By Connor Echols, Responsible Statecraft, 8/18/22

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the United States has sent over $8 billion worth of military aid to support Kyiv’s war effort. This massive arms transfer has included a wide range of weapons, from anti-armor missiles to helicopters and beyond.

With the constant flow of news about the war, it can be hard to keep track of all these weapons packages, so we at Responsible Statecraft decided to put together a timeline of every arms shipment that has been announced since the war began. And whenever a new transfer is announced, we’ll update this page to reflect it.

Before jumping into the timeline, it is important to note a couple of things. First, this list only contains publicly announced information. The Pentagon has admitted to sending at least one type of missile that was never mentioned in their press releases, so there’s reason to believe that this list is not exhaustive.

Second, there are two different sources for these lethal aid packages. One, which has made up the vast majority of transfers to date, is known as a “presidential drawdown.” This means that the White House and Pentagon agree to send weapons to Ukraine from U.S. stockpiles, after which DoD can use the funds to replenish their stocks by purchasing new arms from defense contractors. Biden has used this authority an unprecedented 18 times in order to send weapons to Ukraine, with most of the funding coming from money that Congress has set aside to arm Kyiv.

The other source of weapons is the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, or USAI. This is a special fund within the Pentagon’s budget that is used to purchase new weapons from contractors rather than drawing from existing stockpiles. Transfers from these funds do not require additional approval from Congress.

Without further ado, here is a timeline of every major weapons shipment or funding package announced since February 24:

August 8

The Pentagon announced that it will send $1 billion worth of security assistance to Ukraine via presidential drawdown, including:

— HIMARS ammunition (This is an acronym for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System. These mobile missile launchers can fire a wide range of munitions, including rocket artillery and short-range ballistic missiles.)

— Artillery ammunition

— Javelin missiles and other anti-armor weapons

August 1

The Pentagon announced an additional $550 million of security aid via presidential drawdown, including:

— HIMARS ammunition

— Artillery ammunition

July 22

The Pentagon announced that it will send $270 million of military aid to Ukraine, with $175 million authorized via presidential drawdown and the other $95 million coming via USAI funds. This included:

— Four additional HIMARS

— HIMARS ammunition

— Four Command Post vehicles (These can be used as a tactical operations center or an armored ambulance, among other things.)

— Tank gun ammunition

— Phoenix Ghost drones (These are a type of “loitering munition,” or a weapon that can wait in the air for extended periods of time before attacking a target. This was created by the United States for use in Ukraine.)

July 8

The Pentagon announced an addition $400 million of military assistance via presidential drawdown, including:

— Four additional HIMARS

— HIMARS ammunition

— Artillery ammunition

July 1

The Pentagon announced that it will send $820 million of security aid, with $50 million authorized via presidential drawdown and the remaining $770 million coming via USAI funds. This included:

— HIMARS ammunition

— Two National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) (This system launches missiles to defend against various types of aircraft, including drones.)

— Artillery ammunition

June 15

The Pentagon announced an additional $1 billion in lethal aid, with $350 million authorized via presidential drawdown and $650 million coming from USAI funds. This included:

— Howitzers (This is a popular long-range artillery weapon.)

— Artillery ammunition

— HIMARS ammunition

— Two Harpoon coastal defense systems (These launch missiles that fly just above the surface of the water to attack planes and ships.)

June 1

The Pentagon announced an additional $700 million in military assistance via presidential drawdown, including:

— HIMARS ammunition

— Javelin missiles and other anti-armor weapons

— Artillery ammunition

— Four Mi-17 helicopters (These can be used for transport or combat.)

May 19

The Pentagon announced $100 million in lethal aid via presidential drawdown, including:

— Howitzers

On the same day, Congress passed a $40 billion aid package for Ukraine, roughly half of which was earmarked for military assistance.

May 6

The Pentagon announced $150 million in military aid via presidential drawdown, including:

— Artillery ammunition

April 21

DoD announced $800 million in further aid via presidential drawdown, including:

— Howitzers

— Artillery ammunition

— Phoenix Ghost drones

April 13

The Pentagon announced that it will send an additional $800 million in military assistance via presidential drawdown, including:

— Howitzers

— Artillery ammunition

— Switchblade drones (This is another form of loitering munition.)

— Javelin missiles and other anti-armor weapons

— Armored personnel carriers

— 11 Mi-17 helicopters

— Various types of explosives

April 1

DoD announced that it will send $300 million in lethal aid using USAI funds, including:

— Laser-guided rocket systems

— Switchblade drones

— Puma surveillance drones

— Anti-drone systems

— Armored vehicles

March 16

The Pentagon announced that it will send $800 million worth of military aid via presidential drawdown. The exact contents of this package are unclear, but it likely included Mi-17 helicopters, Javelin missiles, and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.

March 12

The White House announced that it will send $200 million in lethal aid via presidential drawdown, including:

— Javelin missiles

— Stinger missiles

March 10

Congress approved $13.6 billion in aid to Ukraine, roughly half of which was earmarked for military assistance.

February 25

The White House announced that it will send $350 million in military aid via presidential drawdown, including:

— Anti-armor weapons

— Small arms

By Gilbert Doctorow, Blog, 8/20/22

A few days ago, the most widely read journal of international politics in the United States, Foreign Affairs published an article by University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer entitled “Playing with Fire in Ukraine: the Underappreciated Risks of Catastrophic Escalation.” The online version is accessible here – https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/playing-fire-ukraine

This publication was a major event in itself given FA’s orthodox spin on everything to do with Russia and the challenges to the Washington narrative made by Mearsheimer ever since his article “Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault” appeared in the autumn 2014 issue of Foreign Affairs. At the time, that article prompted a paroxysm of rage among the hardliners who form the majority of the American foreign policy community and of the journal’s readers.

The video of a speech on the same subject which Mearsheimer made in 2014 shortly after the article came out has been viewed by more than 12 million visitors to the www.youtube.com site. An updated version of the same speech presented on youtube during this spring has attracted more than 1.6 million viewers. It is safe to say that John Mearsheimer is the most widely seen and listened to academic disputing the conventional wisdom on the Ukraine war today.

I freely acknowledge the merit of Mearsheimer’s new article: to warn how the conflict in Ukraine could easily spin out of control and escalate to a nuclear war. The White House team of inexperienced and ignorant advisers must be shaken from their complacency and anything published in Foreign Affairs will necessarily be brought to their attention, whereas a piece published by www.antiwar.com, for example, will be burned before reading.

However, this does not excuse Mearsheimer from basing himself on the same restricted and distorted sources of information as are used by mainstream media and mainstream academics, while ignoring other sources of information that would give greater depth to his analysis and possibly change his conclusions substantially. To be explicit, I believe he has been listening too closely to Washington and Kiev’s rosy forecasts of a counter-offensive that will result in a stalemate, possibly in a Russian defeat, and he is not listening to Russian reporting on the progress of their campaign on the ground, which points to a slow and steady grinding down of all in their path to conquest of the Donetsk oblast, meaning the capture of the entire Donbas.

The Russian advance is only slightly slowed by diversion of troops to the Kherson region to nip in the bud that well advertised Ukrainian attack. The latest news is of the Russians approaching the strategic strong points of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, the cradle of the Donbas independence movement in 2014. By taking these central region cities, they are cutting off the supply of weapons to the most heavily fortified Ukrainian positions just outside Donetsk city, which have been bombarding residential districts and killing civilians daily for the past eight years. This explains their finally overrunning and destroying Ukrainian positions in the town of Peski just two kilometers from the DPR capital this past week.

The capture of Peski was not reported in Western media just as the war crimes nature of its activity, concentrated on civilian targets in violation of international conventions on conduct of war, was never reported. Thus, the Russian advance carries no hint of ‘shock and awe,’ which is to say the Russians are doing nothing to grab headlines and force the hand of Biden to implement some disproportionate escalation.

The Russians’ latest timetable, as announced in their leading televised talk shows, is to complete the liberation of the Donbas by year’s end. After that, if there is no Ukrainian capitulation, the likely case will be ongoing advance through Odessa to Transdnistria and the Romanian border, at which point no peace treaty would be needed by anyone. The Zelensky regime could be left to die on the vine as mutual recriminations shake his power base.

Mearsheimer’s article goes into great detail over the many possible scenarios for dangerous if not catastrophic escalation of the conflict. But these are myriad and largely unforeseeable, so that he ultimately covers only a fraction of the possibilities for things to go haywire. They are, as he admits, not very likely to occur. Amen.

One of those possibilities for catastrophic escalation that has captured the attention of global media at present is the stand-off at the nuclear power plant in Russia-occupied Zaporozhie, Europe’s largest such power plant. Both sides to the conflict are playing up the threat inherent in artillery and rocket strikes on a nuclear installation for propagandistic purposes, to paint the other side as madmen: the Ukrainians speaking of the Kremlin leadership as nuclear terrorists and blackmailers, the Russians speaking of the Ukrainian forces firing on the power station as ‘apes carrying grenades.’ Surely damage to the plant followed by the release into the atmosphere of radioactive substances was on the mind of Mearsheimer when he formulated his article. However, let me be perfectly clear: this is a phony issue, just as the alleged Russian blockade of Ukrainian ports supposedly was forcing starvation on African nations that were failing to get grain they had ordered from Ukraine before the conflict. The fact is that the nuclear reactors are encased in meter-thick concrete walls which are impervious to all the projectiles which the Ukrainians are capable of launching. The risks are to the administrative buildings and cooling systems. The Russians are fully capable of shutting down the nuclear reactors at any time to prevent a catastrophe.

Now let me turn attention to the nuclear risk that Mearsheimer identifies in the article. He has taken up exactly the same argument as mainstream commentators in the United States, namely that Russia might resort to nuclear weapons in case the campaign turns against them due to higher levels of Western intervention including troops on the ground. We all know that troops are already on the ground, namely the ‘instructors’ who are directing fire for HIMARS. We know that senior American and other Western officers liaising with their Ukrainian counterparts were recently blown to bits by the Russian rocket attack on Vinnitsa. That was all hushed up and the only tip-off of this disaster for Washington was the firing of the Ukrainian intelligence leadership the next day.

Of course, no one knows what might yet force an escalation. But there again, Mearsheimer misses some important considerations. Why does he assume the Russians must escalate to nuclear options and why those options would be directed against Kiev and not, for example, against London? More to the point, he is missing the fact that the Russians have hardly begun to fight, as Putin recently said publicly. They have not mobilized and put out draft notices, they have not put the economy on a war footing. And they have not deployed their most consequential weaponry. Instead, they have held it back, ready for use if necessary in a direct war with NATO. This is massively destructive conventional payloads carried by hypersonic rockets and similar.

Then there is another dimension to the conflict which Mearsheimer does not address in his article though it will exert a decisive influence on whether Washington or Moscow wins the tug of war: the economic damage from sanctions on Europe through blow-back that is about to become politically unsustainable as the fall and winter heating season arrives. The Baltics and Poland are and will remain immune to reason, led as they are by delusional Russophobes. However, when the inevitable street demonstrations come in France, the most volatile of the major EU states, followed by Eastern Germany and even by Belgium, a more passive country, as I hear from the local elites I talk to, then the politicians of Europe will head off in contradictory directions and unity will collapse. The Russians are sure to win this psychological war despite all the efforts of EU state media to put a lid on it. The day when Scholz gives the go-ahead to opening Nord Stream II will mark the Russian victory and put an end to US-driven suicidal decision making here in Europe.

For all of the above reasons, I urge professor Mearsheimer and his followers to pay closer attention to what the Russians are saying and less attention to the hot air coming out of Washington.

By John Mearsheimer, Foreign Affairs, 8/17/22

Western policymakers appear to have reached a consensus about the war in Ukraine: the conflict will settle into a prolonged stalemate, and eventually a weakened Russia will accept a peace agreement that favors the United States and its NATO allies, as well as Ukraine. Although officials recognize that both Washington and Moscow may escalate to gain an advantage or to prevent defeat, they assume that catastrophic escalation can be avoided. Few imagine that U.S. forces will become directly involved in the fighting or that Russia will dare use nuclear weapons.

Washington and its allies are being much too cavalier. Although disastrous escalation may be avoided, the warring parties’ ability to manage that danger is far from certain. The risk of it is substantially greater than the conventional wisdom holds. And given that the consequences of escalation could include a major war in Europe and possibly even nuclear annihilation, there is good reason for extra concern.

To understand the dynamics of escalation in Ukraine, start with each side’s goals. Since the war began, both Moscow and Washington have raised their ambitions significantly, and both are now deeply committed to winning the war and achieving formidable political aims. As a result, each side has powerful incentives to find ways to prevail and, more important, to avoid losing. In practice, this means that the United States might join the fighting either if it is desperate to win or to prevent Ukraine from losing, while Russia might use nuclear weapons if it is desperate to win or faces imminent defeat, which would be likely if U.S. forces were drawn into the fighting.

Furthermore, given each side’s determination to achieve its goals, there is little chance of a meaningful compromise. The maximalist thinking that now prevails in both Washington and Moscow gives each side even more reason to win on the battlefield so that it can dictate the terms of the eventual peace. In effect, the absence of a possible diplomatic solution provides an added incentive for both sides to climb up the escalation ladder. What lies further up the rungs could be something truly catastrophic: a level of death and destruction exceeding that of World War II.

AIMING HIGH

The United States and its allies initially backed Ukraine to prevent a Russian victory and help negotiate a favorable end to the fighting. But once the Ukrainian military began hammering Russian forces, especially around Kyiv, the Biden administration shifted course and committed itself to helping Ukraine win the war against Russia. It also sought to severely damage Russia’s economy by imposing unprecedented sanctions. As Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin explained U.S. goals in April, “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” In effect, the United States announced its intention to knock Russia out of the ranks of great powers.

What’s more, the United States has tied its own reputation to the outcome of the conflict. U.S. President Joe Biden has labelled Russia’s war in Ukraine a “genocide” and accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of being a “war criminal” who should face a “war crimes trial.” Presidential proclamations such as these make it hard to imagine Washington backing down; if Russia prevailed in Ukraine, the United States’ position in the world would suffer a serious blow.

Russian ambitions have also expanded. Contrary to the conventional wisdom in the West, Moscow did not invade Ukraine to conquer it and make it part of a Greater Russia. It was principally concerned with preventing Ukraine from becoming a Western bulwark on the Russian border. Putin and his advisers were especially concerned about Ukraine eventually joining NATO. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made the point succinctly in mid-January, saying at a press conference, “the key to everything is the guarantee that NATO will not expand eastward.” For Russian leaders, the prospect of Ukrainian membership in NATO is, as Putin himself put it before the invasion, “a direct threat to Russian security”—one that could be eliminated only by going to war and turning Ukraine into a neutral or failed state.

Toward that end, it appears that Russia’s territorial goals have expanded markedly since the war started. Until the eve of the invasion, Russia was committed to implementing the Minsk II agreement, which would have kept the Donbas as part of Ukraine. Over the course of the war, however, Russia has captured large swaths of territory in eastern and southern Ukraine, and there is growing evidence that Putin now intends to annex all or most of that land, which would effectively turn what is left of Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state.

The threat to Russia today is even greater than it was before the war, mainly because the Biden administration is now determined to roll back Russia’s territorial gains and permanently cripple Russian power. Making matters even worse for Moscow, Finland and Sweden are joining NATO, and Ukraine is better armed and more closely allied with the West. Moscow cannot afford to lose in Ukraine, and it will use every means available to avoid defeat. Putin appears confident that Russia will ultimately prevail against Ukraine and its Western backers. “Today, we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield,” he said in early July. “What can you say? Let them try. The goals of the special military operation will be achieved. There are no doubts about that.”

Ukraine, for its part, has the same goals as the Biden administration. The Ukrainians are bent on recapturing territory lost to Russia—including Crimea—and a weaker Russia is certainly less threatening to Ukraine. Furthermore, they are confident that they can win, as Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov made clear in mid-July, when he said, “Russia can definitely be defeated, and Ukraine has already shown how.” His U.S. counterpart apparently agrees. “Our assistance is making a real difference on the ground,” Austin said in a late July speech. “Russia thinks that it can outlast Ukraine—and outlast us. But that’s just the latest in Russia’s string of miscalculations.”

In essence, Kyiv, Washington, and Moscow are all deeply committed to winning at the expense of their adversary, which leaves little room for compromise. Neither Ukraine nor the United States, for example, is likely to accept a neutral Ukraine; in fact, Ukraine is becoming more closely tied with the West by the day. Nor is Russia likely to return all or even most of the territory it has taken from Ukraine, especially since the animosities that have fueled the conflict in the Donbas between pro-Russian separatists and the Ukrainian government for the past eight years are more intense than ever.

These conflicting interests explain why so many observers believe that a negotiated settlement will not happen any time soon and thus foresee a bloody stalemate. They are right about that. But observers are underestimating the potential for catastrophic escalation that is built into a protracted war in Ukraine.

There are three basic routes to escalation inherent in the conduct of war: one or both sides deliberately escalate to win, one or both sides deliberately escalate to prevent defeat, or the fighting escalates not by deliberate choice but inadvertently. Each pathway holds the potential to bring the United States into the fighting or lead Russia to use nuclear weapons, and possibly both.

ENTER AMERICA

Once the Biden administration concluded that Russia could be beaten in Ukraine, it sent more (and more powerful) arms to Kyiv. The West began increasing Ukraine’s offensive capability by sending weapons such as the HIMARS multiple launch rocket system, in addition to “defensive” ones such as the Javelin antitank missile. Over time, both the lethality and quantity of the weaponry has increased. Consider that in March, Washington vetoed a plan to transfer Poland’s MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine on the grounds that doing so might escalate the fight, but in July it raised no objections when Slovakia announced that it was considering sending the same planes to Kyiv. The United States is also contemplating giving its own F-15s and F-16s to Ukraine.

The United States and its allies are also training the Ukrainian military and providing it with vital intelligence that it is using to destroy key Russian targets. Moreover, as The New York Times has reported, the West has “a stealthy network of commandos and spies” on the ground inside Ukraine. Washington may not be directly engaged in the fighting, but it is deeply involved in the war. And it is now just a short step away from having its own soldiers pulling triggers and its own pilots pressing buttons.

The U.S. military could get involved in the fighting in a variety of ways. Consider a situation where the war drags on for a year or more, and there is neither a diplomatic solution in sight nor a feasible path to a Ukrainian victory. At the same time, Washington is desperate to end the war—perhaps because it needs to focus on containing China or because the economic costs of backing Ukraine are causing political problems at home and in Europe. In those circumstances, U.S. policymakers would have every reason to consider taking riskier steps—such as imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine or inserting small contingents of U.S. ground forces—to help Ukraine defeat Russia.

A more likely scenario for U.S. intervention would come about if the Ukrainian army began to collapse and Russia seemed likely to win a major victory. In that case, given the Biden administration’s deep commitment to preventing that outcome, the United States could try to turn the tide by getting directly involved in the fighting. One can easily imagine U.S. officials believing that their country’s credibility was at stake and convincing themselves that a limited use of force would save Ukraine without prompting Putin to use nuclear weapons. Alternatively, a desperate Ukraine might launch large-scale attacks against Russian towns and cities, hoping that such escalation would provoke a massive Russian response that would finally force the United States to join the fighting.

The final scenario for American involvement entails inadvertent escalation: without wanting to, Washington gets drawn into the war by an unforeseen event that spirals upward. Perhaps U.S. and Russian fighter jets, which have come into close contact over the Baltic Sea, accidentally collide. Such an incident could easily escalate, given the high levels of fear on both sides, the lack of communication, and the mutual demonization.

Or maybe Lithuania blocks the passage of sanctioned goods traveling through its territory as they make their way from Russia to Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave that is separated from the rest of the country. Lithuania did just that in mid-June, but it backed off in mid-July, after Moscow made it clear it was contemplating “harsh measures” to end what it considered an illegal blockade. The Lithuanian foreign ministry, however, has resisted lifting the blockade completely. Since Lithuania is a NATO member, the United States would almost certainly come to its defense if Russia attacked the country.

Or perhaps Russia destroys a building in Kyiv or a training site somewhere in Ukraine and unintentionally kills a substantial number of Americans, such as aid workers, intelligence operatives, or military advisers. The Biden administration, facing a public uproar at home, decides it must retaliate and strikes Russian targets, which then leads to a tit-for-tat exchange between the two sides.

Lastly, there is a chance that the fighting in southern Ukraine will damage the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, to the point where it spews radiation around the region, leading Russia to respond in kind. Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and prime minister, delivered an ominous response to that possibility, saying in August, “Don’t forget that there are nuclear sites in the European Union, too. And incidents are possible there as well.” Should Russia strike a European nuclear reactor, the United States would almost certainly enter the fighting.

Of course, Moscow, too, could instigate the escalation. One cannot discount the possibility that Russia, desperate to stop the flow of Western military aid into Ukraine, would strike the countries through which the bulk of it passes: Poland or Romania, both of which are NATO members. There is also a chance that Russia might launch a massive cyberattack against one or more European countries aiding Ukraine, causing great damage to its critical infrastructure. Such an attack could prompt the United States to launch a retaliatory cyberattack against Russia. If it succeeded, Moscow might respond militarily; if it failed, Washington might decide that the only way to punish Russia would be to hit it directly. Such scenarios sound far-fetched, but they are not impossible. And they are merely a few of the many pathways by which what is now a local war might morph into something much larger and more dangerous.

GOING NUCLEAR

Although Russia’s military has done enormous damage to Ukraine, Moscow has, so far, been reluctant to escalate to win the war. Putin has not expanded the size of his force through large-scale conscription. Nor has he targeted Ukraine’s electrical grid, which would be relatively easy to do and would inflict massive damage on that country. Indeed, many Russians have taken him to task for not waging the war more vigorously. Putin has acknowledged this criticism but has let it be known that he would escalate if necessary. “We haven’t even yet started anything in earnest,” he said in July, suggesting that Russia could and would do more if the military situation deteriorated.

What about the ultimate form of escalation? There are three circumstances in which Putin might use nuclear weapons. The first would be if the United States and its NATO allies entered the fight. Not only would that development markedly shift the military balance against Russia, greatly increasing the likelihood of its defeat, but it would also mean that Russia would be fighting a great-power war on its doorstep that could easily spill into its territory. Russian leaders would surely think their survival was at risk, giving them a powerful incentive to use nuclear weapons to rescue the situation. At a minimum, they would consider demonstration strikes intended to convince the West to back off. Whether such a step would end the war or lead it to escalate out of control is impossible to know in advance.

In his February 24 speech announcing the invasion, Putin strongly hinted that he would turn to nuclear weapons if the United States and its allies entered the war. Addressing “those who may be tempted to interfere,” he said, “they must know that Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history.” His warning was not lost on Avril Haines, the U.S. director of national intelligence, who predicted in May that Putin might use nuclear weapons if NATO “is either intervening or about to intervene,” in good part because that “would obviously contribute to a perception that he is about to lose the war in Ukraine.”

In the second nuclear scenario, Ukraine turns the tide on the battlefield by itself, without direct U.S. involvement. If Ukrainian forces were poised to defeat the Russian army and take back their country’s lost territory, there is little doubt that Moscow could easily view this outcome as an existential threat that required a nuclear response. After all, Putin and his advisers were sufficiently alarmed by Kyiv’s growing alignment with the West that they deliberately chose to attack Ukraine, despite clear warnings from the United States and its allies about the grave consequences that Russia would face. Unlike in the first scenario, Moscow would be employing nuclear weapons not in the context of a war with the United States but against Ukraine. It would do so with little fear of nuclear retaliation, since Kyiv has no nuclear weapons and since Washington would have no interest in starting a nuclear war. The absence of a clear retaliatory threat would make it easier for Putin to contemplate nuclear use.

In the third scenario, the war settles into a protracted stalemate that has no diplomatic solution and becomes exceedingly costly for Moscow. Desperate to end the conflict on favorable terms, Putin might pursue nuclear escalation to win. As with the previous scenario, where he escalates to avoid defeat, U.S. nuclear retaliation would be highly unlikely. In both scenarios, Russia is likely to use tactical nuclear weapons against a small set of military targets, at least initially. It could strike towns and cities in later attacks if necessary. Gaining a military advantage would be one aim of the strategy, but the more important one would be to deal a game-changing blow—to create such fear in the West that the United States and its allies move quickly to end the conflict on terms favorable to Moscow. No wonder William Burns, the director of the CIA, remarked in April, “None of us can take lightly the threat posed by a potential resort to tactical nuclear weapons or low-yield nuclear weapons.”

COURTING CATASTROPHE

One might concede that although one of these catastrophic scenarios could theoretically happen, the chances are small and thus should be of little concern. After all, leaders on both sides have powerful incentives to keep the Americans out of the fighting and avoid even limited nuclear use, not to mention an actual nuclear war.

If only one could be so sanguine. In fact, the conventional view vastly understates the dangers of escalation in Ukraine. For starters, wars tend to have a logic of their own, which makes it difficult to predict their course. Anyone who says that they know with confidence what path the war in Ukraine will take is mistaken. The dynamics of escalation in wartime are similarly hard to predict or control, which should serve as a warning to those who are confident that events in Ukraine can be managed. Furthermore, as the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz recognized, nationalism encourages modern wars to escalate to their most extreme form, especially when the stakes are high for both sides. That is not to say that wars cannot be kept limited, but doing so is not easy. Finally, given the staggering costs of a great-power nuclear war, even a small chance of it occurring should make everyone think long and hard about where this conflict might be headed.

This perilous situation creates a powerful incentive to find a diplomatic solution to the war. Regrettably, however, there is no political settlement in sight, as both sides are firmly committed to war aims that make compromise almost impossible. The Biden administration should have worked with Russia to settle the Ukraine crisis before war broke out in February. It is too late now to strike a deal. Russia, Ukraine, and the West are stuck in a terrible situation with no obvious way out. One can only hope that leaders on both sides will manage the war in ways that avoid catastrophic escalation. For the tens of millions of people whose lives are at stake, however, that is cold comfort.

Order the book here.

By Black Northern, The Burkean (Ireland), 5/23/22

What rages today is the largest conventional conflict in the European continent since the Second World War, fought by around half a million soldiers serving almost two hundred million people for a territory nearly ten times the size of the whole island of Ireland, yet surprisingly scant primary source material on the roots of the present Russo-Ukrainian conflict exists in either Russian or Ukrainian, let alone in English.

The YouTuber Ian McCollum, who runs the Forgotten Weapons gun channel with almost 2.5 million subscribers, had announced at the very eve of the official Russian invasion his intent to publish The Foreigner Group, a first-hand memoir of the conflict by a Swedish foreign volunteer Carolus Andersson, who served in the ranks of the Ukrainian Azov Battalion. His announcement however sparked controversy amongst his large fanbase, due to the Azov Battalion’s adjacency with National Socialism and Andersson’s own right-wing beliefs, and McCollum eventually cancelled the project. As of writing this however, The Foreigner Group is set to be published instead by Antelope Hill Publishing, who have also recently published Chechen Blues, an account of the First Chechen War of 1994 by Russian journalist Alexander Prokhanov.

This all being said, Nemets (@Peter_Nimitz), a rather eccentric yet affable history book account with just over 50,000 followers on Twitter, has recently done a great service to preserving the historiography of the conflict by translating one of the seminal works of pro-Russian separatist literature into English, 85 Days in Slavyansk by Alexander Zhuchkovsky.

Zhuchkovsky, who fought himself alongside the militants of the newly-proclaimed Donetsk’s People Republic (DPR), sought to write the first book of its kind to examine in depth the Battle of Slavyansk, the first engagement of what would become an eight-year protracted conflict between the Ukrainian government and pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region of the south-east, comprising the oblasts (regions) of Donetsk and Lugansk.

It is unapologetically a pro-separatist account, but a remarkably sober and honest one, a work that is not intended to be consumed in the vein of propaganda, and a work which consults an impressively vast array of Russian, separatist and even Ukrainian sources as well as extensive interviews with many of the prominent separatist commanders and fighters. One such figure ‘inextricably linked to the Donbass Uprising’, cuts head and shoulders above the rest, a constant presence in almost every single chapter, and a figure so prominent that a faithful retelling of Slavyansk could not be told without.

On 12 April 2014, 52 masked volunteers, commanded by its quiet yet imposing leader, Igor Strelkov, crossed the Russo-Ukrainian border, entered the large city of Slavyansk in the Donetsk Oblast, populated by around 100,000 people, and quickly surrounded the offices of the Interior Ministry in the city where a small police garrison were stationed.

After a brief exchange of gunfire, the police garrison swiftly surrendered, were detained, disarmed and quickly released. The militants would in the succeeding hours gradually seize control of the city’s civil administration buildings, its police headquarters and the offices of the SBU, the Ukrainian Security Service. By the end of April 12, Strelkov and his men had seized the city of Slavyansk without bloodshed and almost without a single shot fired.

‘Strelkov’ was only Igor Girkin’s nom de guerre, yet of the man Igor Girkin, very little was known. He was born and educated in Moscow, and was a soldier by profession, having served with Russian peacekeepers in the Moldovan breakaway region of Transnistria, a foreign volunteer for the ethnic Serbian separatists Republika Srpska in the Bosnian War, as well as a regular Russian soldier fighting in both the First and Second Chechen Wars.

He had also worked for the FSB, the Russian state’s successor to the KGB of the Soviet Union, in both operational and managerial capacities for around seventeen years, varying from playing an active role in counter-insurgency operations in the recently re-conquered Chechenya to more mundane bureaucratic work based out of the capital.

‘War was Strelkov’s native habitat,’, Zhuchkovsky writes of Strelkov, ‘He had grown from a bookish boy to a specialist in small wars and paramilitaries. When not at war, he had to make his own by participating in historical re-enactments, decked out as a monarchist Che Guevara with the epaulettes of the army of the old Russian Empire. It says a great deal about Strelkov’s idealism and nobility that he never became a pure mercenary, working indiscriminately for any faction.’

Strelkov is also ideologically quite eccentric even for a political landscape that had spawned the likes of National Bolshevism, a neo-monarchist committed to the restoration of the Russian monarchy that had been deposed by the 1917 Revolution, as well as an irredentist seeking the re-establishment of a Greater Russia to encompass Belarus, Ukraine and other Russian lands, with the remaining rump of the old Soviet Union to be an ‘unconditional zone of Russian influence.’

Strelkov today enjoys a semi-sacred status for his command of the defence of Slavyansk, a cult of personality which the reserved and rather humble Strelkov eventually found himself unnerved by. The events of Slavyansk however transformed him into a nihilist, his reflections of the many failures, little and big, that led ultimately to the separatists’ retreat made him utterly distrustful of both the separatists and the Russian state, a distrust and fatalism which has stayed with him even when analysing the current war.

Zhuchkovsky found Strelkov to be evasive when asked on whether he acted alone or with the tacit support of the Russian government. Some months earlier, Strelkov had played an instrumental yet discreet role in the bloodless Russian annexation of Crimea and in one of the only answers he would give to Zhuchkovsky on the matter, seemed to suggest that the Russian-installed head of the Republic of Crimea Sergey Aksyonov had given his personal blessing to Strelkov’s operation.

Zhuchkovsky himself is at difficulty as to the question, for although it was implausible that a mere ragtag group of fifty-two volunteers acting alone could capture a city of 100,000 without bloodshed, it was also similarly implausible that the Russian state played any significant role, for they would have sent forces in the thousands as in Crimea rather than in the mere dozens.

Alexander Boroday, who would become the first Prime Minister of the Donetsk’s People Republic, writes interestingly of the attempt by himself and ‘some comrades in Moscow’ to recall Strelkov so as to suspend or outright cancel the operation:

‘I left the airport, got into a car, and called Strelkov on his cell phone. The call didn’t go through. I found out later that Strelkov had turned his phone off. He had foreseen this development, and had no intention of changing his plan for the Donbass.’

He writes further on the general opinion of the Russian state regarding the Donbass:

‘The support for Russian annexation was both less intense and less widespread than in Crimea. It was also apparent that there would be no repetition of the Crimean scenario in Donbass. Yes, a majority of the people in Donbass wanted to join Russia, yes there were large protests, but Russia herself hadn’t decided if the Donbass was worthy of involvement. We wanted to wait for the outcome of the protests before making a decision, and decided to slow Strelkov’s operation down. Strelkov had his own opinions, and rushed forward.’

A rational analysis fails to give Zhuchkovsky any real closure, yet such an analysis must assume that the Russian state was acting rationally, which cannot always be certain since states, like the men who create and govern states, are not always rational beings. Strelkov, for instance, argues that Vladimir Putin had effectively crossed the rubicon at Crimea yet inexplicably stopped short at the Donbass, and that the failure of the Russian government to strike while the iron was still hot in 2014 had condemned the separatists at Slavyansk to a long protracted conflict spanning years rather than a swift and decisive seizure of power that might have spanned only days.

The volunteers at Slavyansk on April 12 were largely welcomed by the majority Russian-speaking population, and the volunteer ranks would swell from its original 52 to around a peak of 2,500. Largely made up of the local population, the separatist force also included a large contingent of ordinary Russian volunteers (around 40% were Russian citizens by end of June) as well as a smattering of volunteers from further afield.

A military administration would be established by Strelkov in the following days, enforcing curfews, armed patrols and restricting the sale of alcohol. Military courts were established and the death penalty became a de facto punishment in the city. Interestingly however, conscription, with the exception of local delinquents, was not enforced and the separatist force remained organised on a volunteer basis. Much to the chagrin of Strelkov, large sections of the population did not join the separatist militia, for many it was out of continued loyalty to the Ukrainian government, although Strelkov suspected that general lethargy also played its part.

‘Twenty four men, six of them officers, came from the Union of Afghanistan Veterans. They said they were ready to serve, but requested they be held in reserve near their homes rather than sent to the front line. I thanked them, but told them that we needed men who would listen to orders and fight where they were needed. Only three of them, only one an officer, ended up in the militia. The rest decided it was too inconvenient.’

In the early stages of the crisis, there was regular contact between the separatists and local soldiers serving in the Ukrainian Army, many of whom were seriously considering defection. They knew the separatists well, they were family, neighbours, friends from their school years and so on. The reorganisation of the Ukrainian forces, replacing these more locally based soldiers with more nationalistic troops from the Ukrainian-speaking western provinces largely prevented any such mass defection from occurring.

On April 13, the separatists ambushed an elite Alpha GRU unit eight kilometres to the north of Slavyansk at a checkpoint near the small village of Semyonovka, killing one and wounding four. The Ukrainians were so taken aback by the attack that for many weeks afterwards believed their assailants to have been Russian Spetsnaz, and led to a general overcautiousness amongst the Ukrainian troops who believed that storming the city would lead to a direct conflict with the Russian Armed Forces.

The general belief amongst many of the separatists and indeed the local population was that the Russians would eventually formally intervene, yet as time passed, it become more evident that the Russians would not intervene. On April 17, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov formally agreed with his Ukrainian counterpart that all illegal armed groups were to be disarmed and that all armed actions were to be suspended.

Hopes were raised by a Russian military exercise being conducted in the bordering Rostov region, yet were quickly dashed again. The locals of Slavyansk waited intently for a formal move on Victory Day yet no Russian troops arrived. Repeated appeals by Strelkov, who had finally revealed himself to the public in a press conference on April 26, for Russian intervention were ignored, and following the Ukrainian presidential elections on May 25, Vladimir Putin formally recognised the winner Petro Poroshenko as the legitimate president of Ukraine. A month later, the decree which authorised Putin to use Russian military force in Crimea and therefore would have authorised Russian intervention in the Donbass was revoked by the Russian Parliament.

The aspirations of the separatists were not federalisation or independent republics, but re-unification with Russia proper, yet without Russian commitment, they had little choice but to fall back on independence. Two referendums were held in Donetsk and Lugansk respectively, several weeks before the Ukrainian presidential election, both returned overwhelming majorities in favour of independence, both votes however were believed by international observers to be heavily rigged and therefore illegitimate.

The tentativeness of the Ukrainians began to slowly wear off as they became more confident and therefore more aggressive, seizing back nearby villages as well as commencing artillery bombardment on the city itself. The TV tower overlooking the city at Mount Karachun was seized from a small unit of only twelve separatist defenders, and used as a Ukrainian artillery post. Small groups of saboteurs would be also deployed inside the city, assisted no doubt by the pro-Ukrainian loyalist elements of Slavyansk.

The defence of the city, now effectively under siege, relied on weaponry that had been mainly pilfered from the Ukrainians; guns, artillery, MANPADs etc. Separatist communications were unencrypted and therefore listened in at all times by the Ukrainians. The separatists, knowing that a full frontal assault on the city would result in their rout, employed the age-old tactic of deception; ‘Appear weak when you are strong, and appear strong when you are weak.’ Strelkov, keenly aware that his communications were being monitored, would grossly exaggerate the strength of the militia and play up to the Ukrainian belief that the Russian Armed Forces were in Slavyansk during phone calls.

‘He would reference well-armed companies where there were only poorly-equipped platoons, hoping to demoralise the Ukrainians with tales of an invincible force of Russian mercenaries. Strelkov’s years of experience in the special forces had not been in vain.’

Like all great war memoirs, we have our fair share of characters, the eccentrics, the ideologues, even the fools. One of the most compelling figures frequently mentioned is ‘Motorola’, or Arseny Pavlov, one of the more semi-legendary figures of the separatist struggle.

Motorola, affectionally known as ‘the red-headed separatist’, had formed one of the original 52 who had captured Slavyansk. He was an ethnic Komi, one of the Finnic peoples of Russia, born in the Komi Province and had been in the Russian Army, serving two tours in Chechnya. He had been one of the reconnaissance platoon that had successfully ambushed the most elite unit of the GRU on April 13. He would assume command of said reconnaissance platoon which quickly swelled into the most effective heavy weapons unit in the separatist militia, of around 200 men.

He had a notorious reputation for psychological warfare; often recording his skirmishes with the Ukrainian forces with a GoPro camera and sending the footage to Russian journalists for publication as well as claiming Chechen Kadyrovites were fighting alongside the separatists, often screaming ‘Allahu Akhbar!’ in battle and broadcasting Islamic calls to prayer every few hours as to instil fear into the Ukrainians. Alexander Kots, the military correspondent for the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda writes of Motorola:

‘There are men who fight in bloody battles and survive, but with broken souls and constant cynicism. And there are those who cannot only love and war, but also keep possession of themselves. Motorola is one such man – a fighter from God, a joker, and a lover of Russian rap.’

Motorola would be killed several years later by an IED explosion in his Donetsk apartment, the exact perpetrators to this day unknown.

Another interesting figure that made up the original 52 was ‘Vandal’, in fact a sixteen-year old field medic Andrey Savelyev from Kiev, who gained a reputation for his heroic bravery in rescuing his mortally wounded commander ‘Bear’ whilst under Ukrainian fire. He had been initially refused several times by Strelkov whilst in Crimea, yet his persistence paid off and he was despatched to Slavyansk.

There is also Zhuchkovsky himself; Zhuchkovsky, a native of Saint Petersburg, joined the separatists at Slavyansk following a Strelkov appeal for more men, having been initially stationed at Lugansk. He had narrowly escaped death by shelling twice, once by a few minutes and once by only a few seconds. Near the tail end of the battle, whilst accompanying new Russian recruits to the frontline, his minibus was ambushed by Ukrainian forces. Although Zhuchkovsky and his men escaped with their lives, two of the recruits were killed, their mangled bodies charred beyond recognition and only identifiable by process of deduction.

By July, the position of the separatists had become untenable as the Ukrainians completed their encirclement of the city. Strelkov, by July 4, ordered a withdrawal from the city southwards to Kramatorsk, breaking through the encirclement and thus ending the Battle of Slavyansk after 85 days.

Although the battle of Slavyansk had ended in defeat, the wider struggle had only begun. Eight years of grinding warfare later, Russia has finally crossed the Rubicon and their troops are within twenty miles of Slavyansk, inching ever closer by the day. Strelkov may live to see the day where the Russian flag is finally once more hoisted over Slavyansk, yet it will have come at a personal cost to himself having made too many enemies over the years, but perhaps it will have been at an even graver cost for the many thousands dead since, including Motorola, that may have lived had the Russians taken action eight years ago as Strelkov so desperately appealed.

Separatism is a fine art that the Irish are masters of, and many of the themes evoked in this memoir appeal very deeply to the Irish nationalist; the sense of betrayal the separatists felt at the ambivalence of their motherland is something that as a nationalist from the North appealed to me especially so. But what most struck me and what, I think, will strike the average reader is that 52 men shaped not only the destiny of a country, or even of two countries, but that of an entire continent.

There is little criticism to be made regarding such a highly valuable work that has been re-published and translated at such an important juncture in perhaps the entire history of European civilization. To make petty criticisms here and there would be to nip at ankles. I salute Mr. Nemets for his commendable work in translating Mr. Zhuchkovsky’s excellent memoir. I shall hope that many such memoirs, whether they be the testaments of Russians or Ukrainians, will be published in the coming future.