We are approaching the end game in Ukraine and it doesn't look like something the West will like especially considering the fund invested in the venture.
Still what can they do? We'll see soon enough but my guess is not much without risking an all out war for which nobody is prepared. At least after 20 months of war we've learned that much.
Authorerd by Yves Smith via NakedCapitalism.com,
Putin and Medvedev recently made statements that took an expansive view of what “Russian lands” in Ukraine amounted to. At least as far as Putin is concerned, what he said at the November 3 meeting with members of the Civic Chamber is, philosophically, not all that different than the sort of historical observations Putin had made before.
Nevertheless,
both Ukrainian Pravada and Alexander Mercouris regarded the Putin
remarks as potentially significant, and Medvedev reiterating them would
seem to confirm that take. And both suggested that Kiev might wind up as
part of Russia.
From Medvedev, who loves trolling Western officials:
Now
admittedly, Ukraine has plenty of reason to be jumpy, Putin was
arguably just ringing the changes on favored themes before a relevant
audience, and Medvedev was putting on his usual tough cop hat. Or
perhaps both Russian leaders are trying to get Ukraine and the West to
understand that Russia will control the end-game and reset their views
as to what that could amount to.
Regardless of whether
these remarks represent a meaningful shift, they serve as a reminder
that Russia is on track to take a maximalist stance in terms of
territorial acquisition. For instance, even Russia-friendly
commentators wondered if Russia would take Odessa. Most now seem to see
that as a given and are adding more sections of Ukraine as potential
acquisitions. But as we flagged from the very outset, Russia could lose
the peace by not coming up with a good solution as to what to do about
Western Ukraine.
So does the renewed talk about Ukraine being an
artificial construct carved out of Russia, and of Ancient Rus? Or is
this just posturing, to make those paying attention less unhappy about
the endgame, to act as if Russia has serious designs on parts of Western
Ukraine so that when Russia integrates less into Russia, that the West
can claim a face saving success?
Ukraine’s Appallingly Poor Prospects
Things are so bad it is hard to know where to begin.
Big
Serge recently posted a fine, detailed account of why it was
vanishingly unlikely that Ukraine would achieve its aims of pushing
Russia back to Ukraine’s 1991 borders. Admittedly, hindsight is 20/20.
At the start of the war, many thought, including many in Russia, that
the shock and awe sanctions would cripple Russia, ideally lead to
Putin’s ouster or at least severely destabilize Russian leadership, and
undermine industrial, particularly military, output. The West also
believed what is now clear was its own nonsense, that Russia had a
poorly armed and led military, when it was was the US and NATO that had
optimized their forces to fight insurgents, and had gotten very good at
building super expensive, fussy weapons systems that didn’t necessarily
perform all that well when tested. Even worse, it still has not been
adequately acknowledged that Russia is ahead in many critical
categories, such as air defense, hypersonic missiles, and signal
jamming.
What is striking about the current state of play
is not simply that Ukraine is losing the war with Russia, and it’s just a
matter of time before Russia dictates terms, but that the Ukraine
government is acting in ways that benefits the Russian military, to the
destruction of what is left of its society and economy.
Militarily,
Ukraine is approaching a catastrophic condition. That does not mean a
collapse is imminent; key variables include whether the Ukraine military
leadership revolts against Zelensky and how hard Russia pushes into
growing Ukraine weakness. Russia may prefer to go slowly (mind you, it
is making a concerted effort to crack the well fortified Avdiivka1), not
just to reduce losses of its troops, but also to more throughly bleed
out Ukraine and give the West time to adjust psychologically to
Ukraine’s prostration.
Another factor that bears repeating is that Russia knows well this is a war against NATO. That
will make the eventual defeat more consequential, even if the US and
its minions come up with a face-saving pretense, like Putin was going
march all the way to Paris (or Poland) and they succeeded in stopping
that. That is one aspect that Big Serge gives short shrift: that this
was a messy coalition war, which meant that for Ukraine to message
success often trumped realistic assessments (how often was Russia just
about to run out of missiles? Or having to raid washing machines for
chips?). So not only were Ukraine’s backers not making enough weaponry
to keep up with Russia’s output (which Russia then kept increasing), it
was not the right equipment. Ukraine first stripped NATO cupboards bare
of old Soviet style gear, which their troops were trained to handle.
They then got a hodge podge of Western materiel, which they were often
not well trained enough to handle proficiently, plus the mix of weaponry
created a logistical nightmare. Scott Ritter argued that so many
different types of equipment put Ukraine in a worse position.
And that’s before getting to poorly (barely) trained forces. Depending on how you are counting, Ukraine is on its third or fourth army. A recent story in Time Magazine serves
as one-stop shopping for the deteriorating state of its forces and its
difficulty in replenishing losses. The average age at the start of the
war (30 to 35, due in part to a demographic dearth of men in their 20s)
is now up to 43. And:
Now recruitment is way down. As
conscription efforts have intensified around the country, stories are
spreading on social media of draft officers pulling men off trains and
buses and sending them to the front. Those with means sometimes bribe
their way out of service, often by paying for a medical exemption. Such
episodes of corruption within the recruitment system became so
widespread by the end of the summer that on Aug. 11 Zelensky fired the
heads of the draft offices in every region of the country.
The
decision was intended to signal his commitment to fighting graft. But
the move backfired, according to the senior military officer, as
recruitment nearly ground to a halt without leadership. The fired
officials also proved difficult to replace, in part because the
reputation of the draft offices had been tainted. “Who wants that job?”
the officer asks. “It’s like putting a sign on your back that says:
corrupt.”
A new CNN article also discusses Ukraine’s manpower problems, but
weirdly tries to spin Ukraine as having headroom by not having yet gone
to full conscription. But it does point out that Ukraine has imposed
martial law and restricts travel
Ukraine’s military was about 15% female as of 2020,
and recent rule changes allowed for conscription of women with medical
and pharmacy training, so recent claims that Ukraine is conscripting
women look largely to be misrepresentations of existing policy. However,
it may still be that Ukraine is using more women in combat roles of
late: Dima of Military Summary reported this week of seeing a video of a
trench with dead women soldiers in it.
Experts have argued that
even with diminishing levels of equipment and shells, that absent a
revolt or surrender by the military, Ukraine could keep up a fight for a
while. The West, after all, is probably capable of sending in materiel
at some level. But the manpower, particularly trained manpower, problem
is only going to get worse. And it’s now acknowledged in the Western
press as pretty bad.
There’s been much less discussion of the
Ukraine economy, which is set to go off a more dramatic cliff than its
combat capability. Western journalists go almost entirely to Kiev, and
then likely only near government buildings and foreign-official venues
(tony restaurants) and so have little feel for day to day life. The
reporters who do venture further afield are going mainly to combat
areas. We need to do a bit more digging and give a fuller report, but it
doesn’t take a lot of effort to work out that the near and long-term
prospects for Ukraine are terrible, and it was staring out as the
poorest and most corrupt country in Europe.
Ukraine is facing a demographic disaster,
as Moon of Alabama and others have chronicled. It already had a dearth
of young adults due to a birth collapse (similar to what Russia
suffered) in the 1990s. It’s no secret that many Ukrainians have fled
for Europe and the majority are not expected to come back. Moreover,
that population is also likely to skew young. Douglas Macgregor had said
that his sources estimate that Ukraine is down from a pre-war
population of 43 million to 19 million in the territories the government
in Kiev controls. And the scuttlebutt is Zelensky, to keep the fight
up, is looking to or has actually started throwing more young people
into the meat grinder, by tightening up on essential employment and
college exemptions.
And keep in mind that Ukraine is also suffering a high level of debilitation among war survivors. The
Wall Street Journal reported months ago that orders for prosthetics
might be as high as 50,000. That was before the famed counteroffensive
got going.
As we pointed out and the Western press has also been
acknowledging, Ukraine has not done a very good job of repairing its
grid after the Russian attacks last fall and winter, to the degree it
may fall over in certain areas under higher winter loads. Some sources
have suggested the repair funds were partly looted. That may be true.
But we’ve also pointed out that Ukraine is using Soviet gear and has
been exhausting stocks of spared among former Warsaw Pact members. No
one is going to set up new factories to do a very large but limited run
of various components for Ukraine’s rebuilding. That means that any of
the areas that have suffered critical damage that can no longer get
replacements from the West will find Russia controls their
reconstruction.
Ukraine tax receipts have collapsed as defense spending has spiked. Ukraine projected a budget deficit of $38 billion in March.
Given optimistic assumptions about its super duper counteroffensive,
one has to think that forecast was similarly optimistic. Set that
against two stopgap spending bills with no Ukraine funding and Europe
saying loudly that it can’t fill the US money gap. I have no idea what
the lag is between allocation approvals and cash actually arriving in
Ukraine official coffers, but one would have to think the US till is
about to be emptied. And Ukraine will crash from its already fallen
level of functioning. In Russia even during its mass privatizations,
loss of services and economic/demographic decline, some critical public
servants kept working for no or little compensation. Putin made a point
of giving teachers their back pay in his early years as President. How
much social cohesion is there in Ukraine, particularly after so many
have already abandoned it?
Also keep in mind Ukraine had a nominal
GDP in 2022 of $160 billion on a nominal basis, nearly $380 billion on a
PPP basis. Those figures are likely exaggerated by including the parts
of Ukraine that voted to join Russia. So even looking at these
results in the most generous way possible, Ukraine is running a deficit
of 10% of GDP, when it already has inflation of 30%.
Big deficits after a sudden reduction of productive capacity is a textbook prescription for hyperinflation.
We’ve
also pointed out the Western reconstruction talk was a bunch of hooey,
since private sector types do infrastructure deals only as exercises in
looting (we’ve posted on how new-build deals go bankrupt). So at best,
this initiative was set to be an exercise in strip mining what was left
of Ukraine. That’s now been indirectly confirmed by the reconstruction
czar Penny Pritzker herself. From Ukrainska Pravda via Yahoo in Imagine there may be no help: conclusions of US Special Representative’s visit to Ukraine:
Penny
Pritzker, US Special Representative for Ukraine’s Recovery, has
suggested that officials imagine how the country could survive
economically without US aid during her first visit to Ukraine….
Ukrainska
Pravda stated that her first visit to Ukraine had left “a rather
disturbing aftertaste in many government offices” here.
One of the
sources, familiar with the course of Pritzker’s meetings, said that she
tried to “lead [them] to the idea” of how Ukraine could survive
economically without American aid.
Quote from the source: “At the
meetings, Penny tried to get people to think, like, let’s imagine that
there is no American aid: what do you need to do over the next year to
make sure that your economy can survive even in this situation? And it
really stressed everyone out.”
More details: Andrii Hunder, the
president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine, told Ukrainska
Pravda that Pritzker’s main question during her visit and meetings with
businesses was “What hinders success and who hinders it?”
The UP
article reads that perhaps the strongest concern among most people who
interacted with Biden’s representative was her call not to wait for
Western assistance, but to seek areas of growth as if it wouldn’t be
coming.
Does the Russian Map Talk Represent New Thinking About the End Game?
John
Mearsheimer has argued that Russia wants a dysfunctional rump Ukraine.
The same way the US, NATO and Ukraine obliged Russia’s war of attrition
game plan by continuing to throw ever weaker forces against Russian
lines, so to have they managed to do even more damage to Ukraine’s
economy that the war already would have done by pumping up the military
and government with support it could not maintain for the long haul, and
then withdrawing it abruptly.
However, even though Russia looks
like it will eventually impose its will on Ukraine, Russia still faces
constraints. The more of Ukraine Russia decides to incorporate, the more
it will have to rebuild. Those efforts would compete with another Putin
initiative, announced early in the SMO, of greatly improving public
amenities in remote areas (I envision manufacturing and mining towns in
the hinterlands). Russia is also already facing labor shortages. To some
degree, it might be able to redeploy men now working in manufacturing,
particularly arms related, to reconstruction. But Russia may face labor
constraints on how quickly it can restore infrastructure and buildings.
Putin and his inner circle likely also recognize the risk and cost of tying to hold areas where Russia is not welcome.
Putin even said words to that effect early on. Putin also seems to
value referendums as validating integrating territory into Russia. These
would argue, all things being equal, for limiting the parts of Ukraine
that are candidates for integration to ones with a solidly ethnic
Russian majority.
To look at an overlapping set of consideration,
ever since the Munich Security Conference, Putin has been trying to get a
hostile Europe and US to acknowledge and respect Russia’s security
needs. So what territorial end state is optimal, or alternatively, the
least bad compromise, particularly given that ex Hungary and Belarus,
Russia would continue to have hostile neighbors to its west?
This is why both Putin and Medvedev suggesting Kiev might be part of the equation would seem to be a significant shift. There
are lots of maps of electoral results that Western pundits have used as
proxies for ethnic Russian versus ethnic Ukrainian representation. This one from the Washington Pos is indicative. You can see Kiev is most assuredly in a European-leaning part of the country, as if that were in doubt:
But
in Putin’s November 3 speech, he described long form as to how Russia
has claims on “Ancient Rus” and that would seem to include Kiev2:
Contrast this with Medvedev’s not-exactly-a-joke earlier proposal:
Admittedly, Putin has said repeatedly, such as in his 2021 article, On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, that
Russians and Ukrainians are one people and the recent divisions were
engineered to facilitate control. But it’s going to be hard to put the
discord genie back in the bottle.
One guess is that Russia has
decided it eventually has to take, or ideally, find some other way to
subdue Kiev as the administrative center of Ukraine. But what does it do
then? Even if Russia is able to create a puppet state, how does it
exercise enough control without it becoming a governance and financial
albatross? Remember, Kiev is a physically sprawling city of 3 million,
straddling the Dnieper. It would be hard to secure it against the will
of its inhabitants….unless, say, even more could be encouraged to
decamp.
But it seems any other way, with rump Ukraine entering
into some sort of victor’s peace with Russia, is ripe for the West
trying to undo that. Perhaps (as we and John Helmer have suggested)
Russia creates a particularly impoverished and very low population
buffer zone (one way is by de-electrifying it) as a DMZ of sorts.
Again,
at a minimum Russia’s leadership recognizes it has ever more degrees of
freedom in terms of what Ukraine’s end state might be. And I
may not be imaginative enough. But I don’t see how things have gotten
much better regarding the potentially festering problem of western
Ukraine. Perhaps there have been better remedies bandied about by
Russian pundits and pols that have not gotten coverage here. Any reader
intel or informed speculation very much welcomed.
* * *
1 Even
so, some regular military commentators take note of the fact that
Russia has a potential cauldron here but does not seem to be working
hard to close it. They speculate that Russia is leaving it open to allow
Ukraine to feed yet more men and material into this fire, just as they
did in Bakhmut. As Big Serge points out:
We
need to think about that initial Russian assault in the context of the
Avdiivka battlespace. Avdiivka is rather unique in that the entire city
and the railway running towards it sit upon an elevated ridge. With the
city now enveloped on three sides, remaining Ukrainian logistical lines
run along the floor of a wetland basin to the west of the city – the
only corridor that remains open. Russia now has a position on the
dominating heights that directly overlook the basin, and are in the
process of expanding their position along the ridge. In fact, contrary
to the claim that the Russian assault collapsed with heavy casualties,
the Russians continue to expand their zone of control to the west of the
railway, have already breached the outskirts of Stepove, and are
pushing into the fortified trench network in southeastern Avdiivka
proper.
Now, at this point it’s probably rational to want
to compare the situation to Bakhmut, but the AFU forces in Avdiivka are
actually in a much more dangerous position. Much was made of so-called
“fire control” during the battle for Bakhmut, with some insinuating that
Russia could isolate the city simply by firing artillery at the supply
arteries. Needless to say, this didn’t quite pan out. Ukraine lost
plenty of vehicles on the road in and out of Bakhmut, but the corridor
remained open – if dangerous – until the very end. In Avdiivka, however,
Russia will have direct ATGM line of sight (rather than spotty
artillery overwatch) over the supply corridor on the floor of the basin.
This is a much more dangerous situation for the AFU, both because
Avdiivka has the unusual feature of a single dominating ridge on the
spine of the battlespace, and because the dimensions are smaller – the
entire Ukrainian supply corridor here runs along a handful of roads in a
4 kilometer gap.
2 From Putin’s remarks at the November 3 meeting:
First
of all, we all know very well – these are the facts of history – that
all, as you said, the South Russian lands were given to the Soviet
Ukraine during the formation of the Soviet Union.
There
was no Ukraine as part of the empire, there were regions, and it came in
the 16th century, Ukraine, consisted of three regions: Kiev and the
Kiev region, Zhitomir, Chernigov – that’s all. It came from the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, from Poland voluntarily. We have a
letter in our archives – I have already mentioned it – we, the Russian
Orthodox people, appeal to Moscow, to the Tsar, and so on. In an attempt
to defend our rights, we addressed the same letter to Warsaw: we, the
Russian Orthodox people, ask to preserve this and that, demand, and so
on.
Then what happened happened. They started to form the
Soviet Union and created a huge Ukraine, and primarily and to a large
extent at the expense of the South Russian lands – all the Black Sea
region and so on, although all these cities, as we know, were founded by
Catherine the Great after a series of wars with the Ottoman Empire.
Ok,
so it happened, modern Russia came to terms with it after the collapse
of the Soviet Union. But when they started to exterminate everything
Russian there – that is, of course, extreme. And in the end they
declared that Russians are not an indigenous nation in these lands – it
is a complete outrage, you know? And at the same time, they also started
exterminating Russians in Donbas to the applause of the West.
As
it turned out that, although they signed the so-called Minsk agreements
for a peaceful settlement with us, they were not going to honour them,
as it turned out later, and moreover, they publicly refused to honour
them at all. And they also started dragging this entire territory into
NATO – brazenly, without heeding any of our protests, without paying
attention to our position, as if we did not exist at all. This is what
lies at the centre of the conflict that is taking place today. This is
the cause of this conflict.
