Weekly Overview Cables - Ukraine War, and the strategic, political, and geopolitical significance of the attack on Crimea.
Ukraine War Updates:
Donbas battlefield & outlook.
For two weeks straight now, Russia has failed to make any major advances on the battlefield, and Ukrainian shaping operations in preparation for counter-offensive in the South continue.
According to the UK’s Defense Intel agency, Ukraine has now successfully rendered the two main road bridges connecting Kherson to Russia occupied territories inoperable for military transport.
If accurate, this is a major blow to Russian attempts to fortify Kherson and prepare it for Ukrainian counterattacks.
We will soon see some major indicators if Russian troops in Kherson do in fact experience major shortages in supply as a result of this new reality: desertions will rise, and shelling/assault will also most likely decrease in intensity/frequency.
This is because Russian troops will be forced to save all necessary ammo for main defensive operations.
In addition, Ukraine had successfully uncovered and foiled a Russia-planned assassination of Ukraine's defense minister and the head of its military intelligence agency - operatives of Ukraine’s domestic security service/SBU, detained Russia-hired hitmen tasked with this mission.
In the meantime, Zelensky finally berated his officials for long-standing and continuous gross negligence of revealing military tactics & strategic outlooks.
Operational plans must not be tweeted away - Zelensky’s adviser Mykhailo Podolyak should know better than openly reveal the “1,000 bee sting strategy” in relation to Kherson (apparently, the plan is to chip away/cause constant attrition vs an overwhelming attack).
(side note: certainly, deliberate disinformation campaigns are a different beast altogether. But Ukrainian officials do in fact have a record of openly discussing tactics that they then later follow through upon).
Western support and Russia sanctions
The US provided another $1bn in military aid (and the UK will also supply Kyiv with MLRS systems with a range of 50 miles) - that is in addition to Washington’s $4.5bn in a budgetary grant to help the Ukrainian government to continue with the provision of essential public sector expenditures (all the essentials of pensions, social care, healthcare etc).
Perhaps (at least geopolitically) more consequentially, a group of 26 countries (led-by the US) pledged more than $1.55bn to boost Ukraine’s military capabilities.
There was some mixed news on the sanctions front however.
On the one hand, the EU’s ban of Russian coal went into effect on Wednesday (oil ban will come into effect later this year).
On the other hand, however, RUSI (UK’s premier military think-tank) published a troubling report that uncovered Russia’s use of western microelectronic components in the lost/destroyed military equipment that was later recovered by Ukraine:
“RUSI staff and partners inspected 27 Russian weapons systems and pieces of military equipment lost or expended ... RUSI identified at least 450 unique microelectronic components inside these systems that were produced by companies based in the US, Europe and East Asia….The presence of a large number of EAR99- and some ECCN-classified items in Russian military equipment suggests that these... were either purchased by military equipment manufacturers from distributors in Russia...procured under fake end-user certificates, or ... diverted [emphasis added]”
This is extremely worrying - US-led export controls on advanced electronics are going to be useless if they are not executed properly.
American officials must get on top of these loopholes and ensure that Russia’s military is starved of advanced semiconductors and other microelectronic components.
And the risks of this oversight are not merely limited to the present-day mission of impairing Russia’s military and frustrating their battlefield progress: whatever Russia succeeds in doing/getting away with, China will learn and copy on scale.
Consequently, imposing similar restrictions on China (upon the arrival of an appropriate time), will become even harder, and an essential pressure point will thus be wasted.
Crimean air base strike marks a new milestone in the Ukraine war.
Tuesday’s attack on Crimea’s Saki air base was a highly consequential development with strategic implications that go beyond the short-term advantages gained by Ukraine - the destruction of 9 fighter aircraft (in itself, single biggest loss suffered by the Russian air force in one day) will undoubtedly add major difficulties and roadblocks to Russia’s defense of Kherson.
But before delving in deeper into the longer-term implications, two questions still need to be addressed.
1) Was it an actual attack, or as Russia claims, a fire that started on the base and blew up the ammo laying around (which even if true, would highlight the Russian military’s astonishing level of incompetence in the area of operational/logistical security)?
It was most certainly an attack, and the Ukrainian officials have essentially taken responsibility for it (avoiding explicit admissions however).
The reason for Russia’s denials and advancement of an alternative narrative for the incident is rather simple: this is a highly consequential and exceptionally (personally) embarrassing incident for Putin.
Crimea is his red line - admitting that Ukraine had a reach and capacity to strike so deep into Putin’s crown jewel would be both humiliating and strategically inconvenient: for it would then place the ball on Putin’s court to respond - and any response amounting to a lesser escalation than the Kremlin’s red line rhetoric calls for, would lead to yet further humiliation.
2) How did Ukraine manage to strike deep into Crimea?
The air base was both outside of the reach of Ukraine’s currently possessed weapons and missiles (140 miles), and was presumably reinforced with a battery of air defense systems.
Hypothetically, if the US had already supplied Kyiv with longer range (up to 190 miles) ATACMS missiles (for the HIMARS), then Ukraine could have used them for these strikes.
But even those don’t leave behind craters with diameters of 21-25 meters - depending on the angle of the strike, acceleration achieved, and distance traveled, one would expect a crater diameter of max 11 meters caused by ATACMS: fully 2x smaller than the one observed.
Besides, provision of these missiles would amount to monumental news: Pentagon reports on all of these transfers - since the supply of these military hardware is not conducted under covert operations protocols (like intel sharing).
And even if these were sent over covertly, it is only a matter of time that news will spread - and we would all know soon enough.
Now, what about Ballistic missiles? Could it be that Ukraine hit these targets using their own Grim-2/Hrim-2 ballistic missiles?
Extremely unlikely: all available open source data suggests these missiles are still at a production phase, and are yet to enter operational use.
Finally, the available footage shows back to back explosions without any visible missiles: that is unlikely to happen.
Whatever the missiles used, these were not short-range ATGM types..
A low-flying cruise missile, a heavy ballistic missile, or even a slow-flying loitering kamikaze drone (and they most certainly would not even leave such deep and wide craters) would all be captured on a video (given that consecutive explosions were also captured).
All of this suggests that there might be a grain of truth to Ukrainian officials’ statement that the explosions were the work of Ukraine’s special forces.
Deep and wide craters could be explained by counter-kinetic impact coming out of explosives attached to fighter aircraft that then compounded with nearby ammo.
But then again, there is not much evidence to back up this claim either.
And whether true or not, the claim that the attack was the successful work of special forces (aided by the local partisans) was in itself a very smart play: a perfect example of effective psyops tactics.
For consider what this claim implies: that Ukrainian special ops are so capable (and Russian counter-intel agencies and military opsec is correspondingly so incompetent), that they managed to penetrate deep behind Russian lines, and inflicted severe injury on a strategically crucial air base in a highly symbolic location.
This is a great formula to boost domestic morale whilst creating paranoia and insecurity amongst the Russian troops.
Political and strategic significance for Ukraine.
There are three crucial implications for Ukraine:
1) Undeterred by nuclear threats.
By striking so deep into Crimea, Ukraine challenged Russia’s crucial red line that came with corresponding threats of existential risk to Russia/nuclear annihilation/ judgement day promises.
Demonstrating such resolve and willingness to cross Russia’s red lines and take on major risks, is first and foremost, a message to the Kremlin: we are nowhere near the point of moral exhaustion or military attrition. We are ready to escalate this further.
(side note: this is also a significant damage to Putin’s personal charisma and gravitas amongst his inner circle siloviki/security apparatus. Since no matter what official story they sell to the public, the Kremlin’s establishment is fully aware of the actual truth, and Putin is now facing a burden to recover the lost prestige from this blatant slap in the face. And if he is not willing to escalate, he better make sure that such incidents do not become the norm.)
2) Signaling to the allies and expanding the Overton Window around Crimea.
It is crucial that Western backers of Kyiv see Ukraine’s willingness to fight on: this is a crucial prerequisite for any military success in this war.
This deep strike sends correct signals around Kyiv’s intentions: that they are not ready to fold and accept “negotiations” (meaning submission), and that on the contrary, there are ready to expand the surface area of this war.
In addition, Ukraine also challenged the narrative that “Crimea is gone forever”.
President Zelensky’s crucial remarks (following the strike) that “Crimea is Ukrainian, and we will never give it up… The war with Russia began and will end in Crimea” as well as the vows to retake it: “we will return to the Ukrainian Crimea”, all establish a new reality for this war: Kyiv is in a state of total war and will not stop until it succeeds in re-establishing sovereignty over its entire territory - not just the ones captured after the Feb-24 invasion.
To be clear, Ukraine is still in no military position to retake the peninsula (even if Russia was to continue fighting only a conventional war to defend it (without the use of tactical nuclear weapons) - which it very well may not).
But this does not mean that the political groundwork should not be laid out right now.
Indeed, there is a secondary implication from this tactic: it expands the Overton window of geopolitical discourse around this war.
Not only does this bring back at least some realism to the argument that Crimea may after all be in play, but it also inadvertently dismisses the long-imposed frame that Ukraine needs to negotiate a ceasefire.
This is a direct challenge to that frame: not only is Ukraine going to settle and allow Russians to freeze their new gains via some temporary ceasefire, but Kyiv is in fact actively preparing to retake all its territory.
This then creates further political challenges to fans of the appeasement policy towards the Kremlin: if Ukraine is focused on retaking all of its territory, then suggesting a temporary ceasefire turns into a diplomatically tone-deaf non-starter.
3) Undermining the political significance of Russia’s annexation plans.
Russia is currently in the works to hold referenda in the newly occupied territories.
In both Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, a sham referendum result in favor of joining Russia proper will be used to formally annex both territories and make them part of Russia: the repeat of the 2014 Crimea playbook.
(side note: in doing so, Russia is also taking some major risks: what if Ukraine retakes Kherson after its formal annexation? How can Putin withstand the shame of losing a Russian territory? How could he delay the mobilization and declaration of war after such a humiliation? Perhaps due to precisely these risks, the referendum is on hold: the Kremlin probably wants to solidify its battlefield gains and ensure that Ukraine could not recapture the lost territory. How fast they move with these plans will therefore be a good indicator of how they perceive the correlation of forces on the battlefield and the risk of Ukraine’s successful counterattack).
But Zelensky’s expansion of the war aims, and bringing back Crimea on the table, sends a crucial signal: that no other annexation will matter politically, that Ukraine will not accept the new status quo in relation to any of the lost and annexed territories - that Russia can claim those territories as its own all it wants, but this will not deter Kyiv from further attempts to recapture them.
This is a powerful reminder to the global community not to acquiesce to Russia’s imposed new status quos.
And unfortunately, for a very long time, the West was doing just that: dismissing Crimea’s return and accepting the new status quo that the peninsula is lost forever (or at least, for a very long time/until the end of the Putin regime).
Kyiv’s expansion of the conflict zone is a powerful counterforce against this hitherto crystallized, and unfavorable (to Ukraine) narrative.
4) Strategic significance: overextension
Simply put, Russia now has to worry about a much wider surface area of potential Ukrainian attack.
They are now forced to acknowledge the new reality that even Crimea is within range.
There is a powerful opportunity cost for every Russian soldier/resources pinned across many different axes.
If Russia choses to fortify Kherson, Crimea will remain vulnerable - if on the other hand, it decides to disperse its troops and defend Crimea, Kherson and all other frontlines of Donbas, Ukraine will get to create new opportunities for itself: if Kherson becomes too difficult to surmount, it can chose to redirect its resources and retake towns, and possibly even certain cities in Donbas.
The strategic and political value of these would be far less than a successful recapture of Kherson: but Ukraine is now mainly driven by shorter-term geopolitical signaling concerns of proving viability of military success, and so, any decent battlefield victory would be most welcome.
Russia’s response and potential risks.
On this particular occasion, and caught off-guard, the Kremlin decided to dismiss the attack as a fire on its base: escaping the signaling pressure of the alternative narrative - a narrative that would have forced Putin to escalate and potentially force him to call for general mobilization, and/or declare war.
But if 1) Such attacks continue, and 2) the Kremlin decides to acknowledge these as Ukrainian strikes, the context will change rather rapidly, and Russia will likely resort to one of the three most likely scenarios:
Scenario 1: Russia escalates its efforts, and throws the kitchen sink at Ukraine.
The Kremlin (unfortunately) still has enough revenue to raise the value of military contracts offered to new volunteer recruits, offer them even more money, and perhaps escalate its tactic of recruiting prisoners (being even less discerning in who is released from prison).
In the short-term however, this far more limited recruitment wave will still most likely be insufficient to open new/additional axes of attacks.
Scenario 2: Russia declares war, and orders a general mobilization.
We are yet to see how effective Russian “voenkomats” (military admin units in charge of recruitment) are in successfully and quickly mobilizing a lot of Russians to fight in Ukraine, but it is fair to assume that sooner or later, this would allow Putin to engage in new axes of attacks.
Putin could target Odessa, increase resources on the Kharkiv axes, and possibly even restart a campaign against Kyiv itself (via Belarus).
And even if the Kharkiv and Kyiv axes would serve as distractions only, Russia could potentially succeed in the Southern Ukraine/Odessa axes.
Ukraine would thus be stretched thin and would need to defend multiple new axes of attacks: the momentum/initiative may once again reverse.
Scenario 3: Use of tactical nuclear weapons.
Russia could once again threaten Ukraine against crossing the line in relation to Crimea.
They could follow through on this threat by conducting a demonstrative lower-yield tactical nuclear strike somewhere in the empty fields, and threaten to follow through with actual strikes: wherein, their credibility would now be bolstered, and Kyiv would probably take their threats seriously - no longer dismissing them as bluff.
Overall then, targeting Crimea is a high-reward /high-risk strategy.
Most of the strategic/political rewards have already been accrued however, and it might therefore be prudent to delay further further attacks against Crimea - until after the successful recapture of Kherson.
Regardless of how Ukraine chooses to proceed however, the task for the US & NATO remains the same: continue training and arming Ukraine at the scale and quality needed to beat Russians on the battlefield.