The Russian generals have declared the “first phase” of the Ukrainian invasion over, and now say they will focus on “liberating” the rest of the Donbas region, which they claim was their original intentional all along. So what does this really mean?
Well, certainly they are lying about their “original intentions”. Putin made a number of statements early on that made clear he intended to take over the entirety of the Ukraine and install a government favorable to Moscow. So this “first phase” talk is just a face-saving admission that the Russian military failed (miserably!) to achieve its goals of reaching Kyiv quickly and replacing Zelinsky and his government.
But it does suggest that Putin has finally come to terms with his failures (or, as he no doubt sees it, the failures of his general officers and his intelligence agencies). This certainly doesn’t suggest he has had a change of heart. I assume he will pursue ruthlessly whatever goals he thinks he can still achieve in the Ukraine, and then spin their attainment as a “success”. So what might these be?
Probably it is true that he would like to take the rest of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. His “little green men” held about a third of those regions before the invasion began, as the map below shows.
And if in the process his military could surround and capture the majority of the Ukrainian forces concentrated in those regions, that would be a bonus. The Ukrainians will have to make a strategic decision about that – hold fast and risk being surrounded, or withdraw and trade territory for a better tactical position.
There is as yet no indication that the Russians are withdrawing forces from around Kyiv or in the south to move them to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, so I assume they will just dig in and stay where they are to be a bargaining chip in later negotiations, or perhaps because Putin or his generals think that they may be in a position later to resume the advances in those regions.
So I assume Putin thinks his military can probably take more territory in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, keep the territory he has gained in the south, cutting off much of Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea and giving him a land corridor to the Crimea, and continue to pin down Ukrainian forces guarding Kyiv. And meanwhile Russia can continue to shell and bomb cities and generally try to terrorize the population.
There really isn’t much the Russian military can do right now to improve its performance. About a third of its combat forces in the Ukraine are apparently poorly-trained 1-year conscripts (despite Putin’s assertion that there are no conscripts there), and they are getting their training the hard and deadly way. Russian has, according to most experts, already committed over half its available combat forces to the Ukraine, and to commit much more would leave other areas of Russia vulnerable. Ignore the propaganda about Russia having millions in reserve; they are mostly untrained and unequipped. The Russian NCOs (non-commissioned officers) are notoriously corrupt and poorly trained, which means the troops are poorly led, and that can’t be fixed in a hurry. Russian doctrine depends heavily on armored assaults, and there is no easy and quick way to remedy how vulnerable armor is proving to be these days to portable American Javalin and British NLAW anti-tank weapons. And finally the Russian system depends heavily on top-down commend; lower level troops have no authority or experience acting independently or taking initiative, and there is no quick way to remedy that either.
If the negotiations with the Russians get serious, I expect the Ukrainians could be persuaded to give up their claim to the Crimea, which after all was part of Russia until Premiere Khrushchev arbitrarily transferred it to the Ukraine in 1954, and which isn’t particularly important to the Ukrainian economy. But I doubt they would agree to give up the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and I would guess that Putin would not be willing to relinquish his goal of carving at least that much of the Ukraine off. So I don’t hold out much hope for a negotiated settlement soon, though that might come eventually.
What should the West do? Well certainly we ought to continue to feed the Ukrainians weapons and ammunition, and let them bleed the Russian army as much as possible. We have done well by equipping them to neutralize the Russian armored forces. We ought also to better help them deal with the remaining primary threat they face by equipping them to better take out the long-range artillery and the air power that is shattering their cities.
And certainly we ought to tighten the sanctions and strangle the Russian economy as much as possible, all in the long-term interests of weakening Russia enough to dissuade Putin from moving on to attack a NATO country and forcing us into an all-out Russia vs the West war. Personally I think the West has been a bit too timid in opposing Putin; a bit too scared of “escalation”. It ought to be Putin who is afraid of the West escalating, since in fact Russia is by far the weaker party on all measures.
That doesn’t mean I think we ought to put US or NATO troops into the Ukraine, though if Putin resorted to more drastic measure, like chemical or biological or nuclear weapons, that might change. But I do think we could provide the Ukrainians with more and better weapons, and I do think the West ought to bite the bullet and cut off all gas and oil purchases from Russia, even though it would produce massive dislocation and economic problems in Europe. And America ought to step up to do much more to help the Europeans deal with that dislocation, even if it produces severe economic pain in the US. Politics being what it is, I doubt we will do that, but perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised – who knows?
The Biden administration has done better than I would have expected thus far, and that is promising. But I think we are all thinking much too small, and are just reacting to events day-by day instead of proceeding with a rational long-range plan. Europe needs to get off of its addiction to Russian oil and gas. That will be hard, given the way they have built their economy, and requires thinking on a much larger scale. We need a sort of "Marshall Plan" scale of thinking to help Europe though the transition.
And of course the elephant in the room is China, who is no doubt watching our reactions closely, and calibrating its future moves on that basis. A weak response to this crisis may bring serious problems for us later.
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