Escalation and Bad Faith

Missile Exchanges

There was a Ukrainian missile strike today, December 20, on the Russian city of Ryl’sk, west of the Seym river in Kursk, northwest of cities such as Korenevo and Snagost that were attacked or threatened by Ukrainian forces during the summer Kursk offensive but then later recovered by Russian forces.

Many reports suggested that up to six ATACMS had been used, although a statement from the Russian MOD refutes that, saying instead that the missiles were HIMARS rockets. The attack caused fairly extensive damage to a school, and to a cultural centre, amongst other buildings. Five people were reported killed and 26 injured.

The attack followed on missile exchanges yesterday between Russia and Ukraine, in which Ukraine says six ATACMS and four Storm Shadows struck a military, energy or industrial facility, the Kombinat Kamensky, near Rostov (Russia reported only minimal damage).

The sudden massive splurge in the use of highly expensive Western missiles, with very little to show for it in terms of damage of any kind, least of all damage that would in some way alter the course of the war, may suggest that the West is simply using up its stockpiles while it still can in the final few weeks before the Trump inauguration and Trump rescins the Biden greenlight for the use of precision guided ballistic and cruise missiles against Russian targets in Russia.

I would argue that this is yet another extraordinary reckless Western invitation to catastrophe, mainly, and also a deeply irresponsible waste of taxpayer money.

The Attack on Kiev

In retaliation, there has been a massive Russian strike on Kiev. Russia’s targets in Kiev included the SBU Command Center, the Kiev Design Bureau “Luch” responsible for designing and producing Neptune missile systems and ground-launched missiles for the Vilkha MLRS, a position of the Patriot missile defense system, and warehouses and ammunition depots. The missiles were launched from near Baldyzh in Bryansk. Three NATO generals are also said to have been killed.

Ukraine claimed to have shot down 40 out of 65 Shahed UAV drones and five out of six Iskander M/KN-23 missiles and one Kh59/69 aircraft missile.

Putin’s Press Conference

The Russian attack on Kiev followed an angry exchange between Putin and Zelenskiy. At his customary end-of-the-year national press conference Putin had jokingly dared the West to pit all its air defense systems against Russia’s new Oreshnik weapon over Kiev, and also said that Russia would not negotiate with an illegal Ukrainian president unless Zelenskiy holds elections (which polls confirm he would almost certainly lose). Zelenskiy, in response, called Putin a dumbass and questioned his sanity.

There is some speculation that Kiev pulled its punches in its defense against Russian strikes on Kiev with a view to accumulating evidence that it can exploit in order to pressure the West to supply it with even more weapons, including, according to General Sryski, 30 new air defense systems for Kiev. Washington is rushing another package of aid to Ukraine, worth $1.2 billion. In Kiev and in Washington there is always an appetite for the exploitation of threat for the purpose of pouring public money into private weapons manufactures’ coffers.

Putin’s boasting apart, Russia has so far restrained itself from another demonstration of the use of the Oreshnik in combat. This may be because such an attack is still likely to come in the next week or so. Or it may be indicative of continuing Russian reserve in advance of what it hopes may be real progress towards a ceasefire with the inauguration of Trump in a month’s time. Or it may also suggest that Russia is being cautious not to over use this technology given that every demonstration gives the West further opportunities to study and replicate the weapon. Such learning from the opposition’s use of weapons has been a major factor in explaining Russian militry growth, sophistication and resilience throughout the SMO.

Peace Prospects

The Trump team, as I have previously noted, may be genuinely trying to restrain the last-ditch attempts by the Biden administration to provoke Russia into some kind of massive over-reaction that will make it impossible for Trump to proceed in his bid to negotiate peace terms.

This is tantamount to saying that if the Biden administration can stage a PR event to its liking and hoodwink public opinion, then all lights are green to potential nuclear annihilation (and for what, exactly?).

I doubt that the Trump team would be incapable of understanding this, or of rolling-back Biden’s latest aggressions. But it is also possible that for Trump it might seem that the Biden administration’s escalations may help soften up Russia prior to pushing towards negotiations. Trump’s advisor, General Kellogg, has recently criticized the assassination of General Kirillov (an event in which the MI6 and other European intelligence teams were almost certainly involved), calling it a mistake, and says that Trump wants to negotiate. I am inclined to believe this is genuine, but I also think that the Trump team still do not truly understand how far they must go in order to begin to address Russia’s real concerns.

Among other things, Putin criticized himself the other day for not initiating the SMO earlier in view of what have now come to be seen both by Russia and the incoming Trump administration in the US as a history of bad faith on the part of the West and outright provocations against Russia.

Putin’s comments in his press conference suggest, no surprise, that his base point continues to be “Istanbul+,” namely the agreement reached between Russia and Ukraine but, under pressure from the West, never executed in April 2022 in addition to subsequent territorial gains. This starting point amounts to Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization and denazification and the formal concession to Russia of Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zapporizhzhia and Kherson as Russian. Putin is adamant, as I have just indicated that he will not negotiate with Zelensky whom he says is illegitimate, since the Ukrainian Constitution does not allow for the continuation of a President beyond the expiry of his term in office, even under conditions of martial law, without the call for new elections. Russia would negotiate either with Zelenskiy’s elected replacement or, failing a call to elections, the Speaker of the RADA.

Hubris

In my view, Putin did come across as somewhat callous or cavalier in his attitude towards the war which, it must always be said, is without doubt very bloody and indeed tragic for both sides. He certainly sounded confident, to the point of uncharacteristic cockiness. This seems inadvisable given that the threat environment has hardly disappated for Russia.

The West is catching up in the production of hypersonic weapons: these will form the center of the new missile systems that the US wishes to deploy in Germany from 2025.

Further, as missile expert Ted Postol has recently argued, Russia still lacks the technology to detect the launch of hypersonic medium-range missiles (the reason, most likely, for why Putin in his press conference has urged the Russian military-industrial complex to develop technology that will promptly detect such weapons).

The Battlefields

On the battlefields, there is an overall compelling Russian advance along almost all front lines. In the Kursk region, Russia continues to squeeze Ukrainian forces between Kruglenkoye and Malaya Loknya. It has redressed the situation following failed Ukrainian counter-offensives of a week ago, although in Zapporizhzhia there is a high likelihood of a significant Ukrainian offensive on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant both from the north - across the dried-up reservoir from Chervonohrhorivka, Marhanets and Novokamianke - and from the east from Kamianske in the direction of Vsylivka and towards the ZNPP at Enerhodar.

Syria

In his press conference, Putin has referred to Syria not as a failure, but as a relative success, in the sense that Russian intervention in Syria has succeeded in eradicating extremist jihadism, and that this is the reason why it entered the conflict on behalf of the Assad regime in 2015; in other words, to defeat the threat of the caliphate.

I have to disagree, on several counts. Russian intervention in the post-2011 conflict began with its defense of the Assad regime against what Russia surely knew was a major false-flag campaign to persuade the world that Assad, insanely crossing a major Western red line, had used chemical weapons (it hadn’t, the attack in question was staged by al-Nusra type jihadis, as I chronicle in my book on Conflict Narratives in Syria), thus providing the West and all of its anti-Assad goons a pretext for escalation.

Russia did this in the spirit of a long-standing post-world-war-2 alliance with Syria, Iran, Iraq and Egypt, an alliance that was founded in a measure of Soviet empathy for a Baathist ideology of secularism, socialism and Arab nationalism. Russian defense of Syria had everything to do with broad geopolitical strategy and only incidentally with jihadism although admittedly this has also been a major concern within parts of the Russian Federation, especially from the era of the terrible Chechnya wars. Russian interests in Syria also enveloped its ambitions for naval and air force bases in the eastern Mediterranean, and connected with the possibility of securing a pipeline route for Russian gas to European customers.

I also have to disagree with Putin. He is in effect seeming to take credit for the unbelievable narrative that the West is now pushing and which western mainstrweam media are parroting to the effect that overnight one of the world’s most terroristic movements, the HTS, has become “moderate,” and has turned into a perfectly acceptable entity with whom the West can do business.

This narrative is palpably silly for at least three main reasons: (1) HTS certainly was an extremist Sunni jihadi movement in all its years in Idlib and, before then, in the form of Al Nusra and Al Qaeda, during the Western-instigated (the CIA’s Timber Sycamore and all of that) Syrian “civil war, and the US State Department has still to get around to removing the $10 million bounty on Jolani’s head; (2) HTS, as a terroristic movement, nonetheless directly and indirectly benefitted from Western-friendly funding throughout this time since for the West it was always about regime-change; (3) it is perfectly obvious that HTS’ sudden conversion to a genial, Starbucks-level businesslike commitment to being friends with Israel and fully on board with pro market ideology, reflects sinister and deeply cynical dealings between its major sponsor, Turkey, and with Israel, and the US; and (3) that despite this being the case, it is far too early to determine whether the rank and file of HTS have truly changed their ideological tenor to the extent that Jolani claims, especially given the mammoth challenge that remains of how HTS will handle relations with a multitude of other militia, factions and sects in Syria.

Putin can rightly take credit, big credit, along with Hezbollah, the Quds and the Syrian Army for the destruction of the ISIS caliphate (only a lukewarm concern for the US, which was still always more interested in regime change, as just noted).

But for Putin to extend this credit to one of defeating Sunni extremism in Syria runs the grave danger of making it seem that Russia has been working in cahoots with the West and the Arab monarchies to destabilize Syria by backing or exploiting Sunni extremism for its own geopolitical advantage, and that it is being naievely taken in by the shifting changes of ideological positioning manifested by HTS and the Turks and severely underestimating the dangers that remain. All this must raise the level of concern in Tehran as to how far Putin is acting in good faith.

Putin was not in his best form during his press conference this week.