Ukraine war gets even more dangerous
by Simon Korner
The nearer Ukraine gets to defeat, the more out of control the war becomes. Unable to make gains on the ground, a desperate Ukraine has been inciting terrorism and attacking oil refineries and infrastructure inside Russia as well as the Russian controlled nuclear power station in Zaporizhia.
UKRAINE'S WEAKNESS
The failure of last summer’s Ukrainian counter-offensive was sealed by the fall of the heavily fortified eastern Ukrainian town of Adviika in March this year. Adviika, from where Ukraine had been bombarding neighbouring Donetsk city for almost nine years, was abandoned in a chaotic retreat that left behind hundreds of prisoners and heavy weapons.
The Ukrainian army lacks weapons and ammunitions and manpower. Zelensky said in mid-April, “Today, artillery at the front is 1 to 10, aviation – 1 to 30. With such statistics, the Russian Federation will push us back every day.” In need of more troops, Ukraine has lowered the draft age and reduced the scope for medical exemptions. According to the Financial Times, Ukraine’s adult male population of 11 million has fallen drastically in the last two years through deaths, emigration and the almost 3 million in the east who have taken Russian citizenship. That leaves 3.7 million eligible for mobilisation, but of these an estimated 1 million are evading it. (1) Prime Minister Shmygal admitted: “The demographic situation in the country is very difficult.”
The fracturing of society is reflected in the public spat between Zelensky and his military chief Zaluzhny, which ended in the latter’s sacking in February, highlighting the breakdown between political and military rule in Ukraine.
And the immense suffering of Ukraine’s population, the poorest in Europe, is getting worse. The UN-based International Organisation for Migration estimates that 40% of Ukraine’s population requires humanitarian aid. Nearly three-quarters of Ukrainians would compromise for peace, according to a recent poll. (2)
Western establishment mouthpieces are gloomy about future prospects: “Ukraine could face defeat in 2024. Here’s how that might look”. (BBC 13/4/24) The ex-head of Czech intelligence General Pelc says: “Russia is crushing Ukraine in a slow and systematic way… we only prolong the agony and increase the number of dead people.”
RUSSIA'S STRENGTH
Despite western sanctions, and contrary to mainstream media reports about its imminent economic collapse, Russia’s economic indicators in 2023, “exceeded most expectations, with GDP growing by 3.6 percent”. (3) This was achieved through increased arms production, the opening of new international markets for sanctioned products and the expansion of its domestic industry to replace western companies.
The population is largely united behind the war, with 73% support, according to a poll in November 2023. (4) The recent Russian elections strengthened Putin’s position after a landslide victory with a high turnout – including among the Russian diaspora.
Militarily, Russia has strengthened itself following early setbacks in the war. The US journal Defense News says Russia has raised arms spending to 6% of its budget this year, and is receiving Chinese, North Korean and Iranian support. (5) Arms production has increased by 15 times since war began, the efficiency a legacy of Soviet planning. Russian artillery factories are working 24 hours a day and the workforce has risen from 2.5 to 3.5 million. Russia is producing more than double the number of shells than all western countries combined. (6) Meanwhile, Estonian intelligence estimates that Russia can train 130,000 troops every six months and the UK think-tank RUSI reports that Russian frontline forces in Ukraine rose from 360,000 to 470,000 last year. (7) The US Deputy Secretary of State says that over the last few months, “Russia has almost completely reconstituted militarily”.
Russia is advancing slowly. According to retired US Col Douglas MacGregor, its caution reflects fears that an outright rapid victory could provoke NATO into more reckless military escalation. Nevertheless, MacGregor predicts that by June this year the Ukrainian front could have crumbled. Having finally gained air superiority after destroying Ukraine’s air defences, Russia has begun to target Ukrainian infrastructure in response to recent attacks. It has struck power plants across Ukraine, causing widespread blackouts and squeezing Ukraine’s foreign exchange which it earns from energy sales to the EU. Ukraine’s arms factories are also being ‘demilitarised’.
Russia’s relative restraint up to now – according to Putin it rejected US-style ‘shock and awe’ tactics for humanitarian reasons – is over. It now says it’s fighting a full-on war as it fends off attacks on its navy in Crimea and inside Russia proper, including terrorist incidents such at the Crocus Hall in Moscow. Russia blamed this on western intelligence agencies using ISIS as cover, a charge the West denies.
RUSSIA'S AIMS
Russia’s goals have remained consistent: to defend its people and territory against NATO and Ukrainian attack, including the protection of the ethnic Russians in Ukraine. This means ensuring Ukraine is demilitarised and stays out of NATO. It also means denazification – annihilating the openly fascist groups that led the coup against democratically elected President Yanukovich and went on to form the backbone of Ukraine’s National Guard and other army units. Russia must not only protect its cities and infrastructure but also defend its historically vulnerable southern flanks and Black Sea coast. In 1918 western forces attacked the fledgling USSR from the south, and western-backed White Russians did so again during the Russian civil war. Today, British and US reconnaissance pinpoints naval targets in Crimea and supervises attacks. British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin is believed to be directing Ukraine’s Black Sea strategy.
In 2014 Russia declared it had no territorial ambitions and would support Donetsk and Luhansk remaining within Ukraine as autonomous regions. But Ukrainian shelling of ethnic Russian civilians in the Donbas, which killed 14,000 people, effectively undermined the federated structure agreed on between Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine at Minsk in 2014. This ‘agreement’ was signed deceitfully to buy time for Ukrainian re-armament, as Angela Merkel admitted later.
When in 2022 Zelensky called for NATO to deploy nuclear weapons in Ukraine and Ukrainian artillery strikes on Donbas reached an unprecedented pitch, Russia felt compelled to launch its pre-emptive strike. The Special Military Operation used a relatively small force and was designed to stop the attacks on the Donbas and bring Ukraine to the negotiating table, which it managed to do. But just as Zelensky was about to sign a peace deal, Boris Johnson rushed to Kiev in April 2022 to prevent it. In September 2022, Russia offered a ceasefire, and a year later repeated the offer. Both times it was rebuffed. In April 2024, foreign minister Lavrov again suggested negotiations, as long as Russia’s security needs were taken into account.
Russia’s unwavering insistence on its own security stems from NATO’s 1991 promise not to expand eastwards, which was broken when NATO absorbed eastern Europe. It was President Yanukovych’s attempt to prevent NATO swallowing Ukraine that precipitated his downfall. With him gone, Ukraine’s NATO controllers rapidly escalated attacks on the Donbas, a working-class, Russian-speaking region that refused to accept the legitimacy of the Kiev regime after the 2014 coup. Meanwhile, the CIA began preparing for war by building a string of spy bases in eastern Ukraine, according to the New York Times. (8)
Putin has said Russia won’t push west of the Dnieper river. The problem for Russia will be how to protect its territory from attack given western rockets and drones have a current range of 500 kms and 900 kms respectively. While Putin dismissed propaganda about Russia invading any NATO country as “folly and nonsense”, he also warned that if NATO bombers take off from Poland or elsewhere to hit Russia, airbases in those countries will become legitimate targets.
Having been deceived at Minsk, Russia will not allow a false peace settlement that gives time for Ukraine to re-arm. From its current position of relative strength – “situations on the battlefield determine new realities,” as Lavrov put it – Russia is likely to fight on until Ukraine declares neutrality. It may accept a Korea-style demilitarised zone dividing Ukraine. It may also take Odessa, a Russian city on the Black Sea, in order to protect its southern coast.
US AIMS
For the USA, its $300 billion expenditure on Ukraine since 2014 is money well spent. NATO’s expansion to Finland and Sweden has given the US control over all of northern Europe, including the Baltic Sea. This expansion will be cemented by building twelve bases in Norway’s Arctic from which it can disrupt Russia’s northern shipping routes and prevent Russia from developing natural gas extraction, as the US State Department stated recently. Another US gain has been to suborn its main European competitor Germany through the deliberate destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline in late 2022, which cut off Germany’s imports of cheap Russian gas and forced it to import more expensive natural gas from the US and Norway. The western narrative of a rogue Ukrainian team sabotaging the pipeline has been debunked by Lloyds of London, which is refusing to pay out damages to Nord Stream’s owners because the explosions were a state act of war, hence not covered by insurance.
Like Germany, France, humiliated when the US pressured Australia to abandon its French submarine deal in favour of US nuclear subs, has been firmly put in its place by the US. Macron’s attempts at asserting French autonomy have been dismissed as a “pipe-dream” in the US establishment journal Foreign Affairs. (9)
The US will keep stoking the war with the aim of draining Russia’s economy, destabilising and ultimately dismembering it. This means pushing Europe to provide more funding and supply longer-distance weapons and planes. It also means using instability in neighbouring ex-Soviet countries like Georgia, Armenia, Moldova – where the US has recently deployed troops on military manoeuvres with Romania –and elsewhere to weaken Russia, and intensifying terrorist attacks on Russian territory. This forces Russia to focus on self-defence, neutralising it as a strategic power to create the necessary conditions for the bigger war to come, against China.
EUROPE AND NATO
The internecine rivalries between the European powers have intensified during the Ukraine war, as each seeks to mitigate their humiliating treatment at the hands of the USA. In March, Macron told the other European powers not to be “cowardly” and boasted that 1,500 Foreign Legion troops were ready to enter Odessa, sensing an opportunity to seize the role of leader of Europe within NATO. This, despite having pledged only €2 billion to aid Ukraine, compared to Germany’s €22 billion.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova says that the recent threats by Macron and Poland’s foreign minister Sikorski to deploy troops in Ukraine is about positioning themselves to control the remnants of western Ukraine – in Poland’s case, under the pretext of protecting its own borders. Poland has ambitions to retake its former territory of western Ukraine, known pre-World War 2 as ‘Eastern Lesser Poland’. This potential scramble for Ukraine by foreign powers follows on from Zelensky’s offer to his allies at Davos in May 2022 of “the opportunity – a historical one – to take patronage over a particular region of Ukraine, city, community or industry.” (10)
However, apart from the military instructors already there, it’s not clear that NATO troops will actually enter Ukraine. The USA, UK and Germany are against it, fearing that soldiers – unprotected by NATO Article 5 which applies only to attacks against NATO territory – would be targeted by Russia. Also, French public opinion (68% according to a recent poll) opposes sending troops, while a majority in Poland likewise disapproves of Polish intervention – part of a wider disillusionment after Ukrainian corn flooded the Polish market and threatened Poland’s farmers.
Meanwhile, Germany’s hawks – such as defence minister Boris Pistorius and Free Democrats defence spokesperson Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, MP for Dusseldorf where leading German arms maker Rheinmetall has its HQ – argue for sending long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine. A leaked report revealed the head of the Luftwaffe and other German generals discussing Taurus attacks against Crimea, which Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called “a screaming revelation”. But supplying Taurus missiles would make Germany a target, according to Chancellor Scholz because the technical programming for it has to be done by Germany.
Both France and Germany are on the ground in Moldova – the impoverished neutral country between Romania and Ukraine, which is a potential flashpoint for further conflict. German police are deployed on Moldova’s Ukrainian border, while France has signed a defence pact with Moldova to secure a foothold close to the Black Sea.
Public differences between Germany and France are rooted in the failure of several major joint arms projects, which Germany has recently abandoned in favour of collaborating with the US. (11) These include building new generation fighter aircraft, tanks and missile defence systems. The two countries are now in an arms race forced on them by the USA as a means of making them shoulder the costs of the Ukraine war. Germany’s arms budget this year rose to $73 billion, double that of 2015. France plans to outspend Germany.
Nevertheless, both are united under US-controlled NATO in backing Moldova’s pro-western government as it crushes the strong pro-Russian sentiment among at least half its population and shuts down Russian-language TV and internet channels. Both will support Ukraine if it attacks Transdniestria, a Russian-speaking autonomous region squeezed between Moldova and Ukraine, where a large ammunition dump is guarded by a small Russian military contingent.
OUTLOOK
In April, US Congress passed its long-delayed $61 billion aid package to Ukraine. Combined with the growing contribution of the USA’s European vassals – corralled into buying weapons from the US military-industrial complex under the pretext of conforming to NATO rules on ‘compatibility’ – it’s clear that the West intends to keep the war going. US Secretary of State Blinken’s declaration that “Ukraine will become a member of NATO” supports this conclusion. (12) Future phases of the war could extend to the Arctic and Moldova, and make greater use of long-range missiles to strike infrastructure and cities.
Given the strategy of continuing to weaken Russia, the dangers of the conflict spinning out of control are growing, particularly when tactical differences emerge. When US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin warns Ukraine against hitting Russian refineries because it could “provoke Russia into retaliating and targeting energy infrastructure the West relies on”, (14) and NATO chief Jen Stoltenberg asserts that they’re legitimate targets, we know we’re in uncertain times. Anything can happen. (15)
Moreover, after the US scrapped all its nuclear missile treaties with Russia, the hedge against nuclear conflict no longer exists. General Cavoli, NATO supreme allied commander, warned in April that, with no treaties, and having closed down all the communication channels which prevented escalation during the Cold War, the US is seriously risking nuclear disaster. (16)
(1) https://www.ft.com/content/d7e95021-df99-4e99-8105-5a8c3eb8d4ef
(2) https://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat=reports&id=1372&page=1
(3) https://carnegieendowment.org/2024/04/10/is-kremlin-overconfident-about-russia-s-economic-stability-pub-92174
(4) https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/how-strong-is-russian-public-support-for-the-invasion-of-ukraine-2/.
(8) https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/cia-ukraine-intelligence-russia-war.html
(9) https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/03/strategic-autonomy-is-a-french-pipe-dream/
(11) https://www.kyivpost.com/post/29300
(12) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/20/france-germany-eu-europe-future
(13) https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/blinken-ukraine-will-become-a-member-of-nato/ar-BB1l5EEI
(14) https://www.politico.eu/article/report-us-urges-ukraine-stop-attacking-russian-oil-refineries/
(15) https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/stoltenberg-ukraine-has-right-to-strike-military-targets-in-russia/ar-BB1lptsJ
(16) https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2024-04-09/cavoli-nato-russia-nuclear-13516988.html
Former head of Ukraine armed forces Zaluzhny (right). Sacked by President Zelensky (left) photo by Presidential office
Russia's goals have remained consistent: to defend its people and territory against NATO and Ukraine attack, including the protection of ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
Crocus City Hall, Moscow after terrorist attack
