The original sins of 2022 were the West allowing Russia to withdraw over 20,000 quality troops and over 2,000 pieces of matériel across the Dnipro unchallenged and then allowing Surovikin to build the Scholz-Biden line of massively mined field fortifications from October onwards, with even us humble civilians looking at ever new satellite images, week by week, month by month, in bewilderment. Then, Russia was also allowed to destroy the Kakhovka dam unchallenged, severely crippling Ukrainian industry and agriculture in the south for years to come.
"What struck me in a quick post-mortem was the passivity of the population." Now that is surprising, with Muscovy/Russia looking back on approximately 800 years of slave mentality, nihilism and fatalism. Western thinking did and does not apply.
Jack Watling has Russia's shell-firing ratio 10,000 : 2,000 for Ukraine. In war, without production, everything is nothing. Yet politicians seem utterly incapable to understand what's known as the critical path in any endeavour. When the Kiel Institute showed that the already lackluster Western matériel deliveries basically came to a halt in March 2023, it became obvious that the West prefers to throw Ukraine under the bus to Minsk III and subsequent annihilation. Maybe a rest-Ukraine, a Republic of Lviv, will be all that is left, something the mollycoddled West can then lovingly care for humanitarily.
Excuse my sarcasm, but the West's angst ridden incrementalism and dithering, rewarding Putin once again (after Georgia, Ukraine I, Syria and now Ukraine II), is almost impossible to bear.
I think I have to point that, unless you wanted NATO to go to war with Russia, there's nothing the 'West' could have done about Russia's fighting withdrawal over the Dnipro. Ditto the dam. They were forced out by a long, exhausting, but successful Ukrainian offensive. Modern warfare is not a computer game, the Ukrainians cannot simply generate a fully-trained, battle-hardened, NATO-standard military from a standing start. It takes time to defeat a heavily armed opponent.
"...the already lackluster Western matériel deliveries basically came to a halt in March 2023"
I'm sorry, but that's just plain wrong. It's nowhere near as bleak a picture as you paint. To cheer yourself up, go read Oryx's catalogue of equipment donations, both past and future (https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/04/answering-call-heavy-weaponry-supplied.html). You might be pleasantly surprised. And it doesn't even list all the training and non-military support that Ukraine has received.
If you understand the amount of aid that is flowing to Ukraine, it's hard to see how "the West prefers to throw Ukraine under the bus". I doubt in all history there has ever been an equal to the matériel support NATO and the EU has given and pledged to a non-member, non-ally nation. It is remarkable not deplorable.
A lot could have been done, but wasnt. Properly equipped, the AFU could have kept the momentum and severely disrupted the withdrawal across the Dnipro, and equally making it hard for Russia to build the Scholz-Biden-Line month after month in broad daylight.
The Oryx catalogue is irrelevant. What counts is what was delivered in what quantity and at what time. And for nearly 1,200 kilometers of front line, the total quantity amounts to a plain disgrace, the number of modern MBTs, IFVs, APCs, mobile GBAD and EW systems came to zero this spring. Has the West ramped up its industry in the last 22 months? Not at all. I work with production, and massively expanding production needs time and resources, none of which were mobilised, while Russia expanded existing factories and builds new ones as we speak.
As for training, without western forward observers, and a mere 5 weeks of yesteryear NATO-doctrine training, little was learnt, and qualified analysts wrote about it at the time. Alas, to no avail.
Watling, Gressel, Muzyka, Kofman and Gady have it right. The mollycoddled West miserably failed Ukraine and continues to do so. The self-congratulatory backslapping is plain ridiculous.
You give Ukrainians no agency with your arguments. On the one hand, you ask for the impossible: that the AFU be fully equipped AND trained in less than six months after the invasion. That they weren't but still kicked the Russians out of the west bank of the Dnipro deserves praise not whinging that it wasn't complete enough. They want to liberate their occupied land. They decided that was the best way to succeed with what they had and it worked. But, on the other hand, you concede that expanding production takes time whilst at the same time demanding that rearmament happen immediately.
"Has the West ramped up its industry in the last 22 months? Not at all."
Again, just factually wrong. I'm not going to list all the steps nations have taken because you could go and research it yourself and, just possibly, be pleasantly surprised.
Those qualified experts also wrote that the training was a lot better than nothing. No-one that mattered pretended it was anything other than what it was.
"the number of modern MBTs, IFVs, APCs, mobile GBAD and EW systems came to zero this spring."
I see your game here. Most of those arrived AFTER the spring, but arrive they did. If you had bothered to look at the Oryx list (and I encourage everyone to do so), you could not, in good faith, make the statements you have. So, this begs a question. What's with the relentless negativity? Even if all the F-16 promised arrived tomorrow (and some will any day now), I get the impression you'd still say it wasn't enough and that Ukraine is doomed.
Agency without matériel is meaningless. What was sent was less than 25% of what Zaluzhnyi had asked for in late 2022. And don't get me started on 0 Taurus and the paltry 20 ATACMS. What good is praise when, ever since the Kharkiv and Kherson offensives, nothing at all could be accomplished, because the tired and timid West stubbornly refuses to get its act together? Instead of massively ramping up matériel production, the West keeps ramping up appeasement articles, in order to prepare the Minsk III narrative.
Thanks to NATO and the EU, Ukraine drove Russia from more than half the territory it occupied in the first few months of the invasion. Thanks to NATO and the EU, the first F-16 fighters will arrive before the end of this year. That is the beginning of what will be theatre-wide increase in Ukraine's ability to kick out the Russians. And more advanced weaponry is on the way. Thanks to NATO and the EU, Ukraine now has the best ground-based air defences in Europe. So far, Russia's attempt to destroy Ukrainian infrastructure again has failed utterly. Ukraine learns from its mistakes. Russia does not. Ukraine now has the most battle-hardened troops in the world. Russia does not. It even flung its experienced training cadres into the frontline last year, and now recruits complain they barely see a rifle before they too are sent into human wave assaults. Despite having a navy that consists of one ageing landing ship, Ukraine is devastating Russia's Black Sea fleet. That it can do the seemingly impossible is due, in large part, to NATO and the EU. Thanks to weapons supplied by NATO and the EU, Russia loses more modern tanks in a month than it can manufacture in a year. Thanks to NATO and EU sanctions, Russia will struggle to increase tank production. In contrast, the heavy armour donated to Ukraine by NATO and the EU is so tough that, when knocked out of action, almost all is towed away, repaired, and then returned to the battlefront. And who repairs them? NATO and EU members. Meanwhile, Russia pulls rusty, unreliable WWII-era equipment out of storage in Siberia. I could go on. And on.
Modern warfare is not a computer game, it takes time to defeat a heavily armed opponent. I doubt in all history there has ever been an equal to the amount of support NATO and the EU has given and pledged to a non-member, non-ally nation. It is remarkable not deplorable.
Sorry to say, but you must be a doppelgänger of Sullivan or Plötner. Thanks to NATO, Russia still occupies Crimea and the territories held since November. Thanks to NATO, Ukraine is forced to squander ever more of its better trained and seasoned soldiers and officers. Thanks to NATO, Russia has now a 10,000 : 2,000 shells fired artillery advantage. Thanks to NATO, Russia was able to cripple much of Ukraine's industry and agriculture in the South.
Russia also has the drones and EW systems advantage. How many mobile GBAD and EW systems does NATO produce and deliver to the front lines per month? How many infantry night vision and thermal vision devices? Zero.
Self-acclamatory cheerleading akin to Marcus Keupp and that motley crew of blue eyed "Crimea liberated by summer" armchair war analysts does not cut it. I donate and organise aid. I traveled from Odesa all the way to Kramatorsk, saw and heard how it really goes.
I remain an optimist and have been from the start. If the USA can't defeat the Vietcong and North Vietnam, Soviet Union cut and run from Afghanistan (no surprises there). If Russia, essentially a gangster state, can survive the harrying of their forces, I will be amazed. Power is represented by far more than the number of troops and weaponry that the state can muster as other commentators have said many times in describing this war.
The average Russian male lifespan is pulled down by futility and despair leading to severe alcohol abuse. Putin has his way more than any other male in Russia and does not consume alcohol. For those reasons, I think the average male Russian lifespan is irrelevant in his case.
Many have said this before me, but I think it is correct. His goal is to get on the Russian Mount Rushmore of Russian greats who created that wonderful thing called the Russian Empire— Peter the Great, Catherine the great, etc. He will take their place at take his place by their side as Vladimir the Restorer.
The goal has proved much more elusive than he once thought, but the only way he will ever get there is by slogging ahead and hoping for favorable developments (Trump election, Western fatigue). I don't expect him to ever give up on this dream.
It's a tremendous pleasure to read this article, like all your others. Thank you. One thing which strikes me in all of this is that since we have so little knowledge of Putin's political strength or weakness within Russia, it's perfectly possible that he is unassailable. He may not simply have weathered the Prigozhin episode, but instead let the latter's rivals do the obvious. In that way, rather than representing a challenge, the whole course of events might simply have represented the status quo. I do worry that much of the reportage talks of Putin, rather than Russia, as if we can take for granted that Putin is somehow out on a limb. The wider media reportage, too, often suffers from an unhelpful one-sidedness which hampers understanding. I simply don't think sources like the Guardian, New York Times, CNN et al can be trusted to give a decent analysis; they seem too invested in the outcome they'd like to see. It seems plausible, too, that Russia/Putin will be prepared to at least threaten the use of tactical nuclear warheads if wholesale defeat seems possible; particularly in respect of Crimea. I am not convinced that the West wants politicians from border and Scandinavian states to lead us into that scenario. And while I do not doubt your wisdom on the 'stalemate' point, I am increasingly moving towards the view that the Ukrainian people will not tolerate the sacrifice for much longer. A frozen conflict might be the most realistic prospect, with lines drawn along present statuses, hostilities mainly stopped and possible Ukrainian membership of Western institutions dependent on accepting a de facto partition.
You will find far better granular analysis on his weekly podcast than you'll ever get from CNN. You don't have to agree with him but you will be better informed. You might even revise your opinion "that the Ukrainian people will not tolerate the sacrifice for much longer". Btw, the only person impressed by Putin's nuclear blackmail was Elon Musk. And that says more about Musk's lack of character than anything else.
Your interpretation of Sergei Karaganov’s piece is scary, still. The final victory flees against the horizon. It will be a long and vain battle for Russia.
“.. but did much happen that would surprise a regular reader of these posts” — shouldn’t that be “.. but not much did happen that would surprise a regular reader of these posts.”?
I disagree on one point - your “stalemate v deadlock” has gained some traction in recent weeks. I have seen several references to the term in preference to ‘stalemate’. There does seem to a general recalibration of strategy as well in some other commentaries. Revolving around 2024 being a time to frustrate the Kremlin while Ukr builds strength and capability. By 2025 Putin is not going to be in a good place (l make no presumption about a Trump win or what he would do with it - all very unclear), unless he wins decisively or gets a pretty good deal close to his maximalist aims. Since that is my view of what strategy should look like, l have inherent bias for looking to see if that approach is indeed the one under discussion by the influencers and decision makers. I discern that is getting some bandwidth in the influencers. We shall see if it can carry into the decision making political arena.
Good to see a sober review, much appreciated.
The original sins of 2022 were the West allowing Russia to withdraw over 20,000 quality troops and over 2,000 pieces of matériel across the Dnipro unchallenged and then allowing Surovikin to build the Scholz-Biden line of massively mined field fortifications from October onwards, with even us humble civilians looking at ever new satellite images, week by week, month by month, in bewilderment. Then, Russia was also allowed to destroy the Kakhovka dam unchallenged, severely crippling Ukrainian industry and agriculture in the south for years to come.
"What struck me in a quick post-mortem was the passivity of the population." Now that is surprising, with Muscovy/Russia looking back on approximately 800 years of slave mentality, nihilism and fatalism. Western thinking did and does not apply.
Jack Watling has Russia's shell-firing ratio 10,000 : 2,000 for Ukraine. In war, without production, everything is nothing. Yet politicians seem utterly incapable to understand what's known as the critical path in any endeavour. When the Kiel Institute showed that the already lackluster Western matériel deliveries basically came to a halt in March 2023, it became obvious that the West prefers to throw Ukraine under the bus to Minsk III and subsequent annihilation. Maybe a rest-Ukraine, a Republic of Lviv, will be all that is left, something the mollycoddled West can then lovingly care for humanitarily.
Excuse my sarcasm, but the West's angst ridden incrementalism and dithering, rewarding Putin once again (after Georgia, Ukraine I, Syria and now Ukraine II), is almost impossible to bear.
I think I have to point that, unless you wanted NATO to go to war with Russia, there's nothing the 'West' could have done about Russia's fighting withdrawal over the Dnipro. Ditto the dam. They were forced out by a long, exhausting, but successful Ukrainian offensive. Modern warfare is not a computer game, the Ukrainians cannot simply generate a fully-trained, battle-hardened, NATO-standard military from a standing start. It takes time to defeat a heavily armed opponent.
"...the already lackluster Western matériel deliveries basically came to a halt in March 2023"
I'm sorry, but that's just plain wrong. It's nowhere near as bleak a picture as you paint. To cheer yourself up, go read Oryx's catalogue of equipment donations, both past and future (https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/04/answering-call-heavy-weaponry-supplied.html). You might be pleasantly surprised. And it doesn't even list all the training and non-military support that Ukraine has received.
If you understand the amount of aid that is flowing to Ukraine, it's hard to see how "the West prefers to throw Ukraine under the bus". I doubt in all history there has ever been an equal to the matériel support NATO and the EU has given and pledged to a non-member, non-ally nation. It is remarkable not deplorable.
A lot could have been done, but wasnt. Properly equipped, the AFU could have kept the momentum and severely disrupted the withdrawal across the Dnipro, and equally making it hard for Russia to build the Scholz-Biden-Line month after month in broad daylight.
The Oryx catalogue is irrelevant. What counts is what was delivered in what quantity and at what time. And for nearly 1,200 kilometers of front line, the total quantity amounts to a plain disgrace, the number of modern MBTs, IFVs, APCs, mobile GBAD and EW systems came to zero this spring. Has the West ramped up its industry in the last 22 months? Not at all. I work with production, and massively expanding production needs time and resources, none of which were mobilised, while Russia expanded existing factories and builds new ones as we speak.
As for training, without western forward observers, and a mere 5 weeks of yesteryear NATO-doctrine training, little was learnt, and qualified analysts wrote about it at the time. Alas, to no avail.
Watling, Gressel, Muzyka, Kofman and Gady have it right. The mollycoddled West miserably failed Ukraine and continues to do so. The self-congratulatory backslapping is plain ridiculous.
You give Ukrainians no agency with your arguments. On the one hand, you ask for the impossible: that the AFU be fully equipped AND trained in less than six months after the invasion. That they weren't but still kicked the Russians out of the west bank of the Dnipro deserves praise not whinging that it wasn't complete enough. They want to liberate their occupied land. They decided that was the best way to succeed with what they had and it worked. But, on the other hand, you concede that expanding production takes time whilst at the same time demanding that rearmament happen immediately.
"Has the West ramped up its industry in the last 22 months? Not at all."
Again, just factually wrong. I'm not going to list all the steps nations have taken because you could go and research it yourself and, just possibly, be pleasantly surprised.
Those qualified experts also wrote that the training was a lot better than nothing. No-one that mattered pretended it was anything other than what it was.
"the number of modern MBTs, IFVs, APCs, mobile GBAD and EW systems came to zero this spring."
I see your game here. Most of those arrived AFTER the spring, but arrive they did. If you had bothered to look at the Oryx list (and I encourage everyone to do so), you could not, in good faith, make the statements you have. So, this begs a question. What's with the relentless negativity? Even if all the F-16 promised arrived tomorrow (and some will any day now), I get the impression you'd still say it wasn't enough and that Ukraine is doomed.
Agency without matériel is meaningless. What was sent was less than 25% of what Zaluzhnyi had asked for in late 2022. And don't get me started on 0 Taurus and the paltry 20 ATACMS. What good is praise when, ever since the Kharkiv and Kherson offensives, nothing at all could be accomplished, because the tired and timid West stubbornly refuses to get its act together? Instead of massively ramping up matériel production, the West keeps ramping up appeasement articles, in order to prepare the Minsk III narrative.
Thanks to NATO and the EU, Ukraine drove Russia from more than half the territory it occupied in the first few months of the invasion. Thanks to NATO and the EU, the first F-16 fighters will arrive before the end of this year. That is the beginning of what will be theatre-wide increase in Ukraine's ability to kick out the Russians. And more advanced weaponry is on the way. Thanks to NATO and the EU, Ukraine now has the best ground-based air defences in Europe. So far, Russia's attempt to destroy Ukrainian infrastructure again has failed utterly. Ukraine learns from its mistakes. Russia does not. Ukraine now has the most battle-hardened troops in the world. Russia does not. It even flung its experienced training cadres into the frontline last year, and now recruits complain they barely see a rifle before they too are sent into human wave assaults. Despite having a navy that consists of one ageing landing ship, Ukraine is devastating Russia's Black Sea fleet. That it can do the seemingly impossible is due, in large part, to NATO and the EU. Thanks to weapons supplied by NATO and the EU, Russia loses more modern tanks in a month than it can manufacture in a year. Thanks to NATO and EU sanctions, Russia will struggle to increase tank production. In contrast, the heavy armour donated to Ukraine by NATO and the EU is so tough that, when knocked out of action, almost all is towed away, repaired, and then returned to the battlefront. And who repairs them? NATO and EU members. Meanwhile, Russia pulls rusty, unreliable WWII-era equipment out of storage in Siberia. I could go on. And on.
Modern warfare is not a computer game, it takes time to defeat a heavily armed opponent. I doubt in all history there has ever been an equal to the amount of support NATO and the EU has given and pledged to a non-member, non-ally nation. It is remarkable not deplorable.
Sorry to say, but you must be a doppelgänger of Sullivan or Plötner. Thanks to NATO, Russia still occupies Crimea and the territories held since November. Thanks to NATO, Ukraine is forced to squander ever more of its better trained and seasoned soldiers and officers. Thanks to NATO, Russia has now a 10,000 : 2,000 shells fired artillery advantage. Thanks to NATO, Russia was able to cripple much of Ukraine's industry and agriculture in the South.
Russia also has the drones and EW systems advantage. How many mobile GBAD and EW systems does NATO produce and deliver to the front lines per month? How many infantry night vision and thermal vision devices? Zero.
Self-acclamatory cheerleading akin to Marcus Keupp and that motley crew of blue eyed "Crimea liberated by summer" armchair war analysts does not cut it. I donate and organise aid. I traveled from Odesa all the way to Kramatorsk, saw and heard how it really goes.
https://youtu.be/x56O4G8VsiA?feature=shared
I remain an optimist and have been from the start. If the USA can't defeat the Vietcong and North Vietnam, Soviet Union cut and run from Afghanistan (no surprises there). If Russia, essentially a gangster state, can survive the harrying of their forces, I will be amazed. Power is represented by far more than the number of troops and weaponry that the state can muster as other commentators have said many times in describing this war.
At 71, Putin is already well past average life expectancy for a Russian man.
Do despots like him ever have a clear personal goal in their later years?
If so, what might Putin's be?
It's hard to believe he likes the idea of going to his grave still scrabbling for bits of charred wasteland in Donetsk.
The average Russian male lifespan is pulled down by futility and despair leading to severe alcohol abuse. Putin has his way more than any other male in Russia and does not consume alcohol. For those reasons, I think the average male Russian lifespan is irrelevant in his case.
You're right of course, but I still wonder what he hopes to achieve in the years left to him.
After that, why would he care?
Many have said this before me, but I think it is correct. His goal is to get on the Russian Mount Rushmore of Russian greats who created that wonderful thing called the Russian Empire— Peter the Great, Catherine the great, etc. He will take their place at take his place by their side as Vladimir the Restorer.
The goal has proved much more elusive than he once thought, but the only way he will ever get there is by slogging ahead and hoping for favorable developments (Trump election, Western fatigue). I don't expect him to ever give up on this dream.
It's a tremendous pleasure to read this article, like all your others. Thank you. One thing which strikes me in all of this is that since we have so little knowledge of Putin's political strength or weakness within Russia, it's perfectly possible that he is unassailable. He may not simply have weathered the Prigozhin episode, but instead let the latter's rivals do the obvious. In that way, rather than representing a challenge, the whole course of events might simply have represented the status quo. I do worry that much of the reportage talks of Putin, rather than Russia, as if we can take for granted that Putin is somehow out on a limb. The wider media reportage, too, often suffers from an unhelpful one-sidedness which hampers understanding. I simply don't think sources like the Guardian, New York Times, CNN et al can be trusted to give a decent analysis; they seem too invested in the outcome they'd like to see. It seems plausible, too, that Russia/Putin will be prepared to at least threaten the use of tactical nuclear warheads if wholesale defeat seems possible; particularly in respect of Crimea. I am not convinced that the West wants politicians from border and Scandinavian states to lead us into that scenario. And while I do not doubt your wisdom on the 'stalemate' point, I am increasingly moving towards the view that the Ukrainian people will not tolerate the sacrifice for much longer. A frozen conflict might be the most realistic prospect, with lines drawn along present statuses, hostilities mainly stopped and possible Ukrainian membership of Western institutions dependent on accepting a de facto partition.
If you want clearer insight into Putin and Kremlin politics can I suggest you visit Mark Galeotti's blog and podcast. He's an expert on such matters.
In Moscow's Shadows
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com
You will find far better granular analysis on his weekly podcast than you'll ever get from CNN. You don't have to agree with him but you will be better informed. You might even revise your opinion "that the Ukrainian people will not tolerate the sacrifice for much longer". Btw, the only person impressed by Putin's nuclear blackmail was Elon Musk. And that says more about Musk's lack of character than anything else.
Thanks, Martin.
Your interpretation of Sergei Karaganov’s piece is scary, still. The final victory flees against the horizon. It will be a long and vain battle for Russia.
“.. but did much happen that would surprise a regular reader of these posts” — shouldn’t that be “.. but not much did happen that would surprise a regular reader of these posts.”?
I disagree on one point - your “stalemate v deadlock” has gained some traction in recent weeks. I have seen several references to the term in preference to ‘stalemate’. There does seem to a general recalibration of strategy as well in some other commentaries. Revolving around 2024 being a time to frustrate the Kremlin while Ukr builds strength and capability. By 2025 Putin is not going to be in a good place (l make no presumption about a Trump win or what he would do with it - all very unclear), unless he wins decisively or gets a pretty good deal close to his maximalist aims. Since that is my view of what strategy should look like, l have inherent bias for looking to see if that approach is indeed the one under discussion by the influencers and decision makers. I discern that is getting some bandwidth in the influencers. We shall see if it can carry into the decision making political arena.