Weekly Overview Cables - US Restrictions on Ukraine's deep strikes must go.
*note: cables will be off this week - back after memorial day.
Ukraine War Updates.
1) Russia reaps benefits from overstretched Ukraine.
Russian forces are ramping up their push to capture Chasiv Yar (and some additional gains have now been made), aiming to leverage increased pressure on Ukrainian troops from broader offensives in northern Kharkiv Oblast and eastern Ukraine.
Preparations are likely underway for the second phase of Russia's northern Kharkiv Oblast offensive, expected to kick off after the anticipated seizure of Vovchansk.
With that said, so far, Russia is yet to dedicate north of 10k troops to Kharkiv offensive.
This is still largely a fixing operation (and a genuine desire to create a buffer zone and prevent Ukraine-backed saboteurs from easily and frequently crossing into Russia’s Belgorod region.)
Once Ukraine commits its reserves, the main effort will be the expansion of the Russian push in Donbass - where progress is slow but steady.
The near-term Russian objective is probably to cut Ukrainian supply lines connecting Kostiantynivka and Kramatorsk - setting up conditions for further Russian territorial gains to come at a much lower cost.
2) Ukraine’s unprecedented strikes in Crimea.
Over the past week, Ukraine engaged in an unprecedented level of deep strikes targeting Crimea.
A long-range Ukrainian strike on the Russian-controlled Belbek airbase in occupied Crimea destroyed three Russian warplanes and a fuel facility near the main runway, according to an American commercial satellite company Maxar.
The very next day, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported shooting down over 100 Ukrainian drones on Friday, marking one of Ukraine’s largest air assaults against Russia in months.
A Ukrainian security official confirmed Ukraine's involvement in the attack.
This is an unprecedented volume of drone strikes to be conducted in one day - one which resulted in rolling blackouts in Crimea.
The timing of this ramp up in Ukrainian strikes aims to 1) galvanize domestic morale, and 2) signal to both Russia and the West that recent setbacks around Kharkiv have not affected Ukraine’s resolve - and that on the contrary, the harder that Russia will push, the harder will be the pushback that they will receive.
3) Putin’s state visit to China.
Russia did not secure much sought big trade deals with China, but there were hints of a closer alignment and cooperation in the defense-industrial production.
Russia's delegation included top officials focused on boosting defense production, including Denis Manturov - recently promoted to first deputy prime minister overseeing the defense sector.
And from China’s perspective, the timing for such a cooperation is increasingly favorable.
We will have to unpack this in-depth in the upcoming cables, but for now, it is sufficient to say that the recently announced additional tech embargo measures (like the semiconductor export restriction on Huawei) and new EV/Battery/solar panel tariffs in America, and an indication that EU is also moving in that direction, reduces the maximum cost China stands to absorb from more open cooperation with Russia.
After all, if a lot of harm and restrictions are coming their way in any case, why not push back and create nuisance and further distraction for the West in Europe by offering stronger support for Moscow?
To be clear, there is still a lot for China to lose - but whether or not they move forward with this support will ultimately depend on Xi’s calculation on the extent to which Washington and Brussels are truly ready to escalate in order to dissuade or (or if all else fails) to punish Beijing for their increasing involvement in backing Putin.
The US must lift restrictions on Ukraine’s deep strikes.
Kharkiv is not under an immediate danger of seizure.
Russian troops took more than five months to capture Bakhmut - a city approximately 8 times smaller in size and 15 times smaller in population.
If Russia had to expend 30k casualties (with 20k coming from Wagner alone), and use human wave tactics to seize a city of that size, then taking Kharkiv - a city of 130 square miles and population of approximately 1.2m (although, given recent events, this number will probably go down soon) would take much more than the 40-75k troops Russia has kept in North-eastern axis/Belgorod Region of Russia.
(side note: and only approximately 10k Russian troops have moved in to capture the few villages near Kharkiv)
Realistically, Russia would need to devote 200k+ troops just to encircle the city and use the siege tactics seen in the capture of Mariupol (and there - a mere few thousand soldiers kept on for three months) or devote an even higher figure to fight it out street by street.
Ukraine will also not treat Kharkiv like any other city - it is the second largest city and its loss would lead to a terrible damage to the national morale.
As such, and given the intensity of potential battle, the overall resource allocation and preparatory needs would be so logistically demanding and intense, that if Russia was to decide to take Kharkiv, then this move would be telegraphed several months in advance.
Consequently, and as discussed in the previous week’s cables, Russia’s primary objective is to engage in a fixing operation and force Ukraine to stretch itself thin.
And given Ukraine’s current difficulties with manpower, from Russia’s point of view, this is exactly the correct strategy to increase the likelihood of a breakthrough in Donbas - putting large cities like Zaporizhia under a direct threat.
We talked about Ukraine’s erroneous decisions in being too late to mobilize - and to this day, they have not reduced the mobilization age to 18 (it is currently at 25).
But even if all of the manpower-related mistakes were to be reversed today, their effects would only be felt later this year.
As it stands, Russian forces attacking Ukraine have now expanded to about 510k troops.
And each month, Russia is recruiting 30k more troops to the effort - a figure approximately 3x that of Ukraine (although accurate numbers are hard to come by, at the very least, we know that the pace is lower than that in Russia.)
So Russia enjoys a significant advantage in this long frontline - it has a much freer hand to open new axis of attack.
Given all this, the very least that Ukraine can do, is to try to deny logistical and air power advantages to Russia.
Part of this equation, is to arm Ukraine with sufficient number of Patriots, NASAMs, IRIS-Ts, SAMP-Ts to 1) protect frontline troops, and key high-value locations from Russian ballistic and hypersonic cruise missiles, and 2) shoot down and destroy Russian bombers dropping glide bombs.
(side note: due to lack of sufficient number of surface-to-air missile interceptors, Ukraine’s successful missile interception rate has fallen from 73% to 46% - Russian missiles are now once again more likely to hit their target: previously this only happened right at the outset of the war.)
But another important aspect is Ukraine’s capacity to engage in long range strikes on Russian territory: crucial railroads, logistics hubs, ammo depots, air fields - Ukraine must be equipped and allowed to strike all of these important targets that are on the Russian soil.
But up until this point, this was not the case - for example, Ukraine was not allowed to use HIMARS an ATACMS missiles outside Ukrainian territory - so crucial targets in Belgorod were off-limits
(side note: Crimea is Ukraine - so no such limits were placed: to a devastating effect for Russia.)
This means that some of the most powerful missile systems in Ukraine’s possession are precluded from targeting Russian assembly areas and command posts in Belgorod - this ludicrous situation grants Russian freedom to prepare for an invasion free from the safety of their own territory.
And even Patriots were not allowed to be moved to Kharkiv - for the fear that they may shoot down Russian bombers dropping glide bombs from within Russia’s own airspace.
Indeed, This is precisely why Zelenskyy appealed to the West asking for more Patriot batteries - saying that even two additional batteries guarding over Kharkiv would preclude Russian invasion.
Now, this is hyperbolic and more will be needed - but.. there is truth to this: without Patriots, Russian bombers will stay within Russian borders and drop glide bombs to decimate Ukrainian defenses in Kharkiv - mere 18 miles away from the border.
Russian glide bombs launched from Russia have a range of around 40 miles - 20 miles more than what is needed to reach Kharkiv.
As a result, Russian bombers can target and strike no fewer than 2,480 Ukrainian settlements in Chernihiv, Sumy, and Kharkiv oblasts together without ever leaving Russian airspace - fully 26k square miles of territory would be within the reach of Russian bombers that don’t ever cross into Ukrainian airspace.
The current policy from Washington is untenable and logically incoherent: Ukraine can use US weapons to defend itself from an attack, but it must first wait for Russians to amass into a large fighting force and cross the border first.
In other words, currently, Washington wants Ukraine to first wait for Russia to assemble all of its invasion force and firepower might before launching a defensive strike.
Crucially, this means that Russia would enjoy an enormous tactical advantage: it can prepare and amass power relatively unscathed, and launch glide bombs and hypersonic missiles to soften Ukrainian targets prior to invasion.
Russia already had an upper hand in terms of manpower, and pure firepower, and now, due to Washington’s incoherent policy, it also enjoys asymmetry of reach.
In essence, Ukraine has to take punishment and await Russian troops’ arrival on its territories before its hands are finally untied.
This is a ridiculous situation that grants perverse incentives to aggressive nuclear powers everywhere.
Exactly what is the message being sent?
Is it that precisely due to possession of a nuclear weapon (and America’s hesitance in letting its conventional weapons to be used against such a power on its own turf), any other aggressive/revisionist nuclear power can also use stand-off range weapons to attack its other victims, and America will not allow a proportional counter-strike on aggressor’s territory due to ‘‘escalation concerns’’?
So then, what if China uses its DF-26 ballistic missiles to destroy crucial airfields and defensive installations in Taiwan?
What would happen then?
Would it be that as long as there is no actual invasion, America would not let Taiwan use any of US-made weapons to counter-strike missile launchers located in China?
Tentative signs of change in policy.
Now, there are fortunately some signals that Washington is finally changing its tune.
During his visit to Kyiv (and when announcing $2bn in foreign military financing for Ukraine), US Secretary of State Antony Blinken implied that the US will no longer act as an obstacle for Ukraine’s plans to use US-provided weapons to strike Russia: “We have not encouraged or enabled strikes outside of Ukraine, but ultimately Ukraine needs to make decisions for itself on how it conducts this war…We will continue to back Ukraine with the equipment it needs to win.”
This is good.
It is ok if Washington doesn’t offer affirmative rhetorical support for such strikes and refuses to follow in the footsteps of the UK.
(side note: once again, the UK leads the way in normalizing the use of weapons that were hitherto out of limits for the rest of NATO states. Similar things happened previously with armored vehicles and tanks - UK was the first to announce that it was sending Challenger 2s - and US and Germany promptly followed suit. Similarly, UK’s storm shadow missiles were delivered much earlier than ATACMS. And now, the UK has openly announced that it is ok to use its storm shadows to strike targets within Russia. The UK will be remembered in the history of the Ukraine war as the NATO state that continuously pushed the Kremlin’s ‘‘red lines’’ and proved how malleable and meaningless they all were.)
That is, as long as restrictions on the use of ATACMS, and other long-range strike capabilities are lifted, and Ukraine is allowed to use these advanced weapons to strike crucial targets in Russia.
And until that happens, Ukraine should keep using storm shadows and other long-range missiles to hit Russian military installations in Belgorod - to normalize the practice and make Washington’s continuous refusal even more untenable than it currently is.
Have a good vacation. Look forward to your comments on events in Iran and Slovakia.