Act of Desperation – Russian Attacks on Ukraine Infrastructure (The Russian Invasion of Ukraine #253)

One way of measuring the desperation of the Kremlin is by the ferocity of the war against Ukrainian civilians. Vladimir Putin and his handpicked commander of Russian military forces, Sergei Surovkin – known as General Armageddon – have hit on what they believe will be a successful strategy, destroy Ukraine’s critical infrastructure. Leave millions of Ukrainians without heat, water and electricity in the dead of winter and they will scream for mercy. In turn, this will force their leaders to the negotiating table. And if that does not work, it might still force another wave of Ukrainian refugees on the rest of Europe. Ukraine’s allies might then then force the Ukrainian leadership to negotiate a ceasefire or better yet, an uneasy peace that locks in Russia’s territorial gains in the four Ukrainian provinces it absurdly annexed.

Smoking ruins – Aftermath of Russian missile strike on Ukrainian infrastructure

Striking Back – Attacking the Innocent
The volume and vileness of the latest Russian missile strikes illustrate a larger point. It is no coincidence that their ultimate targets are civilians rather than soldiers. That is because the Russian military realizes that they cannot defeat the Ukrainian Army. This is a simple and provocative point that the Kremlin makes by focusing their newest strategy not against Ukrainian forces which threaten to destroy their own, but against innocents. No matter what Russian forces have tried, thermobaric bombs, massive artillery bombardments, human wave attacks, the result has been the same, Russian forces in retreat. The Russians have lost 55% of the territory they once occupied in Ukraine. Their forces are stretched thin across the frontlines. Raw conscripts feel many of the gaps created in their lines by the loss of over 80,000 soldiers killed and counting. What does it say about the current state of the Russian military that they target the defenseless, rather than the defenders.

The interesting thing is that the Russian missiles strikes show little sign of eroding the Ukrainian population’s will to resist. If anything, it seems to be reinforcing resistance. Meanwhile, the Kremlin has resorted to conscripting whomever they can as cannon fodder in a desperate bid to patch up their frontlines. The chance of the Russian Army suffering a decisive defeat. not just in separate battles or campaigns, but in the entire war is greater than ever. Thus, Putin has ordered Surovkin to use extreme measures. The upshot is a no holds barred attack on Ukrainian civilians. The goal is to make them feel pain and suffering. Cold, thirst, lack of light, these uncomfortable conditions are supposed to break the will of the Ukrainian people. If they give in, even worse will come. The campaign is relentless. The Russians have launched massive attacks multiple times over the past few weeks and will continue to do so until they run out of missiles. Thus far, this has been the most successful tactic the Russians have employed during the war.

The hits keep on coming – Smoke rises from Russian missile strike on Ukraine

Futile Attempts – Failure to Execute
Only time will tell if the missile attacks are successful in weakening Ukrainian resolve. If they is not, Putin will be searching for yet another tactic in what has been up to this point, one futile attempt after another to achieve something that can be called a victory. Most likely, the next idea will be a long-rumored mass mobilization. The Kremlin continues to come up with bad ideas, whose execution is even worse. Putin and those whose livelihoods are reliant upon his regime, must be extremely concerned for their future. With each passing month, the likelihood of instability inside Russia increases. Putin wanted to cause chaos and calamity to keep Ukraine weak and from turning to the western world. Oddly, that is what his mismanagement of the war has done to Russia. In his twenty-two years in power, Putin’s Russia has never looked so weak. It is hard to see how he can extricate his regime from Ukraine without causing internal upheaval.  

The Kremlin is running low on ammo, and not just the kind that goes in guns. Putin is not yet down to his proverbial last bullet, but he has emptied several chambers over the past nine months. How many more botched miliary operations can the Kremlin mismanage before the sheer number of failures finally backfires? One of the most ironic aspects of Putin’s prosecution of the war is that everything he tries ends up hurting Russia as much or more than it does Ukraine. For instance, the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine made Russia’s closest neighbors much more wary of the Kremlin. They are now likelier to increase military spending to protect themselves. Holding Europe hostage to Russian oil and gas has now led Europeans, particularly the Germans, to diversify energy supplies away from Russia. At the same time, Russia has lost pricing leverage over the oil and gas they sell to China and India. War crimes have ruined Russia’s reputation in much of the civilized world, consequentially their prestige on the international stage has taken a terrible blow. Russia closest allies now are Iran, North Korea, and Syria. Ukraine’s are the United States, the European Union and Great Britain. Russia is now much more isolated and poorer than it has been at since Stalinist times, but at least the Soviet Union had victory in World War II to fall back on. The Kremlin has nothing to fall back on except its battered reputation.

In the dark – Kyiv without electricity

Firing Away – Sources of Frustration
If all the above was not bad enough, Ukrainians were supposed to be the ones who would be plead by now for negotiations. The opposite has occurred. The Russians are now the ones doing the pleading, not by words, but through actions. Hence the missile strikes on civilian infrastructure. Anything to get Ukraine into negotiations. Putin is trying to signal that Russia is far from done in the war. A more realistic assessment would be that Putin is signaling that he is far from done with the war. It is debatable whether Russians are done with the war, if they were ever really for it to begin with. Desperation and frustration are not viable strategies for winning a war against a well-trained and highly motivated opponent. That has not stopped the Kremlin from trying. The missile barrages will continue, but so will the failures to break the will of Ukrainians.

Click here for: Hard Target – Vladimir Putin’s Personal & Professional Security (The Russian Invasion of Ukraine #254)

Massive Retaliation – Putin, Ukraine & An Unwinnable War (The Russian Invasion of Ukraine #55)

For years I spent part of each day thinking about nuclear war. I marveled at how humanity managed to escape from the clutches of Armageddon during the latter half of the 20^th century. My favorite anecdotes were nuclear close calls. Times famous, infamous, and anonymous when nuclear war was close at hand. Some of these such as the Cuban Missile Crisis are well documented, others such as broken arrow incidents where nuclear bombs were lost or near accidental missile launches are lost in a haze of history. These promised maximum drama and a series of horrific what ifs. Only a sadistic sort of armchair warrior spends their time conjuring counterfactuals from such stories. In retrospect, these nightmares were relatively easy for me to disregard because everything had turned out fine. At least that was what I wanted to believe.

An unwinnable war – Destroyed Russian tank in Ukraine

Limited Options – The Point Of Attack
My interest in nuclear war led me down many rabbit holes, or should I say silos, as I explored the extremely dark netherworlds of nuclear strategy. It was hard to find a great deal about the topic because much of the material was and still is classified. Every now and then, I would stumble across a nugget of information that refused to go away. The kind of detail that can rattle the nerves of even those with the steeliest dispositions.  One of the most chilling and illuminating passages I stumbled across was in an otherwise rather listless read. I cannot recall the books title, but I remember scouring the text while looking for a memorable anecdote. That was when I came across a short passage, less than the length of a paragraph, that detonated in my mind. It stated that in a nuclear exchange between the United States and Soviet Union, the Americans would be much more likely to escalate the situation to a full-scale nuclear war.

The reason was that the United States had never experienced such widespread destruction in its history, whereas the Soviets had experienced wholesale destruction of cities such as Minsk and Kyiv during World War II. The public outcry in America would be deafening if a city was destroyed by a nuclear strike. Conversely, the Soviets might stomach more destruction because they had seen it all before. The logic made sense. It also spoke volumes about the idea of acceptable risk for each side. I inferred from this that the Soviets saw a nuclear war as survivable, the Americans did not. I cannot help but think of this anecdote when I read articles about whether Vladimir Putin might resort to using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. It is well known in western circles that Russian military doctrine views nuclear weapons as both tactical and strategic. It is the former which gives western leaders nightmares.

Looking towards a bleak future – Vladimir Putin at a rally in Moscow

Seeds of Destructions – Casualties & Collateral Damage
The Russian military has large quantities of low yield nuclear bombs that can be used on the battlefield. This falls within the realm of Vladimir Putin’s favorite strategy, escalate to de-escalate. For example, let us say the Russian Army starts to get pushed out of the Donbas, Putin could direct the detonation of a nuclear weapon. This would effectively freeze the conflict in place owing to one or all the following: thousands of casualties, radioactive contamination and/or fear that another nuclear detonation might be forthcoming. If the Russians are anything like the Soviets, then they would be willing to sacrifice a great deal by using a nuclear weapon.

Keep in mind that Vladimir Putin’s most formative experiences came from his upbringing, education, and professional career in the Soviet Union. He is steeped in the principles of tyranny. True tyrants not only terrorize their foreign enemies, but even more so their own population. Josef Stalin killed many more Soviet citizens than he did foreigners. Lenin killed many more Russians than foreigners. The point is that Putin has almost as little regard for his fellow Russians as he does Ukrainians. If a nuclear detonation by Russia in Ukraine led to even more onerous sanctions or NATO responding in kind with a nuke of their own that devastated Russian troops, Putin might just take it in stride. After all, this is a man whose decision to invade has led to the deaths of 21,000 Russian soldiers and enormous numbers of casualties. In the overall scheme of Putin’s increasing irrationality, nuclear conflict is not that extreme. Putin has shown that if he cannot achieve his goals, then he resorts to acts of massive destruction. Casualties and collateral damage are givens, nuclear weapons fit well within his mindset.

At a certain point, one begins to wonder if Putin is going to destroy Russia while trying to destroy Ukraine. Over the past two months, he has made Russia weaker than it has been since the 1990’s. In other words, everything Putin did to restore Russia to prominence over the last two decades, he has managed to destroy in just two months. Much of the destruction is obvious, but bears repeating. The economy is in free fall, Russian prestige internationally has cratered, the military is rife with corruption and incapable of carrying out operations without getting thousands of their soldiers killed for minimal gains at best. Nothing is working the way it should. Then again, considering that Russian institutions have been hollowed out by corruption and the silencing of opposition voices, maybe these failures should be expected. Where does Russia go from here? From one failure to the next? The appeal of using a nuclear weapon is that it might stop the freefall. Either that or exacerbate it.

Getting fired up – Russian nuclear missile launch

Power Outage – Decisions & Consequences
Vladimir Putin now finds himself in a situation where he has no good options. The use of a tactical nuclear weapon would cause more damage to Russia than its enemies. The consequences would be catastrophic for Putin and by extension, Russia. It would lose what little status it has left. NATO would undertake a massive rearmament. Sanctions would be tightened to the limit, strangling an already struggling Russian economy. Russian relations with China would suffer grave damage since the Chinese aim for maximum stability and Putin is the very opposite of that. In addition, Putin would be put under tremendous pressure from Russian elites who would finally realize the danger he presents. Staying in power would be extremely difficult. For all these reasons, Putin will probably not turn to the nuclear option. Then again, this is the same man who decided to invade Ukraine and look how that turned out.

Click here for: From Cradle to Grave – The Two Eras of Putinism (The Russian Invasion of Ukraine #56)