The Advancing Storm

A Calm Before the Storm

There is an expectation, at least so far as Russian activity in Ukraine is concerned, that today and the next few days will be relatively quiet, on account of the celebration of the Russian Orthodox Easter holiday.

There have been fears that perhaps Ukraine would exploit this situation to launch an attack on the Kerch bridge in Crimea. Even were a such an attempt to be made it is far from a foregone conclusion that it would be successful against Russian air defenses and considering that bridges are relatively hard to hit and to significantly damage. In additon there is awarness in Kiev that a Russian reprisal could be very severe. It might take the form of an attack on the Dnieper bridges although these are useful or could potentially be very useful for Russia, in the event of a Russian drive into western Ukraine, even as they are currently useful for Ukraine to transport supplies to its large forces of troops in eastern Ukraine.

On the Battlefields: The Question of Kharkiv

Russian advances in the battlefields continue to edge forward at relatively high speed. The most significant substantial change in recent days is the growing evidence of Russian strength around Chasiv Yar, and we have had confirmation of places where the Donetsk Kanal runs underground and which Russian forces could easily cross or ford. Russian forces are also taking many settlements all around the Ocheretyne-Avdiivka area. Latest reports suggest that Russian forces have occupied 100% of the settlement of Keramik and 60% of the territory of Arkhanhelske to the north of Ocheretyne, but there are also heavy Ukrainian counter-attacks to the south of Ocheretyne near Soloviove and Novobakhmutivka. Dima, at midday today, expresses significant reservations as to what is really going on in this area.

Either of these two areas, perhaps in conjunction with further Russian advances against and further north of Urozhaine (Russian forces have retaken the southern end of this settlement) and Staramoiorkse and, less likely from Robotyne, together with the much mooted talk of a major Russiasn offensive against Kharkiv, could become principal foci of Russian interest after May 9th (Russian celebration of Victory Day).

Ukrainian sources say that a Russian force of 35,000 is already gathered on the borderlands north of Kharkiv and that these are due to be increased to 70,000 - still too few to take a city of the size of one million. Russian forces are advancing north and south of the settlement of Kostiantynivka and cutting supply routes to Vuhledar. Further north, in advance of pushing further against Ukrainian positions in Krasnohorivka, Russian forces are seeking control over the area that is bordered by Krasnohorivka (where Russia controls the south), Russian-controlled Marinka and Heorhiivka (where Russia controls the eastern part of the settlement).

In Kherson around the Dnieper estuary, Russia is taking early preventative attacks on towns on the Ukrainian side of the Dnieper in anticipation of a Ukrainian attempt to seize more islands in the river and advance on Russian towns to the south of the river. Ukraine is also once again sending boats of soldiers across to the Krynky foothold and staging FPV drone attacks against Russian settlements in the Karsunka-Kosachi Laheri area.

The Macroleon Factor

Amidst continuing evidence of disarray among Ukrainian forces (including another instance of Azov Batallion disobedience), the main threats of potential disruption include the arrival of French forces and the delivery of the first F16s. Macron has encouraged Ukraine to ask for help in the event that Russian forces break through its fortifications (which, in effect, they have done already in many places), almost as though Ukraine was a member of NATO already, which it isn’t.

It seems very likely that upon such a request, Macron (today dubbed Macroleon by Mark Sleboda) will send troops. Odessa or the protection of Odessa has come up in recent discussions as to where French troops might be deployed. Odessa is coming under intense Russian fire at the moment, not least on account of it being a source for the production and dispatch of water drones.

Were a French force to arrive, whether near Odessa or somewhere else, then it seems incontrovertible that such troops would find themselves in harm’s way and that they would take casualties. In this event, Macron would very likely look for help to the USA. It is not at all certain that the Biden Administration would want to become involved, especially were such a plea to come before the election. Aggrandizement of the (false) idea that Russia has become a potential imperial threat to Europe might make it difficult for Biden to refrain from sending significant US forces, to fight alongside NATO forces, in Ukraine.

An outright defeat of Ukraine - with or without NATO boots on the ground - would not be a good pro-Democratic Party look in advance of the election.

Russia’s position would then be a very delicate one. On the one hand, Russia would surely not want to seem to be weak in the face of a direct provocation either from NATO as a whole or from individual NATO countries (it is likely that the sending of a French contingent would be done in conjunction with comparable contingents from Poland and Lithuania, and perhaps Romania, the Czech Republic and Latvia). On the other hand it could be, as I believe Ray McGovern has recently speculated, that Putin really did mean what he said a few weeks ago about preferring a Biden over a Trump administration, given Biden’s greater predictability. If so, Russia could consider pulling its punches until after the election.

Besides, as I noted in a recent post, there are some other reasons why, conceivably, Russia would prefer to continue with its current mode of aggressive attritional warfare. This strategy is more predictable, and its costs are more containable. It reduces the appearance of a Russian intention to go beyond the Dnieper, even assuming it might want to proceed that far. A big arrow offensive could prove very embarrassing to Putin were it to go badly wrong, and the size of Kharkiv, for example, were Russia to attempt to seize it, is such as to make one think that it could go very badly wrong.

I note that Dima of the Military Summary channel is also hinting at this, in the light of all the attention that the idea of a Kharkiv offensive has excited, consideration of the possible pressure that Russia would experience if things did go wrong in Kharkiv, and what would happen if Russia was forced to divert troops from other parts of the main combat lines, leaving itself exposed in areas of weakness such as in Kherson.

So far as the F16s are concerned, the negatives are well rehearsed. These planes and, in particular, the ones that will be donated from Europe, are pretty much well beyond their expiry dates; there are few, in any, suitable airfields for them to take off from in Ukraine; they would, therefore, be taking off from Poland or Romania, which is likely going ro require Russia to strike at airfields in these countries, especially since Russia will not know for sure whether they have been loaded with nuclear warheads. Ukraine has few pilots who have been sufficiently well trained to fly them, and the incentives for NATO airmen to do so are not impressive. Russia has faster air defense and other missiles to fire at them and has faster fighters. There is some uncertainty as to when these planes will actually arrive in Ukraine or become available on Ukraine’s behalf in neighboring countries.

Kharkiv, Really?

We cannot be sure that Russian shelling and bombing of Kharkiv, especially of its energy and air defense facilities, is necessarily indicative of an intended ground operation and is not simply one measure among many to construct a border buffer zone - as Putin announced he would many weeks ago.

So maintenance of Russisa’s current playbook of aggressive attrition, even while advancing, could be less threatening and challenging to Kiev and its western sponsors and less likely to provoke even more dangerous responses than those that they are already resorting to (especially given the imminent arrival of F16s), involving hits on Russian targets and oil refineries. NATO countries already understand that under a Trump administration they would come under greater pressue to foot more of the military bill than they are so far accustomed to. So they too might pull their punches until after the election so as to avoid undertaking big ticket manouvers (e.g. against the Zapporizzhia nuclear power plant) that have dangerously escalatory and other nuclear implications, until Biden is returned to power, as they might hope.

Ukraine Election Meddling

Reviewing the origins of the current phase of tension between NATO and Russia over Ukraine, Aaron Mate has recently noted, in the light of a recent New York Times disclosure, the construction since 2014 of 12 CIA bases in Ukraine, in conjunction with Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency, and he has observed a reference in that article to CIA use of the SBU to come up with talking points in support the Russiagate hoax of 2016.

This was perpetrated, of course (see Boyd-Barrett and Marmura’s 2023 collection of analyses for Routledge, Russiagate Revisited: The Aftermath of a Hoax) by the Democratic Party to distract voters from damaging revelations of DNCC bias against Bernie Sanders. With the assistance of US and UK intelligence agencies the hoax was exucuted prinicipally by commissioning, through the DNC’s legal arm, the discredited Christopher Steele report and its largely unsubstantiated election dirt against Trump, and commissioning CrowdStrike, the tiny private computer security agency whose job it was to investigate supposed evidence (evidence that, ultimately, CrowdStrike was unable to confirm) of Russian hacking of DNCC servers (including by a supposed Russian entity that CrowdStrike itself had baptized as “Fancy Bear.”).

Aaron Mate therefore is drawing attention to Ukrainian involvement in the Russiagate hoax (amplified by the smearing of Trump political consultant Paul Manafort as pro-Russian when he was actually pro-Ukrainian), and in particular the involvement of the SBU, which already had acquired a somewhat sinister reputation and which became far too influential a source of information for Western investigators in efforts to prove that Russia, not Ukraine, was responsible for the downing of flight civilian Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in July 2014 (see my book Western Mainstream Media and the Ukraine Crisis, published by Routledge in 2017). In other words, not a source you would want to depend on for anything important.

Bearing in mind US instigation (with $5 billion from the National Endowment for Democracy) of the coup d’etat against an elected president in Ukraine earlier that year, including the direct intervention of the State Department’s Victoria Nuland in who would replace that president among the coup plotters, and expressions of support for the violent anti-democratic “pro-democracy” protestors from US vice-president Joe Biden and John McCain, and taking into account the appointment of Biden’s son, Hunter, to the Board of Ukrainian energy giant Burisma in 2015, there emerges a case that actual Ukrainian meddling in support of Clinton in the 2016 US election was far more pernicious than the (fictional) meddling of Russia in support of Trump.

Why Did Minsk Fail?

In comments made in a discussion yesterday on the Duran, Aron Mate has asked why it is that Ukraine was opposed to the 2015 Minsk Accords that could so easily have achieved a stable peace for Ukraine, requiring only that Ukraine allow some autonomy to the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk and give up its claim on Crimea. He reasons that the ethno-nationalist leaders of the 2014 coup may not have actually wanted these regions to remain in Ukraine precisely because the regions were significantly pro-Russian and that therefore Kiev would have had to accommodate pro-Russian points of view in the legislature.

Mate also cites evidence of a conversation at the Munich Security Conference, at the time that the Minsk accords were signed, between Victoria Nuland, John McCain, and Mike Pompeo, at which they basically agreed that the US should ignore the Minsk accords and flood Ukraine with weapons. This ran counter to the decision of President Obama, who, having started the intervention in Ukraine, was getting cold feet, resisting sending lethal aid to Ukraine, and supporting Minsk. Obama, says Mate, did not have the fortitude to stand up against his own Cabinet. It is Trump who, having had to endure the scourage of being a potential “Putin agent” as per the Russisagate narrative, had to play at at being especially tough on Russia, to allow lethal weapons to Ukraine and help Ukraine build up forces ready for an invasion of eastern Ukraine.

Palestine

The head of the ICC is warning against Israeli pressure on the Court not to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu, and his top ministers, perhaps indicating that the Court is/was indeed about to do so. An ICC statement condemns attempts to “impede, intimidate, or improperly influence its officials.” In the meantime the ICJ (note that both the ICC and the ICJ are based in The Hague, Netherlands) has turned down a request from Nicaragua that Germany be ordered to immediately cease its supply of weapons to Israel, but still indicates that the ICJ remains concerned about indications of genocide in Gaza. South Africa and Ireland had supported Nicaragua’s case to the ICJ. In the meantime, the country of Colombia has withdrawn its ambassador from Israel, cutting of diplomatic relations. Turkey has brought a halt to all trade with Israel. A recent meeting between President Erdogan of Turkey and President Sisi of Egypt may suggest that both countries are appraising the Gaza crisis with a view to some form of real, actually helpful, intervention from the Arab world (amidst increasing suspicions that the leaders of other members of the so-called Arab world like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the UAE are Islamo-allergic).