearly as bad as Niger’s. They lack transport, communications and supplies. Any war there, without an outside stabilizing force, is likely to become a war of atrocities. No one knows whether Putin will tip his hat to Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and fly them into Niamey. 

Niger, of course, is a sideshow and Ukraine is the main event, with significant geopolitical implications. The Russians have been holding out instead of starting a big push to finish the war, trying to wear down the Ukrainians and split support for the war in Kiev.

But war planners in Moscow know how to count, and it could be they now see opportunities for a big offensive. If it materializes, keep an eye on Kupyansk.