Roughing Up Türkiye (Turkey) has Consequences
This is a summary of today’s relatively brief broadcast from Athens by Alexander Mercouris (Mercouris 08.08.2022), with some added color from me.
Donetsk and Kherson
Intensification of fighting, with the major fighting remaining in Donbass, with reports that the Russians have broken further through the Seversk-Bakhmut Ukrainian defense line in the area opposite Donetsk City, particularly in Solidar, a suburb of Bakhmut, following the recent capture of Peskiy.
This is an area of Soviet-era industrial factories, many of which have been converted by the Ukrainian army into defense positions. These factories are built to enormous engineering specifications, and can withstand heavy artillery attacks, and are sometimes the last places in a city to fall (as in Mariupol), but sometimes Russians attack them first. The capture of these industrial premises is at least as important as capture of their corresponding towns.
Zelenskiy had previously assured Ukraine that Lysychansk (in Lugansk) would be the last Ukrainian town to fall, so if Bakhmut (pop. around 70,000) falls and its neighbors Sloviansk and Kramatorsk fall likewise, then the credibility of the Kiev government will be severely damaged. Ukrainians are pulling back from Seversk, which they thought that Russia had intended to take, now that they realize that it is a side show, and all 20,000 of them may now be headed down to Bakhmut. There are reports that Ukraine is trying to rush weapons and artillery back to the Donbass after diverting them for the purposes of a counteroffensive (that never occurred) in Kherson region.
In Kherson there was a Russian offensive on SundaY towards Mykolayiv (a former center for naval shipping construction, now largely idle), and north of the Inguletz river, seeking to take a village that separates Russian lines from Mykolayiv. As for a Ukrainian counteroffensive, several western sources are now expressing pessimism that this will ever happen, on the grounds that Ukraine is finding it impossible to assemble sufficient tank formations in any particular places and is critically short of ammunition.
British Ministry of Defense briefings which had been providing very pro-Ukraine accounts of the battlefield, have now stopped providing battlefield reports. In one of the most recent, the UK claimed Russia was laying antipersonnel mines in Donetsk, including, bizarrely, Donetsk City (controlled by Russia) but the Russians claim that it is the Ukrainians who have been laying these. The British do not allow for the possibility that there is a Russian version of events - as shown in coverage of who is actually shelling the Zaporizhzhia power station. This is firmly under Russian control so the only people who would have any conceivable motive to shell it would be the Ukrainian army!
Extraordinary the lengths some people will go to avoid the obvious.
When the Russians have broken the Donetsk battle lines they can advance westwards.
The Sochi Summit
Beyond the battlefields there is the summit meeting between Erdogan and Putin in Sochi. The Financial Times reports western alarm about deepening trade and energy ties between Turkiye and Russia, raising the possibility of punitive retaliation against NATO-member Turkiye if it helped Russia evade sanctions.
One EU spokesman said the EU was monitoring events closely. Another suggested that EU companies could pull out of Turkiye! Which could of course be damaging to Turkiye’s $800 billion economy. But such actions, another noted, could be challenging although some EU members could take actions unilaterally.
Given that Turkiye is at least nominally a NATO country and EU ally, these events are extraordinary and would inaugurate a new phase of sanctions warfare that would create considerable worldwide turbulence. Such measures would add to the historic insensitivity that the west has exhibited towards Turkey, ignoring for example, Turkey’s own preference of name -Turkiye, not Turkey.
No part of the Sochi agreement seeks to undermine western sanctions in any way. If Turkiye wants to send furniture to Russia, for example - the kind of product that European firms have decided not to provide to Russia - well, the sanctions policy does not specify furniture, food, or any such commodities. It is simply that European countries have been strong-armed to conform to a general economic war which is probably doing them more harm than it does Russia.
It now seems thinkable that Turkiye will leave NATO. and quite a few people in Europe would be happy to see that. From a military point of view, however, this would be a far greater loss to NATO than the additions of Sweden and Finland is a gain. Turkiye, through the Dardanelles, holds the key to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea and is a much larger country than the Scandinavian. Russia might now have an incentive to build up its fleet in the Black Sea, which is currently one of its smallest (bigger ones are the Northern Fleet based in the northwest Arctic, and the Pacific fleet in Vladivostok). If Turkiye comes out of NATO, then the West will have much more problematic access to the Black Sea. With Russia having an airbase in Tartus in Syria, its position in the oil and gas rich eastern Mediterranean will become considerably more influential, with interesting implications for relations between Russia, Syria, Libya and Turkey on the one hand, and Greece and its allies on the other.
To threaten Turkiye is an extraordinary folly (and probably wiser counsels will prevail, at least for a while), one that is well in tune with the general madness of the US/NATO/EU penchant for causing fights (as in Taiwan) everywhere and losing all of them (as in Afghanistan, Ukraine). The Washington Post has declared that the US can, after all, take on Russia and China at the same time (and presumably Iran, North Korea and many others). Thanks Jeff Bezos! A certain Austrian gentleman (name begins with H) had much the same approach: he never finished a war before starting another one.