WTH... WHY are we helping the Russians win?
And further details about the lack of arms, the Russians' weaknesses and the long term game
Three takeaways from this week’s pod with George Barros, The Institute for the Study of War’s expert on Russian forces and the war in Ukraine:
The Russians are prevailing in small pockets in Eastern Ukraine because the Ukrainians are running short of ammo. Why? Slow deliveries from the West.
The Russians will need an operational pause if they succeed in consolidating wins in the Donbas.
If sanctions are lessened or pressure is relieved, the Russians will use that pause and their new territories as a springboard to attack all of Ukraine.
Joe Biden announced another billion in support for Ukraine this week. But the issue isn’t the billions, it’s the speed with which the United States and other NATO allies are delivering the long range artillery and ammunition to take on the Russians. For their part, the Russians are fighting *better*, but they’re not fighting *well*. The war is not lost for Ukraine, and pace Henry Kissinger, Zelensky is not going to sue for peace and cede his nation to Moscow.
The pressure is on, but because leaders in Washington and Europe don’t want to take responsibility for irresponsible fiscal and energy policies, they’re blaming this summer’s nightmare at the tank on Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine. That’s only partially true; oil prices were way up well before the first Russian soldiers moved. Ditto inflation. But that’s ratcheting up the temperature in some circles pushing Kyiv to surrender quickly and let us pay less for gas.
Right now, things are dire in the Donbas and Russia has taken some ground. With sufficient help, Ukrainian forces will push back. But — and this is key — they won’t be able to without quick support. And another thing: There will be growing talk of lifting sanctions, allowing Putin back into the community of civilized nations and all that jazz. It can’t happen.
Interested? Listen to the whole thing here.
HIGHLIGHTS
Russia couldn’t win in wider Ukraine, so it set its sights lower?
GB: …even then with these downscaled objectives, we've seen the war degrade into this attritional artillery slug fest, where the Russians still have not been able to achieve or make substantial progress towards those goals. That's partly due to the fact that the Ukrainians have put up a very stiff defense and they've been performing very well, but with the sheer weight that the Russians are able to bring to bear and with the way that they've concentrated and deprioritized all these other fronts in order to focus just on the Luhansk, the Russians have been able to make these incremental but nonetheless continuing gains in Lugansk.
What do the Ukrainians need?
With regards to material support for the Ukrainians, I think a key thing is going to be making sure that we really extend the operational range for Ukrainian artillery fires. From the open source, we don't have a clear sense of exactly how much ammunition the Ukrainians have. That really comes up against the limits of what we can see in open source intelligence. But it is very true that we can see from the pattern of the fighting from various different sources and data that we can collect that the Ukrainians need to be able to strike Russian forces as they move closer towards the front lines in Luhansk. And in order to do that, the Ukrainians need better weaponry, more long range artillery, different weapons systems, longer operational ranges, so they can hit those supply lines, hit those logistics convoys and those ammunition depos, which is something that the Ukrainians actually have demonstrated a battlefield capabilities to do. So they just need to be able to do it at longer ranges, which is why all of this Western aid is, in my view, going to be decisive the next couple months.
Do the Russians have limits? A game plan for the long term?
GB: The Ukrainians just the other day released a really interesting intelligence report that talked about how the Ukrainians claim they have information that the Russians have an operational plan for the next 120 days, which would put this conflict out into October 2022. The Ukraine claim that this plan has a series of contingencies that depend on the current Russian operational performance in Luhansk in the east. If the Russians managed to secure those few remaining bits, like 5% of the territory of Lugansk Oblast that is still not yet captured, it's our assessment that at that point in time, whatever it occurs within the next couple weeks, perhaps sooner or later, that the Russian offensive will likely culminate. That the Russian forces will be spent.
And they will have to take an operational pause in order to regroup, cobble together whatever forces they have in order to continue their objectives. As it stands, the current Russian objective is actually still to capture both Luhansk and Donetsk. So by capturing Luhansk, unless they define down their priorities again, we'll have to then continue their fighting to go for Donetsk.
But the Donbas isn’t Russia’s only game, is it?
GB: I also want to talk about the Ukrainian south… very strategically important territory, both for Ukraine, and for NATO, with the Black Sea. [It’s] not talked a lot about in the mainstream media since that's not where all the activity is happening, but there's been a lot of very alarming things that have happened there, which indicate that the Russians intend to hold those territories in the long term. The Russian has recently have just begun issuing passports to Ukrainian citizens in those occupied territories. The Russians are creating fortified common structures there and creating second, and in some places, third lines of defense truly indicates that the Russian seek to hold these territories and likely annex them just similarly to the way that the Kremlin annexed Crimea in 2014
How is the fight going for the Russians?
GB: [T]he Russians are continuing to have systemic problems with force generation and effective combat power generation. And this is evidenced in really this all around the board scraping the bottom of the combat power barrel in order to cobble up the forces necessary to continue this, to drive a conquest that Putin still seems to be very fixated on.
But what if Russia mobilizes its whole population?
GB: I have a colleague here at the Institute for the Study of War who wrote an excellent piece on Russian conscription policies and how it actually works and why essentially these mobilization conscription policies, both for regular Russian conscripts, as well as for these Ukrainian civilians, which are being forcibly conscripted are just not going to actually generate effective combat power.
What about stories they’re press-ganging Ukrainians?
GB: And obviously, a forcible conscription among occupied territories is going to decrease the level of already low love that the locals have for the Russians when they come in, that would likely set favorable conditions for more partisan activity that will cause problems for Russia in the long run.
Shouldn’t we push the Ukrainians to sue for peace?
GB: It's very clear that Putin is not decreasing his war gains or his war goals. So that thinking is very flawed. And we really do need to ensure that we provide Ukraine as much as they can absorb. I don't know what that number is, but as much as they can absorb effectively in order to be able to maintain the tempo that the Ukrainians need. I'm sure we have the capability to do that. I'm not sure exactly why it's taking so long.
What’s happening right now in Severodonetsk?
GB: Severodonetsk is very interesting because it's probably the last significant Ukrainian prepared defensive position within Lugansk Oblast. There is a sister city across the Severodonetsk River which is also another prepared Ukrainian position. Look, even if the Russians managed to capture Severodonetsk in the coming weeks, they're still going to have to cross the river, the Severodonetsk River and operationally river crossings, contested river crossings for the Russians have gone very poorly. That is a capability that's difficult for them. They have not been able to do well. There's, of course, a very well documented time where the Russians attempted to cross the river at a different location, slightly further to the west. And we're absolutely whacked by the Ukrainian artillery. So even if the Russians manage to take Severodonetsk, they're going to have to then in order to complete the capture of Luhansk cross the river and take one final position in Lysychansk, which is another city right across the river. The Russians are also not setting really good conditions to be able to do that.
Just the other day, I think it was yesterday, the governor of Luhansk Oblast confirmed that the Russians had destroyed all but one of the road bridges connecting Sievierodonetsk to Lysychansk over the river. Really, there's two ways to interpret that information. There's one that the Russian seek to destroy the bridges in order to entrap the Ukrainian defenders that are in Sievierodonetsk, which is one option. The other option is that the Russians seek to do that and then stop at Sievierodonetsk. The other option is the Russians seek to destroy the bridges, capture Sievierodonetsk, and then conduct river crossings in order to get to Lysychansk, which would not be particularly smart given the way that, if you look at the geography of the area, Lysychansk sits up on an elevated hill overlooking the river.
What’s the long term fear?
What we're really concerned about is, absolutely, if the Russians managed to take what they have now, perhaps lock it in with a ceasefire that certain western states might pressure Zelensky to accept, which I hope he does not, that would enable the Russians to be able to one, take the time that they need to be able to lick their wounds, cobble together the forces, some effective forces, or reconstitute some units, play the long game to try to alleviate sanctions pressure, which I think in many cases, the Kremlin has had successes in actually alleviating that sort of political pressure just by waiting for the west to forget about what had happened, or try to exploit this desire to have good will, or some sort of détente over a long extended period of time.
Also, if you look at the geography of where the Russians currently are, as of right now, as of today, they have an excellent springboard to be able to attack large, large territories within Ukraine, particularly in the south. I'd point to where they currently are at Kherson, and I'd encourage the listeners to take a look at a map that we have. We have a great interactive map at our website Institute for the Study of War.
They are actually positioned in a great position on the other side of the large Dnipro River to be able to project into the rest of southern Ukraine and up into central Ukraine. That is a significant geographical achievement that the Russians had prior to when this war resumed on February 24, because the Russians are no longer confined just to being within a small pocket in the east and in Crimea. They now have a much larger springboard, and would necessitate the Ukrainians to spread their already battered units across a larger frontal area.
Find the whole transcript here.
SHOWNOTES
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 8, NewsWires, June 9, 2022
Ukraine claims victories in Severodonetsk as street fighting continues, New York Post, June 9, 2022
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 7, NewsWires, June 8, 2022
Ukraine Live Updates: ‘The Fate of Our Donbas Is Being Decided,’ Zelensky Says of Sievierodonetsk, New York Times, June 9, 2022
Ukraine Counterattack Takes Back Parts of Strategic Donbas City, Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2022
Ukraine says Russia creating food “catastrophe” that could starve millions in bid to reopen Black Sea ports, CBS News, June 9, 2022
War in Ukraine: Russian Losses, Ukrainian Victory, and the Information War, AEI, April 6, 2022
Wheat Harvest Outside Ukraine Is Also Under Threat, Adding Pressure to Global Supply, Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2022
Russia-Ukraine live news: Donetsk sentences 3 foreigners to death, Al-Jazeera, June 8, 2022