Propulsions and Retractions.
Stalls and Feints on the Battlefields
The situation in Lyptsi and Vovchansk near Ukraine’s border with Russia in Kharkiv does not appear to be going well for Russia. Russia has been beaten back, somewhat, in Lyptsi and in the northern sector of Vovchansk. There are conflicting reports as to whether Ukrainian counterattacks have been successful. In Vovchansk there are reports of Ukrainian forces repairing bridges (or laying pontoons as replacements for bridges), recently bombed by Russia, across the Volcha, so as to improve the supply of materiel to Ukrainian forces still in the north. The Citadel and industrial area in the northern sector appear still to be under Ukrainian control.
But war is a very uncertain business. Although calculations vary, one plausible assessment suggests there is a rough balance of forces between Ukrainians and Russians in Kharkiv, in terms of numbers of men, but with considerable Russian advantage in terms of artillery and air power and also in the quantity of reserves that Russia has available to pour into Ukraine, either in the Lyptsi-Vovchansk area or further west in Sumy.
New Offensives
While Russian progress may have been interrupted in Kharkiv, there are plenty of signs of (always slow) Russian progress in multiple locations along the combat lines, incuding Chasiv Yar, Avdiivka, Kostyantynivka, Vuhledar, Staramaiorske and Robotyne. In fact there is a new Russian offensive that may be of even greater significance than the offensive in Kharkiv and perhaps Kharkiv has been intended as a feint all along. This new offensive is to establish a very large swathe of territory as Russian in a circle that encompasses Pavlivka, Vodiane, Vuhledar, Kostyantynivka, Solodke, Volodymyrivka and Mykilske.
Western Weapons and First Strikes
In recent days I have spoken on several occasions about the intensification of western and Ukrainian escalation taking the principal forms of attacks on Russian nuclear early warning infrastructure, increasing number of NATO trainers and troops in Ukraine (especially from France), and permissions to Ukraine to use Western weapons in attacks on Russian targets in Russia. This last appears to have generated the most obvious Russian concern with statements by both Putin and Lavrov that permission to Ukraine to fire advanced missiles on to targets in Russian territory would be regarded as an existential threat to Russia. It is easy to see why when we understand the implications of what Moscow-based commentator Mark Sleboda was saying yesterday to the effect that Russia has no way of knowing whether or not such missiles are carrying nuclear warheads. Much the same may be said about F-16s.
A NATO first strike might become more likely in the event that the depletion of NATO weapons (as a result of giving stocks away to Ukraine) and the overall weakness of its armies, led Russia to escalate its territorial ambitions to include the Baltic States and former East European countries. I don’t think this is going to happen, given how slow its progress has been in the Donbass and how much Russia would detest having to take responsibility for Western Ukraine but I am mindful that increasing tensions between countries that both have nukes can dramatically increase the chances of nuclear war starting as a result of accident.
Western Retractions
There are some indications of partial Western reconsideration of this escalatory trajectory. First of all, President Biden has said that this permission (to use Western weapons on Russia) is confined only to the Kharkiv area, where large concentrations of Russian troops north of the border might and actually already have attracted Ukrainian missiles. It is unclear whether this limitation would apply to use of Western weapons that are being used in retaliation for Russian missile strikes that have been fired at Kharkiv from a long distance away. Further, it appears that the US has prohibited the use of ATACMS (which have longer range than most if not all the others currently available, given that Germany has still withheld the supply of Taurus missiles) for firing on targets in Russian territory. In other signs of retraction, Belgium and the Netherlands have said they will not allow use of F-16s for targets on or over Russian territory, and other countries have said they will limit the use of their weapons by Ukraine within the constaints of “international law.”
Why these signs of caution even amidst escalation? Because nobody can really know whether Russia will or will not use nuclear weapons nor, for that matter, whether the US or NATO itself will use such weapons. But there are sufficiently alarming statements by Putin, Lavrov and Medvedev that should lead us to expect that they might, and that possibility in itself should be enough for reasonable, intelligent people not to take the risk. Nor should anyone trust Ukraine, on the basis of its performance in precipice-walking over the past couple of years. One can see that this is indeed an existential matter for Russia. There can be no reasonable doubt that the West, for a very long time, has sought regime-change in Moscow, that the West/NATO has aggressively moved to Russia’s very borders, despite multiple Russian warnings over three decades, has positioned nuclear missile facilities in Poland and in Romania and undertaken aggressive NATO military exercises along Russian borders whose targeted opponent is clearly Russia. Given Western strikes on Russian nuclear early warning capability and the potential use of weapons that might be carrying nuclear warheads towards targets on Russian territory, there are numerous possible occasions when Russia might consider it has no choice other than to launch its own nuclear-headed weapons whether in reprisal against a NATO first strike, or as a first-strike response to a potential nuclear threat.
For the moment, however, neither side is rushing up the escalatory escalator quite that fast. There are suggestions that in reprisal for NATO permissions to Ukraine for the use of Western weapons on Russia, Russia may target and destroy drones flown over the Black Sea by “third parties” to the conflict, including the US’ “global hawk” satellite surveillance system that is crucial for NATO-Ukrainian attacks on Crimea, while Russia is perfecting jamming and similar forms of electronic warfare that might make it more difficult for Ukraine to actually exploit the additional freedom to use Western weapons on Russian facilites.
Other factors that have come into play holding the NATO countries back from going for all-out war include the relative weakness and small scale of most armed forces of NATO; the disapproval of these escalations by Hungary and Slovakia; the outright opposition by Italy to either allowing Ukraine to use its weapons on Russia or to put boots on the ground; by avoidance of the Ukraine issue in the run up to general elections in Great Britain; by increasing dissension in Germany which, in the context of European elections, the question of Ukraine looms menacingly over Germany’s deindustrialization and economic fragility. Italy too is suffering from the impacts of the cessation of supplies from Russia of oil and gas that was originally expected to feed and justify the notion of Italy as being an energy hub for Europe but finds instead that it must pay twice as much for oil and gas (much of it still coming, in a roundabout way, from Gazprom) and is having difficulty in making up supplies from Algeria and other minor locations.
The European propaganda endeavor to paint Zelenskiy as a noble Churchill-like warrior is fraying at the edges as Zelenskiy reveals himself increasingly as a dictator who: refuses to be answerable in the court of popular elections; who has persecuted the Ukrainian orthodox church; suppressed media freedom; has allowed the pressganging of young men to keep up the number of recruits to the army; and as the main reason for why Ukraine has sacrified the lives of over half a million men and many more injured, and several million displaced across Europe, without anything to show for it other than an empty treasury and total dependence on the West. All this without even achieving membership of NATO and even as Zelenskiy irritates his sponsors with a never-ending clamor for more weapons to add to those that Russia has already destroyed and in the absence of any evidence that those weapons ever made any difference.