Ukraine Revisited II

The Western media calls it a stalemate, but the players has not yet agreed to a draw: Is it perhaps because they both realize, that the one has won and the other has lost?

On the frontline

Russians are regaining the areas in The Ukraine that were lost in the last half a year. Together with the areas taken by the Russians elsewhere in The Ukraine, this will make the territorial gains by Moscow in 2023 substantive, if not the quantity, then at least the quality, including consolidated strategic high ground and gaining air dominance on the eastern front, making Moscow ready to attack at will. Territory is not decisive. Of course, conquering advantageous positions on the battlefield is a prime directive in a military campaign, but what will eventually determine the outcome of a war of attrition will be whether the defender will be able to keep up. We speak of the loss exchange ratio, where the loss of men, materiel and morale determines the outcome. In The Ukraine, the conflict has now entered a phase where Armed Forces of The Russian Federation (AFR) are able to pressurize

The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) along the entire frontline (recording losses in The Ukraine, I divide the numbers coming from the Russian ministry of defense by a factor 7). In October, AFR began the encirclement of one of the main fortresses on the eastern front, Avdiivka, narrowing the possibility of AFU to supply the frontline and shell the city of Donetsk for the first time in 9 years. Immediately, AFU responded by deploying 5 battalions (3000 - 5000 men) from the reserve to widen the noose tightening around the fortress, but the situation remains critical

AFU is stretched thin, its air defenses in the east are penetrable, the men deployed are tired and have been fighting without proper rest for far too long. In October, AFR, by combining AWACS type radar surveillance planes with S-400 air defense missile systems, destroyed an AFU aircraft a day on average; while it is still uncertain to what use the F16 fighter jets arriving from the West will be for AFU, since the logistics demanded for such aircraft, especially lengthy runways and skilled pilots seems to be in short supply. AFR are superior in numbers, artillery, armed vehicles, and air force. Only the yet ongoing battle of electronic warfare, the scrambling and control of drones, sustains the frontline. The collapse is immanent and unlikely to hold 2024 without Kiev suffering a breakthrough by AFR, unravelling AFU defense of Eastern Ukraine.

 

Political condition in Kiev

The political situation around the government in Kiev speaks for itself. November 2023 have seen an open rivalry between the plutocratic elite and the military leadership, a fight for power centered around the battle between two men, president Zelensky and commander in chief Zaluzhnyi. After defense minister Reznikov and six of his deputy ministers got fired in September, the Plutocracy has been starved of cashflow and with a hole on the size of 40 bn$ emerging in the national budget of Ukraine for 2024, the current deficit forces the president and his supporters to squeeze even more goodwill out of their donors, since the slump in GDP starves their respective enterprises, making the craving for another 60bn$ from the US Congress the only game in town: ‘steal what you can before we go under’ seems to be the motto for the plutocrats. What is new? But when Zaluzhnyi then gives an interview to The Economist about the need for more military aid, mirroring the interest of the military leadership to mend expectations of their performance with reality, the clash of interests, that has been a rift in the polity at least since the summer of 2022, is now exploding; Zaluzhnyi’s right hand, Chastiakov died after one of his birthday presents blew up last week, in what was quickly labelled an accident, leaving the Ukrainian public in little doubt that it was the result of a gang style murder. This week the American newspapers ran a story that a colonel, closely linked to Zaluzhnyi, was the ‘coordinator’ in the bombing of the North Stream pibeline, that was presumably undertaken by six guys from a Yacht, and not, as common sense would indicate, by use of advanced diving equipment in a large scale military operation: It seems more likely that the first story widely believed, was correct, that the Russians blew up their own infrastructure, although the chance of that being true is equally negligible. The last few days rumors have circulated, that the president has commenced a purge of three generals in AFU, stirring up a fus around the exhausted government in Kiev. The bottom line is this: Zelensky will do everything to stay in power and avoid a military takeover, but the current impasse is worsening the prospect for Ukraine further.

Plutocracy and Martial Law

The proclaimed state of exception has left the Ukrainian constitution suspended. This means that for Zelensky to stay in office, Martial Law must be renewed, next time mid February, a formality to be expected by the Rada, the rubber stamp parliament in Kiev, dominated by the Servants of the People’s Party, a new party, without political ideology, nor any concrete policies, formed around Zelensky bearing the name of the party created by the character in the television show of the same name, starring Zelensky; the political reality of corruption and intra-state conflict are sought dreamed away by fictionalization, a sentiment that loomed large with voters at the election, but is now clear to most people was a plutocratic scam: The legitimacy of the government and the political system is called into question by both the army and the man in the street, since the looting of the state happens in front of their eyes and the failure of Zelensky to deliver on his lofty promises of anti-corruption and peace with Russia, are widely acknowledged in The Ukraine. The real problem for Kiev though, is that the ability of the current junta to keep up basic governance structures are eroding towards 0% hence a coup d’état seems to be immanent, either by the security apparatus or by the military commanders, if not a joint venture between them, but really the question is, whether there could form a faction strong enough to take, and make actual use of, the formal powers in the collapsing administrative apparatus in The Ukraine. The story circulating amongst geopolitical observers that Moscow has piled up a throng of missiles to knock out the critical infrastructure in the major cities of non-occupied Ukraine, this time once and for all, scares the government agencies in Kiev and their population stiff, while Putin frequently and confidently visits the Russian military headquarters at Rostov-on-Don.

Coup d’état?

Oh boy, what a complete mess: The battle between the two factions struggling for power in Kiev will continue and most likely escalate until Zalushnyi publicly endorses the president, as Zelensky and his supporters has been praying he will for months. We are at the stage of postponing the inevitable; the signs that it is all over are everywhere. From the somewhat orderly deployment of troops, one must conclude that apparently the government is able to sustain unity of command in the higher echelons of AFU, and this indicates that Zaluzhnyi enjoys enough loyalty around his person to keep himself alive and on top for at least some months to come. Perhaps he and his henchmen will be able to persuade Budanov to forge a new formal government by getting rid of Zelensky, but to the political scientist it is a hermetic black box what goes on in the catacombs of Kiev and we can only speculate to what comes next. What seems certain though, is the outcome of the war and the political future of The Ukraine.

Prospects for Peace

It is now clear what happened at the outset of the invasion. As the ARF spread its forces from the south through Melitopol and from the north around Kiev and Kharkiv, negotiations were held between Kiev and Moscow concerning peace between Kiev and Moscow, i.e., NATO membership for Ukraine and its status as a country in its region plus Crimea and the breakaway regions in the east. The position of the government in Kiev was undermined by a special NATO summit on 24^th of March 2022 deciding that a war with The Russian federation was to be preferred. The meeting in Istanbul taking place on the 29^th of March 2022, that was about to end up in peace negotiations during the following week by Kiev recognizing Moscow’s demands as legitimate, ended abruptly as the prime minister of the U.K., Boris Johnson, told Zelensky to chose war. This sudden U-turn has hindered future build up of trust between Kiev and Moscow; Putin proclaims steadily that he is ready to meet with Zelensky, seemingly ignoring the obscure utterances that has come from the Ukrainian president lately, but this time the conditions for negotiations will be much, much harder to come to terms with for the junta in Kiev, no matter its internal composition. When peace will come, the terms will be dictated by the Kremlin and NATO will have suffered yet another strategic defeat; the Russian polity is stable and with the constant progress on the battlefield, slowly but surely grinding AFU out of resources, Moscow can wait years on Kiev and NATO coming to terms with reality, without The Ukraine becoming a member of the alliance: NATO would get in direct conflict with Moscow and its 1500 nuclear warheads, were its proxy to join the alliance before a viable peace is obtained. In war, events on the battlefield speaks loud and clear, now roaming the question: Was it such a good idea to go to war with Russia in the Ukraine? – Was it really, like it has been heralded in parliaments, think tanks and the press all over the West: The best investment NATO could make to have all these brave young men die for the chance of teasing Moscow? And now, when it has all backfired, one could ask with considerable weight: What was won from forging unity amongst the members of the world’s greatest military alliance, when its enemy gets what it wants, anyway?