While reading Mark Sumner’s news roundup this morning, one tidbit jumped out at me like a camera flash to the face in a dark dorm room after a party.
Put this in your extremely unconfirmed file. It may even be an example of disinformation “leaked” from the Ukrainian side. But damn … if much of this is true, it changes the complexion of the war.
For example: “Russians didn’t have a tactical plan. The war costs about $20B per day. There are rockets for 3-4 days at most, They use them sparingly. They lack weapons, the Tula and 2 Rotenberg plants can’t physically fulfil the orders for weapons. Rifles and ammo are the most they can do.”
I cannot possibly stress how important this is. To provide context, let me add in a few more observations.
From the CNN timeline, there are several reports of Ukrainian forces not only holding off the Russian advance, but being able to coordinate counterattacks. Those counterattacks are in some places stopping the Russian advance and retaking or holding key objectives, to the point that CNN crews can even walk the battlefield the next day with no Russians in sight.
www.cnn.com/…
For these events to occur, several things must have happened.
1) The Russian strikes did not destroy the Ukrainian maneuver forces in the initial barrage.
2) The Russian strikes were unable to paralyze the command, communications, and support functions of the Ukrainian maneuver forces, allowing them to consolidate and organize a local couterattack.
3) The Russians did not have sufficient reserve of ‘on call’ fires to
3) The Russian strikes did not destroy power and communications infrastructure, allowing CNN to get reports out of the country more or less in real time.
In addition, just before the key quote in Mark’s diary, there is another:
As of Saturday morning, it appears that Russians control no Ukrainian cities. Some of this may be strategy — there were earlier suggestions that Putin’s plan was to grab Kyiv first, then move on other cities after he had put in place a puppet government that signed onto a surrender deal. However, at this point it really starts to just look Russian forces are finding this much, much tougher than expected.
The key thing to take away from this observation is the additional two facts. It appears that the eastern side of the drive on Kiev has bogged down, and that the Russians are in fact attacking Kharkiv and not bypassing it, and from CNN reporting, the Russians may be calling up reserves: www.cnn.com/…
The significance of these actions is that in a conventional military campaign, Russia would want control of major north-south routes, splitting Ukranian forces east of the Dnieper into a southern and northern group. That prevents them from supporting each other and allows Russia to defeat the forces individually. If Russia can’t do that and can’t lock down freedom of maneuver around Cherniv (bypassing the city to allow Russian supply convoys to move freely along the E95 and M02 highways) then Russia is going to have a hard time sustaining any kind of offensive.
And let me point out that neutralizing and bypassing places like Cherniv and Kharkiv are day 1 objectives. They would be meticulously planned. The key strategic points are fixed, they enemy disposition scouted and researched, and supply convoys are going to be rolling past them. You absolutely, positively have to control those routes for the invasion to work. If Russia didn’t roll in with enough forces to do the job, that is a very bad sign.
Finally, there is the ‘soft power’ aspect of this:
The Russians are losing the propaganda war hard. In a matter of three days, countries around the world have gone from ‘targeted sanctions’ on the separatist regions and the military, all the way to crossing traditional ‘red lines’ such as personal sanctions on Putin and openly discussing shutting Russia out of most of the world economy. Countries with ties to Russia have done major reversals, such as India not objecting to a resolution condemning Russian aggression, and Germany halting NordStream 2 and greenlighting lethal aid to Ukraine.
And understand that these gestures are coming forward with the expectation that is is ‘only a matter of time’ until Ukraine falls. Sympathy for the doomed and protection of Europe and the international order even if it isn’t enough to save Ukraine.
So back to the point of the diary. Why is it so significant if the Russians didn’t bring enough missiles?
If the Russians are running low on bombs and missiles, that changes the strategic picture. Fundamentally it means that the Russians will never have their sought after air dominance. It means that the Ukrainians will be able to concentrate maneuver forces and challenge Russian forces, including some significant ones. If the Russians continue to bog down but the flow of western military aid accelerates, the Ukrainians may be in a position to assemble new maneuver forces in western Ukraine and start conducting coordinated operations. That could snowball into bigger and bigger counteroffensives. Keep in mind that it takes 6 weeks to provide minimum military training. If this conflict drags on, with the help of some allies, brand new uniformed military units could be available for combat by May or June.
In the realm of questions for ‘what comes next militarily?’ we started out thinking on a spectrum of ‘will the Ukrainians fight?’ through ‘how much damage will they be able to do?’ to ‘how many hours will they hold out?’. Those questions are now answered and we need a new set of questions. ‘how many days can Ukraine hold out?’ to ‘can Ukraine deny Russia any strategic objectives?’. Tantalizing on the horizon would be ‘could Ukraine fight Russia to a standstill?’
