The interview is behind a paywall and I’ve not been able to access it to read directly. I’ve read a few articles in English speaking media summarizing a few points from it. Below is Prof. Oliver Boyd-Barrett’s summary of Alexander Mercouris’ commentary on the interview as it relates to Russia, the Minsk Agreements and the Russia-Ukraine war.
Angela Merkel, former German chancellor, has given an interview with Die Spiegel in which she indicates that had she been in control the crisis would not have taken place. She mentioned her initiative with Macron to get a conversation going between Russia and the EU in 2021. She discovered that the Russians by that time were skeptical and doubtful whether she would be able to deliver on her promises, given that she would not be chancellor for much longer. She was regretful that she ran into opposition from the Baltic States, from Poland, from the Netherlands which made dialog with the Russians impossible. She also talked about the Minsk agreements, which she largely authored, about how by 2021 the Minsk agreement had been hollowed out (Ukraine’s Poroshenko has openly admitted he never intended to honor it anyway) and she indicates she was looking for some form of Minsk III.
Mercouris considers that Merkel lacks understanding of how Russia thinks about these things. He recalls how Macron offended the Russians intensely by telling Putin to forget about Minsk II, to hand the Donbass back to Ukraine, and talk with Zelenskiy. Neither Merkel nor Macron ever understood how giving up on Minsk and letting Zelenkiy off the hook for Ukraine’s egregious failure to implement the peace agreement, poisoned relations with Russia. They seem to have thought that, provided the price was right, Russia could be persuaded to give up the Donbass, despite the clarity with which Russia had told Europe otherwise – reminiscent of the US attitude to the Russian intervention in Syria in 2015 when the Americans thought they could get Russia to agree to abandon its support for Assad. Russia insisted that the joint interest was fighting the jihadists.
Merkel’s inability to understand Russia, to take its positions seriously, is critically revealing of Europe’s fateful disdain for its opponent. The West badly underestimates Russian persistence, and maintains wholly flawed misconceptions of the true nature of Russia and Russian institutions.
Link to Mercouris video here. Begins around 49 minute, 50 second mark.
Poverty in Ukraine has increased more than tenfold since the outbreak of the US/NATO-Russia war, according to the latest data from the World Bank (WB). Officially, 25 percent of the country’s population is now poor, up from supposedly just 2 percent before February 2022. Both numbers are a huge underestimate, as Ukraine already had the lowest or near-lowest GDP per capita of any European country before the Russian invasion, and its government has long set an absurdly low poverty line in an effort to undercount the number of people living hand to mouth.
With officials predicting that the poverty rate could rise to as much as 60 percent or more next year, levels of deprivation are emerging in Ukraine that have not been witnessed on the European continent since the end of World War II.
Unemployment is now running at 35 percent, and salaries have fallen by as much as 50 percent over the spring and summer for some categories of workers. The lowest paid segments of the workforce—students and unskilled laborers—are estimated to be surviving on a monthly wage of about $291. With its economy on track to contract by 35 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund, Ukraine’s public debt has now soared to 85 percent of GDP.
Basic goods and services are both unavailable and unaffordable for millions, as inflation, which stood at 24.4 percent as of September, eats away at workers’ salaries and pensions. A recently released joint study by the World Health Organization and Ukraine’s Ministry of Health found that 22 percent of people in Ukraine cannot access essential medicines. For the country’s 6.9 million internally displaced, that number rises to 33 percent.
Eighty-four percent of survey respondents said that prices are too high, and 46 percent said that what they need is simply not on the shelves. The medications that are hardest to get—those that treat blood pressure, heart problems and pain, as well as sedatives and antibiotics—reveal a population struggling to cope with decades of poverty-induced ill health and the physical and psychological trauma of war.
While US and NATO officials are able to dispatch massive amounts of firepower to Ukraine’s front lines within a matter of weeks, the delivery of life-saving humanitarian goods is seemingly an impossible logistical challenge.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 is spreading, with another 23,000 cases recorded between just October 10 and 16. Ukraine’s coronavirus vaccination rate is under 45 percent, and only a small fraction of the population has ever gotten a first or second booster dose. Even before the outbreak of the war, Ukraine was, in the words of President Zelensky himself, “medically naked” as the result of years of austerity measures imposed by overseas lenders.
More than 7 percent of the country’s housing stock has been damaged or destroyed, and millions have lost access to heat, electricity and water. Last week, 30 percent of the country’s power stations were knocked offline. According to news reports, in preparation for the winter, people are gathering wood and building makeshift stoves in abandoned buildings that still have roofs. Under these conditions, the government in Kiev recently made the helpful suggestion that everyone charge their devices and stock up on batteries and flashlights, in anticipation of ongoing rolling blackouts.
Among the most vulnerable are the elderly, immobile and disabled. Out of a prewar population of 44.13 million, Ukraine has 2.7 million people officially registered as having a disability. Thousands among them are housed in grossly underfunded and often horrific orphanages and nursing homes, where they are especially vulnerable to the ravages of war. Human Rights Watch and other nonprofit groups issued statements in August noting that authorities had overlooked many of those institutionalized in these settings in their evacuation plans, leaving them stranded. Reports surfaced of the mentally infirm chained to beds and undernourished children left to lie in their own waste. In September, the Western media carried news stories claiming that Russian forces were using these populations as “human shields,” failing to mention the fact that for the Ukrainian government they had long been human trash.
The government in Kiev is requesting large amounts of aid from international agencies and foreign states, as the overwhelming majority of its domestic budget is being eaten up by military expenditures and debt servicing, as well as the payment of salaries and pensions. According to Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, 60 percent of Ukraine’s budget is now devoted to defense. World Bank regional country director for Eastern Europe Arup Banerji recently stated that if Ukraine does not receive more financing soon, it will have to either further cut social spending or resort to simply printing money, thereby driving up the inflation rate.
Speaking last week at an annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund, Ukrainian President Zelensky requested another $55 billion from the international community—$38 billion to cover next year’s budget deficit and $17 billion for infrastructure. The World Bank estimates, however, that Ukraine’s overall rebuilding costs at more than six times that amount, $349 billion.
But foreign governments are not nearly so generous with their purses as they are with their stocks of arms. While financiers and politicians have repeatedly spoken about the necessity of giving Ukraine grants in Marshall-Plan-like funding schemes, much of what the country is currently promised is coming in the form of loans or not coming at all.
In an October 12 commentary published in the South China Morning Post, right-wing economist Anders Aslund noted that of the $35 billion the IMF has pledged to Ukraine to help it keep its government running and schools and health care facilities open, it has released just $20 billion. And of the 9 billion euros the EU committed to the country in May, just 1 billion has been sent.
Speaking about Ukraine’s “very large” financing needs, in mid-October IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva noted that her agency is gearing up for talks with Ukrainian officials “to discuss Ukraine’s budget plans and a new IMF monitoring instrument, which should pave the way for a full-fledged IMF program once conditions allow.”
In other words, should there be anything left of Ukraine, the IMF is intent on using the physical destruction of the country to increase its oversight of the government and economy and force through privatizations and massive cuts to social spending. The recent appointment of Ukraine’s Minister of Finance Sherhiy Marchenko as rotating chair of the IMF’s Board of Governors is an expression of the full commitment of the Ukrainian bourgeoisie to this longstanding project. International lenders have been bleeding Ukraine dry for decades.
And even under conditions in which grants, as opposed to credits, are extended to the country, Ukraine will be kept on a tight leash. A recent analysis by Deloitte Insights, an online publication by the international financial management, first emphasized the importance of “anti-corruption” and “fraud prevention” in all ongoing funding deals with Ukraine. When it suits them, the international community will, once more, discover that Kiev’s “freedom fighters” are a bunch of thieves.
In an expression of what is being prepared, over the course of the summer the Ukrainian government pushed through, with the avid support of its Western allies, a series of “reforms” gutting salaries and workers’ rights on the basis of the fact that martial law had been imposed in the country. So-called “zero-hour” contracts are now legal. In addition, all those employed by small- and medium-sized enterprises, about 70 percent of the workforce, have been denied the workplace protections granted in the national labor code, which is no longer applicable to their category of employment. While allegedly these measures are to be temporary, the government clearly intends for them to continue indefinitely.
In motivating the passage of the new legislation, Zelensky’s grossly misnamed Servant of the People party insisted that Ukraine suffers from “extreme over-regulation of employment” that “creates bureaucratic barriers … for raising the competitiveness of employers.” Minister of Parliament Danylo Hetmantsev denounced labor regulations as being at odds with a country that is “free, European, and market-oriented.”
Russia’s international reserves rose to $552.1bn, climbing by 1.9% ($10.5bn) over the week as of November 11, the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) announced.
As of November 4, 2022, international reserves amounted to $541.6bn, Tass reported. (chart)
The total includes the circa $300bn frozen in Western central banks at the start of the war in Ukraine in February.
Russia’s reserves are continuing to rise as its trade recovers from the shock of the massive sanctions package imposed following the invasion of Ukraine in February.
Russia’s current account surplus showed some increase in October, reaching c$17bn v c$15bn in September, according to the CBR. This stronger figure was driven by higher Urals prices ($70.62 per barrel in October v $68.25 per barrel in September), which supported export flows, and by a contraction in imports as a result of subdued household consumption.
Russia’s exports are recovering too. Despite the sanctions, Russia’s exports to the EU – mostly energy and raw materials – are on course to increase this year compared to exports a year earlier, largely due to the hefty increases in the cost of oil and gas.
Russia’s bilateral trade with the European Union in 2021 reached €257bn, with €158bn of that being Russian exports to the bloc. According to Eurostat, Russia-EU trade reached €171.4bn in the 7M 2022, which if averaged at similar volumes for the entire year would give a total 2022 figure of €293.8bn – an increase on 2021 levels.
At the same time, after crashing shortly after the war started, trade with China has recovered and reached a new all-time high, replacing European countries as Russia’s biggest trade partner.
Russia’s bilateral trade with China in 2021 amounted to $141bn (same value as the Euro today), of which Russian exports to China were worth $68bn. In the 10M 2022, according to the Chinese Customs Ministry, that trade had risen to $153.9bn, with Russian exports to China hitting $94.34bn. Compounded over the full year, that would indicate an increase in trade of some $184.6bn, meaning an additional $43.6bn over 2021, with Russian exports rising to $113.2bn, an increase of $18.86bn.
Russia is also running healthy trade surpluses with its neighbours in the CIS, where trade turnover is also growing. Trade within the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), a trade bloc that includes Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, in 2021 amounted to $72.61bn, of which Russian exports to the EAEU member countries amounted to $45.3bn. Over the first seven months of this year that had increased to $74.2bn, meaning a compounded 2022 total could reach $127.2bn, with Russia’s exports achieving about $99.6bn of this. That will indicate increases of $54.59bn in volume and $54.3bn in exports over the year.
Daniel L. Davis is a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army who deployed into combat zones four times. He is the author of “The Eleventh Hour in 2020 America.”
As a stage-setter for this analysis of Russia’s looming winter offensive, I have previously evaluated limited objective options Putin might choose, and then the likely preparation phase of an all-out war scenario. In this final edition, I will lay out what I contend is the most dangerous course of action Ukraine could face: a ground campaign to deprive Ukraine of its lifeblood from the West.
As a disclaimer right up front, I will concede that I have no knowledge of any secret Russian plans and have no idea if this is what Putin will do. What I represent in this analysis, however, is that given the force dispositions of both sides, the geography of Ukraine, Russia, and Belorussia, and the current status of each side’s army, what follows represents the gravest danger to Ukraine and one possible scenario; there are a virtually unlimited number of alternatives.
At a minimum, however, Kyiv must account for the possibilities described below in its winter defensive plans.
Triple-Axis Advance in Ukraine
Aside from insufficient troops numbers in February, Russia’s biggest strategic mistake was attempting to invest Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, and Kharkiv simultaneously in the north. The only chance that had of success would have been if Zelensky panicked and surrendered merely at the sight of Russian tanks. When that didn’t happen, the initial Russian plan was doomed. In this scenario, Putin recognizes that the number of troops he has for the task remains insufficient to capture large cities – and that he doesn’t need to capture major cities to succeed.
Instead, what he may seek to do is identify and then take out the Ukrainian center of gravity. This is a term made famous in Western military circles by Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz. In the early Nineteenth Century, von Clausewitz wrote the book On War in which he defined the center of gravity as being “the hub of all power and movement (of the enemy), on which everything depends.”
Meaning, in war, the overall objective should be to deprive the enemy of the one thing he must maintain to win the war. A belligerent’s objective in war, von Clausewitz explained, must be to strike his enemy “using superior strength” against his enemy’s weakness, “constantly seeking out the center of his power.” Only by “daring all to win all,” he concluded, “will one really defeat the enemy.”
In my assessment, Ukraine’s unquestioned strategic center of gravity is its western corridors to the Polish border where the vast majority of its war support enters the country. Their operational center of gravity is their resupply lines emanating eastwards from Kyiv to Ukraine’s various frontline positions. Without those two corridors, it would be nearly impossible for Kyiv to sustain wartime operations for more than a few weeks.
Putin, therefore, may calculate the best use of those 218,000 additional troops will be to launch a three-pronged axis to cut both of those supply routes: the priority effort in the west out of Belarus with the objective of Lviv, a supporting effort to the northeast in the Sumy direction, and supporting axis from the east to reinforce the current offensive in the Donbas.
LVIV AXIS (MAIN EFFORT, 40% OF AVAILABLE TROOPS)
A Russian attack out of southeast Belorussia with the objective of Lviv would represent the greatest strategic threat to the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF). Virtually all of the UAF’s weapons, ammunition, and repair parts enter the country from Poland through several land routes towards Kyiv. If Russia were to cut these routes off by attacking along the Polish/Ukraine border down to Lviv, Russia could cut off the majority of the shipments of war material from the West, without which Kyiv would not long be able to sustain its forces at the frontlines in the eastern part of Ukraine.
There are available rail lines in Belarus that could transport and then sustain a Russian incursion there, and already there have been reports of Russian forces building up in the Brest region. At the moment, the vast majority of Ukraine’s combat forces are concentrated in the southeast (near Zaporizhia), the east (Donbas) and northeast (Svatavo). If Russia made a major unexpected push, with up to 75,000 combat forces, they would have a real chance at plunging roughly 250km to Lviv.
If Russia attained strategic surprise, Ukraine would have to try and hold off the Russian advance with whatever forces it could muster from the west of the country, as it would likely take weeks to move meaningful combat power from the east of the country to the west (and as described in the section below on Donbas Axis, putting combat troops from the eastern fronts would risk a Russian breakthrough from the east) – and that would imply Kyiv would have the capacity to move troops across country, as Russia has already severely disrupted Ukraine’s energy system and any new missile attacks could outright destroy it.
Russia would not intend to attack Lviv, but rather isolate it by creating a blocking position east of the city to cut off the M10 Highway and prevent any supplies reaching the UAF from the Polish border. If properly resourced and sufficient strategic surprise is gained, this axis would have a reasonable chance of successfully attacking to blocking positions west of Lviv. The bigger challenge for Russia would be to keep the corridor from the Belarus border secure and its forces supplied, however, as Ukraine would no doubt throw everything it had to cutting off the penetration. To limit Kyiv’s ability to focus all its reinforcements on the Lviv Axis, Russia would simultaneously launch an axis in the Sumy area.
SUMY AXIS (SUPPORTING EFFORT, 40% OF AVAILABLE TROOPS)
Russia made an initial assault in the Sumy region in February, and Ukraine currently mans newly created defensive barriers to slow down any future Russian advance in this direction. Moscow would either choose less densely manned entry points or plan on a major push through contested zones near the border. The initial push in this axis would be similar to the February path, which will create uncertainty in the Ukrainian Command as to the objective of this axis.
Initial penetrations will put Russian columns on a route that could lead to Kyiv. It would be very difficult for the Ukrainian authorities to conclude anything besides it being a new push on the capital, and they would likely send whatever reinforcements that were available in the region racing to defend Kyiv. But once Russia’s leading elements reach somewhere around the town of Pryluky, about 150km from the capital, they would turn south, with the objective of Blahodatny, on the northern bank of the Dnipro River.
As with the Lviv axis, the Sumy axis will be composed of approximately 75,000 troops with the ultimate objective of creating a corridor to the Dnipro River so as to cut off all connections and resupply routes with Kyiv and its forward armies in the Kharkiv, Donbas, and Zaporizhia fronts. Also, as with the Lviv axis, the Sumy axis will seek to bypass or block access to major cities. It will only seek to capture those areas necessary to ensure security of the corridor and provide security for the Russian line.
DONBAS AXIS (SUPPORTING EFFORT, 20% OF AVAILABLE TROOPS)
Simultaneous with the launching of the Lviv and Sumy axes, Russia would send a major force to supplement its existing offensive in the Donbas. The intent would be to send about 40,000 of the newly created mechanized units, along with about 10,000 Russian troops freed up after withdrawing from Kherson, to attack the weakest identified flanks of the UAF in the Donbas region. The purpose of this attack will be twofold.
First, to the extent possible, the inclusion of major additional forces on weak flanks could help break the stalemates roughly existing in the Bakhmut/Adveevka direction, and possibly force Ukraine back to Seversk and Kramatorsk. But more importantly second, would be to fix all the Ukrainian troops in the Svatavo, Donbas, and Zaporizhia fronts in place so they are not able to withdraw in an effort to blunt Russia’s Lviv or Sumy axes advances.
Should Ukraine seek to thin their lines in order to send reinforcements west, they would run the risk that Russian mechanized forces accomplish a breakthrough. One of Russia’s biggest failures in the opening invasion was not to mass forces at key and decisive locations and did try to attack cities with woefully insufficient numbers of troops. That lack of mass and mutually reinforcing actions allowed Ukrainian forces to isolate the Russian advances in each area and bring the invasion to a standstill in less than three weeks.
If Russia employs a three-axes advance with its newly mobilized combat forces, added to the roughly 200,000 troops already engaged – and critically, avoids trying to invest cities – they will have a chance to focus their combat power where Ukraine is weakest, and in ways that are mutually reinforcing to other axes. This course of action would represent great risk for Zelensky’s troops, but it isn’t without significant risk for the Russians either.
RUSSIAN RISK IN UKRAINE
In war, nothing is guaranteed and nothing is ever easy. Despite the months of building up of combat power around Ukraine’s borders in the months prior to February, Russia still caught Ukraine by surprise when the invasion actually took place. Other than the elaborate defensive positions constructed over eight years in the Donbas, there were little other barriers to Russia’s entry on February 24. That will not be the case for the troops launching Putin’s winter offensive.
Ukraine continues to man and expand on the defensive works in the Donbas but are now constructing new defensive positions and barriers in the Sumy, Kyiv, and Lviv areas to the north along the Belarus border. Though the border between Ukraine and Belarus is more than 1,000km long, Zelensky’s forces will seek to build fortifications and barriers along the most likely routes of entry and will make use of all natural barriers (such as rivers, marshes, or lakes) to channel Russian forces into preplanned “kill zones” or block their paths.
Some of the Russian troops that enter the fight will be trained fighters with combat experience. But meaningful numbers of the troops will be raw recruits who have never been under fire. Even in my own experience in armored warfare in Iraq, I observed how there can sometimes be significant differences in the skills and quality of different units of the same army.
The disparity in the Russian army, however, could be dramatic, in that some may be good while others may fail abysmally. It is uncertain, therefore, that Russian ground forces would be able to successfully penetrate Ukrainian border defenses and drive 100 or more kilometers to the south and seize their objectives on the Lviv and Sumy axes.
As has been extensively covered, Russia’s logistic system was inadequate at the start of the war. Logistics and resupply could again be a major constraint for Putin’s winter offensive, as the farther away from Russian or Belarussian rail lines his army gets, the more difficult it will be to sustain the forward units. A long corridor of troops also has built in vulnerabilities to Ukrainian interdiction and flanking attacks.
If Russia attains strategic surprise in the location of its primary two axes of advance, Ukraine may not have sufficient combat strength in the region to stop Russia. But over time, Kyiv may have success in building combat power in the Ukrainian interior and strike at weak points along Russia’s support corridors, preventing supplies and reinforcements from reaching the frontline troops.
Bottom line: war is hard, all the time, and rarely do initial plans work out. The enemy is always devising new and creative ways to frustrate one’s own objectives. As with all wars, the winner in this one will be determined by which side does the best to cope with the unexpected, reacts the best and quickest, and proves to be the most resilient. It is impossible, at this point, to predict which side that will be, as both Ukrainian and Russian militaries have shown flashes of brilliance, courage, and stamina.
CONCLUSION
In addition to the risk that will be faced by the Russian army, we must consider Putin’s personal risk. Many have long argued that Putin desires to be a modern-day Peter the Great. He wants to be remembered in Russian history as a great statesman and military leader. It is possible that in pursuit of that goal, he may use every conventional tool in his military chest to subdue Ukraine. If he succeeds to any degree, he will likely remain in power for some time. If he fails, he may not last much into 2023.
If Putin’s mobilization and winter offensive stall out and make little to no dent in the current front lines, the risk of his running afoul of Russian public opinion will be great. Russians have long rallied behind strong men who succeed and strengthen their country. They have sometimes driven from power those that fail. Putin is painfully aware of Russian history and realizes what is at stake for his country generally and his life specifically in this war.
We will have a much clearer picture of the level of risk Putin is willing to take when we see which path Putin takes in the coming winter offensive. He will lean towards pursuing the limited objective paths of options 1 and 2 if he is uncertain about the quality and capacity of his ground forces. If he is willing to risk his regime and his life, and has sufficient confidence in his army, he may engage in all-out war to subdue eastern Ukraine, using his entire force and arsenal short of nuclear weapons.
Ironically, it might be better for European and NATO security if Putin chooses either of the limited objective options, as doing so would result in Russia on a firm defensive footing for the foreseeable future. If he goes for all-out warfare and succeeds – conquering all of Ukraine east of the Dniper and imposing a negotiated settlement on the rump western Ukraine on terms favorable to Moscow – Europe may face the prospect of a larger, experienced, and successful Russian army on its eastern flank.
Given the stakes, it might make more sense for the West to use all its diplomatic tools to get both sides to end this war as soon as possible, with neither side getting all it wants. Holding out in hopes of draining Russia with a drawn-out stalemate runs the risk that Russia defeats Ukraine, leaving Europe with a much less favorable security environment.
