Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Tag: Ukraine War Page 2 of 6

Ukraine Has Lost

By

On November 3, 2023

Comments

It’s all over but the shooting, as the saying goes.

Avdiivka is being encircled in record time. The US is transferring its attention to Israel and Palestine. The Russians now have the largest armaments industry in the world for the stuff that matters, and North Korea and Iran are supplying them massively (though Iran may be about to be distracted.)

Back in March 2022 Ukraine could have negotiated peace terms. My guess is that the next negotiations will be surrender terms.

It was always clear, and I have said so consistently from the start, that Russia was going to win. Ukraine cannot win a war of attrition with Russia, especially when Russia has air superiority and far more artillery and artillery shells.

The West has been unable to ramp up weapon production, mainly due to the arms industry being a very small oligopoly who are interested in earning more per unit and maintaining bottlenecks.

Last year I read in an article that Medvedev, I recall, explained to Russian arms company execs, in excruciating detail, exactly what the Soviets did to plant managers who didn’t meet quotas in WWII. Since Putin has a record of dealing harshly with capitalists who cross him, this was taken seriously. The West isn’t really taking the war seriously, except maybe Poland and the Baltic republics, and Poland has essentially no arms industry of its own.

U.S. News now ranks Russia as the most powerful military in the world. I suspect they’re overstating the case, but Russia is certainly number two or three. My suspicion is that, as in the Cold War where USSR military strength was constantly overstated, this has to do with wanting more money for the military budget.

The sooner Ukraine negotiates, the better deal they’re going to get. Fortunately for them, Russia would be insane to take non-Russian majority areas anyway. The real risk is the coastline, while it isn’t all majority Russia, the urge to make Ukraine into a landlocked country will be immense. And certainly Russia wants Odessa.

In a larger sense the loss of Russia to Chinese alliance is the loss of any chance of defeating China. The biggest geopolitical blunder of the early 21st century, and the end of the oil and gas deals with Russia is the end of German/European energy intensive industry, which is a LOT of it.

Oh well.

Donors and subscribers make it possible for me to write, so if you value my writing, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE

 

The Lost Chance For Peace In Ukraine & What It Will Cost

By

On October 25, 2023

Comments

The great devastation of World War I for the combatants was a lost generation. A massive chunk of the fighting age men died. The established figure for France is somewhere around 1.5 million (the official figure is 1.3 million, but it is generally agreed that’s too low.)

Let’s take a look at what that meant. First the population pyramid in 1914.

Next, the population pyramid in 1920 (Both from Wikipedia.)

Ouch.

Similar charts for France before and after the Napoleonic wars would be even worse. Or Russia before and after WWII.

Anyway, at the beginning of the war and even before, I called for peace on the Austrian model. Well, it turns out that almost happened.

Gerhard Shroeder, the former chancellor of Germany, confirms.

At the peace negotiations in Istanbul in March 2022 with Rustem Umerov, the Ukrainians did not agree on peace because they were not allowed to. For everything they discussed, they first had to ask the Americans. I had two talks with Umerov, then a one-on-one meeting with Putin, and then with Putin’s envoy. Umerov opened the conversation with greetings from Zelensky. As a compromise for Ukraine’s security guarantees, the Austrian model or the 5+1 model was proposed. Umerow thought that was a good thing. He also showed willingness on the other points. He also said that Ukraine does not want NATO membership. He also said that Ukraine wants to reintroduce Russian in the Donbass. But in the end, nothing happened. My impression was that nothing could happen, because everything else was decided in Washington. That was fatal. Because the result will now be that Russia will be tied more closely to China, which the West should not want.

And the Europeans? They have failed. There would have been a window in March 2022. The Ukrainians were ready to talk about Crimea. This was even confirmed by the Bild newspaper at the time.

No NATO, Austrian style peace, they give up their claims on Crimea.

Instead what has happened is the loss of a generation of Ukrainian men. I suspect the overall population will turn out to be even worse than the French in WWI, especially since 6.2 million fled Ukraine out of a population of 43.79 million before the war. That’s about 14%. I’m guessing most of them won’t want to return, though some will be forced to by their host countries.

Ukraine will take generations to recover from this war. Eighty years from now it and climate change will be the major factors.

Ukraine is going to wind up without Crimea, Donbass, Luhansk, the Crimean land bridge and possibly a chunk more. It could even lose its entire coast.

The war is being determined on the battlefield. Russia is now, as best I can tell, actually taking ground faster than before. In the battle for Avdiivka the Russians have taken the local hill with the commanding view over the entire region, allowing them to interdict reinforcements and hit anything they want.

They did this quickly.

Ukraine is losing, the speed of its loss will increase, and they will wind up with less population and land than if they had just made peace two months into the war.

Donors and subscribers make it possible for me to write, so if you value my writing, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE

British Intelligence Says Russian Casualties Up 90% + Palestine Update

By

On October 23, 2023

Comments

I love this sort of thing.

Russian offensive military campaigns in eastern Ukraine have been partly behind a 90% increase in Russian casualties recorded by Ukraine, according to an intelligence update from the UK Ministry of Defence.

Russia has been carrying out offensive operations in the area of Avdiivka, a small city just to the north of Donetsk.

We’ll note first that UK intelligence has been just a wee bit biased. So if they say 90%, well, take it with a tablespoon of salt.

But let’s assume this is true. What that means is that on shifting to offense from defense, while attacking one of the most heavily fortified areas in Ukraine, Russian casualties have slightly less than doubled.

Which is dog bites man. It’s what you’d expect.

The question is advancement. Maps are quite different from different sources and so are casualty lists but it’s clear that this is slow work.

The bottom line is that Avdiivka is more heavily fortified than Bakhmut. Russia isn’t going to take it easily or quickly unless there is a Ukrainian collapse. Understand clearly that the US and NATO are running out of arms to send to Ukraine, and that artillery shells and missiles intended for Ukraine are now being sent to Israel.

The Palestinian/Israeli war is turning out to be a big plus for Russia and if the war expands, especially if the US becomes more directly involved, Ukraine may find itself out of equipment and ammunition. America is particularly like to go to war if Iran declares.

Without equipment, even the best fortifications won’t stand.

Meanwhile, in Palestine, the 17 trucks of relief were not, in the end, let in. Most Palestinians are down to about a liter of water a day, and not clean water either. Food is running out. The Israeli army has still not invaded Gaza. I would guess they are waiting for deprivation to do its work, and reluctant to allow any aid in because some of it would be used by Hamas fighters.

Israeli morale appears to be shaky, and they are very wary of invading a built up urban area with 40K entrenched fighters. Since they don’t feel they can win that battle as it stands (at least without shattering casualties) they are engaging in siege warfare. Unfortunately, there are 2 million civilians.

All hospitals in Gaza have been told they must evacuate, and are refusing. Anaesthetics are almost entirely out, so operations are being carried out without anaesthesia. Vinegar is being used as a disinfectant in some cases.

To call this a humanitarian disaster is to understate the case, but at least the Israelis have managed to make Russia look civilized.

I would expect massive breakouts of disease given the water and sanitation issues, especially if this goes on for weeks to months, as seems likely.

The Israeli end game appears to be genocide or full ethnic cleansing. We’ll see if they stick it out and if other forces allow it. Even US friendly states like Qatar and Jordan are becoming restive: Jordan’s King straight up refused to meet with Biden, which is amazing.

At least one Iraqi militia is moving to the border with Israel, and I expect many are. Hezbollah is being held back, I suspect, by a reluctance to have Lebanon subject to full bombing again, but have forced Israel to create a five mile DMZ on their border and to evacuate settlers.

I still think an OPEC embargo would be the simplest way to force an end to this, but if a military solution is desired, I’m sure Hezbollah and other potential antagonists want a simultaneous declaration of war.

The joker remains Israel’s nuclear weapons, with threats to glass Iran, and so on. The simplest solution would be to get a nuclear umbrella from Pakistan or Russia, but even that might not work if Israel thinks it is about to lose. To avoid that, a reciprocal threat would have to be made: a promise to not kill Israeli civilians unless nukes are used. Ugly, but Israel is, at least, acting like a mad dog.

This seems likely to drag out for quite some time, which is very bad for the civilians in Gaza.

If you ever wondered what you would do if a genocide was likely or occurring, you now know.

Donors and subscribers make it possible for me to write, so if you value my writing, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE

Palestine and Ukraine Updated Commentary

By

On October 17, 2023

Comments

In the Ukraine, Russia is advancing, and while it’s slow, it’s steady and a lot better than Ukraine did in its complete flop of a counter-offensive. Weapons and aid from America are now flowing to Palestine, and most Western countries are reluctant to send more arms and munitions, not least because the shelves are almost bare and production has not been significantly ramped up.

Russia, on the other hand, has vastly increased its ability to produce key munitions, and is importing from North Korea and Iran (though Iran may soon become more reluctant.) The Russians have more artillery, more missiles and more drones, and plenty of artillery shells. Ukraine is so desperate for manpower it is trying to force Ukrainian who fled to other countries to return so they can be conscripted, and it has expanded conscription among women.

The immediate front is highly fortified, and Russian movement into it is slow, though not as slow as Ukraine’s was. Mud is also an issue, but it remains entirely poss that Russia will break thru at some point in the next few months.

Militarily, it would be very much in Russia’s interest if the Israel/Palestine war was to expand, and if the US was to become involved

As for Gaza and Palestine, the Israeli Army keeps coming up with excuses not to invade Gaza. First it was “there are clouds”, now it is “we won’t invade while Biden is in Israel.” Hamas still has at least 40K troops, and Gaza is excellent defensive ground, plus if Hezbollah wants to open a second front, it’s logical for them to wait till Israeli troops are engaged in Gaza.

The US may have indicated (I have some doubts) that if Hezbollah attacks Israel, it will attack Hezbollah. I’m not sure how well this will work out for the US: even Jordan might no longer be willing to base their aircraft, Iraq bases will come under attack immediately, and I suspect Turkey will forbid sorties to fly from there. That means reliance on aircraft carriers, and Hezbollah has anti-ship missiles, with Iran having a lot more.

Part of what is driving Israel to delay the invasion of Gaza (or rethink it entirely) is a desire to make sure that if regional war occurs, the US is actually part of the war. Israel alone against Hezbollah/Syria/Iran/Hamas, is in serious danger of losing.

Water has supposedly been turned back on in Gaza, but it makes little difference, as there isn’t enough power to run pumps and deslanization, and much of that infrastructure was bombed day one by the Israelis.

Leaving aside direct deaths from lack of water, or drinking untreated water and sea-water, it would be surprising if there wasn’t a cholera epidemic soon.

Even leaving aside a ground incursion, actual genocide can occur if the water, food and power situation is not resolved soon.

Negotiations are ongoing to get humanitarian aid in with some commitments made so there’s reason for mild optimism.

Likewise there are negotiations to allow refugees out to Egypt, though Egypt definitely doesn’t want them and it’s going to take some massive bribes to get them to accept anything more than token numbers, if they will at all. (Egypt is in a debt crisis right now, if I were them I’d hold out for actual debt forgiveness, not another crap IMF deal.) Remember that Hamas is ideologically aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, whom the Egyptian military couped, and violently suppresses in Egypt, where they are the natural ruling party.

It is also true that allowing massive numbers of refugees into Egypt gives Israel the “win”, allowing them to ethnically cleanse another group of Palestinians

Gaza hospitals have been repeatedly hit, and there are reports Gaza is now out of painkillers among many other medicines and medical supplies. Given how bombing tends to produce burn victims, this is especially horrific.

There is still serious danger of escalation of the Israeli/Palestinian war, and if it escalates it could escalate very quickly and widely. If the US starts hitting Iran, well remember that Iran is a serious Russian and Chinese ally. Understand also that the “street” in most Muslim countries is super-majority pro-Palestine.

Frankly, if I were them and could co-ordinate it, I’d just all declare war and finish the problem once and for all. Israeli unconditional surrender, and the creation of a new Palestinian state with equal rights for all, no matter their religion or ethnicity. Then de-Zionize. In other words, give them the Germany/Japan post-WWII treatment. As long as Israel exists as a religious ethnic apartheid state, it will remain a source of massive instability, and remain the possible flare up point for regional or even world war.

We’ll continue to keep an eye on Palestine going forward, but I’ll see if I can weave in articles on other topics.

Donors and subscribers make it possible for me to write, so if you value my writing, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE

The Pointlessness Of Continuing The Ukraine War (And Its Future)

By

On October 3, 2023

Comments

So, this map tells you about half of what you need to know about the war in Ukraine this year:

For this, some hundreds of thousand of soldiers and civilians have been killed, wounded, raped, tortured or made into refugees.

From fairly early I’ve been saying that Ukraine should be settled by peace negotiations.

This is why.

This is WWI bullshit. Ukraine is gaining nothing, and Russia is gaining little (they’ve significantly improved their alliances and their ability to produce war goods.)

Ukraine is under extreme stress. Western countries are becoming less willing and able to support it, they’ve engaged in multiple waves of conscription and are at the point of trying to force men who fled Ukraine to come back, sign up, and go into the trenches.

There’s a fairly strong argument that France never recovered from the manpower losses of the Napoleonic war and WWI.

Now, as for the future, these sorts of wars end when one side can’t keep it up any more, and when it can’t the war ends fast or large gains are made. The country most likely to not be able to keep it up is Ukraine, it has far fewer men and resources than Russia, and those allies providing armaments are losing the will or ability to keep doing so, while Russia’s allies (who provide mostly parts, other than Iran and North Korea, who could care less about sanctions) find Russia’s needs easily supportable.

It’s hard to say “when” this will happen, but it could even occur during the next Russian offensive, it’s more than possible.

Ukraine should have negotiated for peace back in April of 2022. They had almost done so, according to many sources, when Boris Johnson visited and suddenly they changed their mind.

What have they gained by continuing to fight? Nothing but a lot of dead people they can’t replace and a pile of destruction.

As for the West, we are clearly “fighting to the last Ukrainian” and that’s despicable.

End the war. Ukraine is very unlikely to get better terms later than sooner.

Donors and subscribers make it possible for me to write, so if you value my writing, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE

Ukraine Has Lost & A Negotiated Peace Is The Only Sane & Humane Solution

By

On August 7, 2023

Comments

OK, I’m on the record from the start saying Ukraine would lose the war militarily. The counteroffensive has failed. NATO equipped and trained an entire army for Ukraine and it didn’t even get to the main defensive lines.

The Americans told the Ukrainians to charge entrenched, mined positions without air superiority and in the face of an enemy with more artillery than them.

That went about as you’d expect.

The Ukrainians are not taking back the territory they have lost, let alone Crimea, which was always a ludicrous fantasy.

Ukrainians are dying like flies and I am firmly on the side that says that their casualty numbers have to be higher than the Russians, because the Russians are launching a ton more artillery shells and have air superiority. Meanwhile six million refugees have moved to the EU, and I’ll bet most of them will never return to Ukraine, which was a depressed and extremely corrupt nation even before the war.

Russia has not been squeezed out by sanctions and is not going to be. China will not let it happen and most of Africa and Latin America are on their side, while India wants more trade with them. The nation hurt most by sanctions is probably Germany, which is losing much of its energy price sensitive industries (very important industries that have been world leaders for over 100 years in many cases.) Since Germany is the industrial heartland of the EU (and cemented that by using the EURO and enforced austerity to devastate other EU countries industrial base), this will hit the EU hard.

Russia, meanwhile, is churning out ammunition and weapons and buying them from North Korea and Iran, who don’t care at all about US sanctions, for obvious reasons. In the West, weapons warehouses are bare and we don’t have the capacity to restore them, nor are we ramping up production quickly.

So Russia has a larger population and army, and more weapons and equipment than the Ukrainians. They have air and artillery superiority.

The only road forward for anyone who isn’t a horrific bastard is a negotiated peace. Russia (sorry) is going to get the Russian parts of Ukraine, and Ukraine is just going to have to suck it up. If the war continues, Russia may attempt to grab the entire coastline and that would make Ukraine a land-locked country.

The longer the war goes on, the worse for Ukrainians. The war is lost and a negotiated peace will save tens of thousands of lives and make it so that Ukraine is less of a complete basket-case after the war.

There will be a guerilla war after any peace. It could be won by the Ukrainians, but I doubt it. Eastern Ukraine is flat and occupied mostly by Russian speaking sympathizers who want to be in Russia.

Sometimes you lose the war on the ground. Russia will not get everything it wanted, but they will get some of what they wanted and so will Ukraine, in the sense that they may get real security guarantees or NATO membership after the war is over.

But Ukraine has lost. Pretending it hasn’t is ridiculous and monstrous. Throwing more hastily conscripted soldiers into the meat grinder is stupid and evil.

The best possible end at this point is a negotiated peace.

This is a donor supported site, so if you value the writing, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Wagner Mercenary Company Chief Prigozhin Has Gone Over The Line

By

On June 5, 2023

Comments

So, Prigozhin captured a Russian Colonel (after what appears to be a real firefight), and interrogated him and made him “admit” that Russia troops had fired on Wagner mercenaries.

He has also accused the Ministry of Defense (MoD) of not supplying enough ammunition and of setting explosives along the route that Wagner used to leave Bakhmut, among other things. What Prigozhin is saying, repeatedly, is “the bureaucrats are stabbing us in the back, that’s why the war isn’t going well.”

Soto Voce, of course, this is an attack on Putin, whom the hard right blames for not going full war economy, not retaliating against the West’s supply of Ukraine and keeping the gloves on (which he has, if he hadn’t, there wouldn’t be power on anywhere in Ukraine.)

Almost anyone but Prigozhin saying such things would have been in prison now, and I think Putin is making a mistake if he doesn’t make an example of Prigozhin: the kidnapping of a Colonel was over the line. Since Wagner has withdrawn from combat anyway (just in time to avoid the counter-attack, so that if Ukraine has a good counter-attack they can say “we took it, the MoD lost it), well, it’s time.

Wagner was useful because it was a prison-to-frontline piprline. It took heavy casualties of people whose deaths don’t matter to Russia. Prisoners are also ideal in that a normal person is often taken from a job. A prisoner was just an expense: if he gets dead, almost no one cares.

This is, of course, the truth behind Putin’s war: he keeps trying to fight it on the cheap: the right isn’t wrong about that. He doesn’t want to go “all-in”. Money isn’t expensive to Putin, it’s cheap. Actually doing another mobilization or moving to a war economy or putting in extended curfews to help avoid Ukrainian attacks, those are expensive, because at the end of the day, Putin does require popular support to stay in power.

Putin is popular, he has always been popular and he wants to stay popular.

But there are also attacks which can’t be allowed. When you rule, in part, by fear, as Putin does, you cannot allow someone to get away with really challenging you. That’s what Prigozhin is doing, and Putin needs to put him down and probably dismantle Wagner.

Mercenaries are always a bad idea anyway, for a variety of reasons. Putin may not need full mobilization, but he needs more than he’s done, and he should calculate the costs of a slow drag war vs. mobilizing and getting the war done by making real gains that force the Ukrainians to the table.

But leave Prigozhin to keep spewing his attacks and Putin will be seen as weak, and once seen as weak, some dog pack or another will tear him down.

(Oh, and if I were in the Russian army officer corp, I’d kidnap Prigozhin and “interrogate” him.)

Donors and subscribers make it possible for me to write, so if you value this writing, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE

The US Endgame In The Ukraine

By

On March 1, 2023

Comments

Seems to be what most of us thought it was before the war ever started: try to replicate Afghanistan in the 80s. Keep Russia tied down till Russia collapses, supplying weapons and letting masses of Ukrainians die, avoiding US casualties. The country will be in ruins and not recover for decades if ever.

There are a few problems with this.

Russia is not the USSR. In many ways the USSR was stronger, but Russia is far more resilient. The USSR had a food deficit, while Russia is a net food exporter: one of the world’s largest. They still have a vast market for hydrocarbons and for their weapons. There is nothing the West can sanction that they must have. This is especially the case because while China and India have pretended to go along with the sanctions, both countries are moving into Russia in a big way to replace the Western businesses which left.

In the 80s China was not a Russian ally, and even if it had been it was not the greatest manufacturing power and world’s largest exporter. The Chinese make noises about peace, and they don’t supply weapons, but they are happy to buy Russian oil and gas and to sell Russia whatever else it needs.

Russia has a population problem, but it still has a far larger population than Ukraine. It can feed men into the grinder far longer than Ukraine will. Weapons are great, but they must be used by soldiers.

Further, Russia is not trying to occupy the entire country, but only the parts which are Russian majority or close to it. These places are not anti-Russian. They are not ideal for guerilla operations, both because of the lack of support for them and because Ukraine is basically a large open plain, not mountain or jungle.

Internally, as I’ve pointed out repeatedly, the Russian leadership cannot afford to lose. If Putin is seen by Russians to have lost the war, he will lose power and he may not survive that, nor may his family.

Further, people who think Putin losing power would be good for Ukraine or the West are deranged. The people who will replace him are to his right, and they will want another go. Their primary complaint is that Putin hasn’t gone all in: hasn’t full mobilized, hasn’t used all the weapons available (Russia has been far more restrained than the US was in Iraq), and hasn’t moved to a war economy.

Meanwhile, the West is becoming more unified, but not stronger. China continues its rise, and US reshoring efforts seem to involve taking industry from Europe and some week efforts at moving semiconductor production to the US. China produced more semiconductor patents last year than the rest of the world combined, the idea that the Western tech lead is durable is a joke.

Western power and leadership is a wasting asset. Russia is now firmly a Chinese satrapy, China and Russia and India are moving to their own payment system and OPEC is moving to sell oil in non-dollar denominations. Meanwhile climate change advances and it increases Russia’s advantage in agriculture: it improves their yields.

This is a fantastically stupid war, with no good end and it’s not going to replicate Afghanistan and the USSR because Russia is not the USSR, Ukraine is not Afghanistan and America is not the America of the 80s, still vastly dominant economically.

Negotiation should be the way out, but we are stuck in a maximal position: Russia must get nothing.

And that is not going to happen any more than Russian collapse.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Page 2 of 6

Previous

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén