What will Russia do in Ukraine (and not just in the Donbass)
Russia has sent troops to the Donetsk and Lugansk territories in eastern Ukraine. What will the Russian army do in case of war? And how will Kiev respond? All the details according to Foreign Affairs
Michael Kofman and Jeffrey Edmonds, researchers with the Russia Studies Program at the Center for Naval Analyzes, yesterday published an article in the geopolitical journal Foreign Affairs to explain why Russia intends to wage an extended war in Ukraine, and not a limited military operation. in a specific territory.
WHAT HAS PUTIN DONE
Yesterday Vladimir Putin ordered the deployment of troops in the self-proclaimed separatist (and pro-Russian) republics of Donetsk and Lugansk: both are located in Donbass, a region of eastern Ukraine. Shortly before, it had formally recognized the independence of the two territories, aligning itself with the resolution passed by the State Duma (the lower house of the Russian parliament) last week.
Putin motivated sending soldiers to Donetsk and Lugansk with "peacekeeping" in that area. He recently spoke of an ongoing "genocide" in the area by Kiev against Russian speakers: an unfounded accusation that seems to have been used as a pretext for an invasion disguised as a peacekeeping mission.
The leaders of the Donetsk and Lugansk separatist movements – Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik, respectively – are part of United Russia, Putin's party.
Beyond the military operation, Moscow was already very present in Donetsk and Lugansk : in addition to having armed and financed the rebels in their war against the national army, it had provided passports to some of the inhabitants and elaborated economic development plans for these territories. The Kremlin used the presence of a Russian-speaking population in the Donbass to justify its interests in the region.
WHAT KOFMAN AND EDMONDS WRITE
In Foreign Affairs Kofman and Edmonds write that the possibility still exists that Russia decides not to launch a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, opting instead for limited offensives as it did in 2014, when it annexed Crimea. But in these eight years Ukraine has changed and, despite the presence of Moscow in the Donbass, it has come a lot closer to the West. The Kremlin, on the other hand, would like to bring the country back under its sphere of influence and prevent its entry into NATO and the European Union.
Considering all this, the two researchers write that Russia, in order to achieve its goals, “will not limit itself. It will use most of its military assets – ground forces, air power, attack helicopters, powerful missiles, and its navy – in violent open conflict. It will cross a large part of Ukraine, not just the east, and will try to take the capital with the aim of installing a pro-Russian government ”.
Last Friday, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, said he was "convinced" that Putin had "made the decision" to invade Ukraine "next week, in the next few days", adding that the attack may not be limited to Donbass but aim for the capital, Kiev.
For Kofman and Edmonds, a war between Russia and Ukraine would be "incredibly destructive" and would provoke a popular uprising against the Russian occupiers, as well as a large number of refugees and civilian casualties. Unable to predict the scale of the possible conflict, the two authors nonetheless argue that "it would produce levels of violence never seen in Europe since the 1990s" with the dissolution of Yugoslavia.
THE MILITARY NUMBERS OF RUSSIA
Russia has deployed over 150,000 troops near the border with Ukraine (US government estimates are even higher: 170-190,000). This is a number that – we read in Foreign Affairs – suggests that Moscow's plans do not include a limited incursion but the occupation of "substantial" portions of Ukrainian territory, "including the capital".
THE OPENING AIR ATTACKS
According to Kofman and Edmonds, Russia will open the military campaign in Ukraine with air strikes against the country's critical infrastructure: logistics and command centers, defense bases, airports. It will use its bombers, its ballistic and cruise missiles with ground launch; it has also installed long-range rocket systems in the vicinity of the Ukrainian border, as well as various artillery to support ground troops.
However, the two researchers note that the Russian Air Force has little experience in destroying enemy air defenses and has rarely used anti-radar missiles. On the other hand, however, Ukrainian air defenses are limited and not sufficient to guarantee adequate coverage for the infantry.
THE EARTH COUNTRYSIDE
The "opening" air campaign of the conflict will probably be short because Russia – unlike the Western armies – concentrates its firing capabilities not in the air forces but in the ground forces. It will then use helicopters to transport its troops to Ukrainian territory, and will use paratroopers. The tactic could be the following: a pincer maneuver to encircle Kiev and "envelop" the bulk of the Ukrainian ground forces in the eastern part of the country; at this point, Russian formations could block Ukrainian supply lines and fragment the national army into many isolated groups surrounded by Russian soldiers. Drones and helicopters will serve to offer coverage.
THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE NAVY
The Russian navy, on the other hand, would play a supporting role. The Black Sea fleet has been modernized and currently has platforms (conventional submarines, corvettes) capable of launching guided and precision cruise missiles: they have a range of over 1600 kilometers, and therefore are potentially capable of hitting any part of the territory. Ukrainian. The Black Sea fleet has also been reinforced on the amphibious side and is suitable for conducting operations of this type together with the ground forces, perhaps in the isthmus that separates the Crimean peninsula from the rest of Ukraine.
THE CYBER WAR
Finally, in addition to traditional capabilities, the Russian military operation could be supported by electronic warfare tools (to disable the Ukrainian military's navigation and communication systems, for example). Moscow's IT capabilities can also be used to spread fake news on the Internet, aimed at confusing Ukrainian citizens and soldiers and demoralizing them. Ukraine's critical infrastructure, such as the electricity grid, could be knocked out by Moscow's cyberattacks.
WHAT UKRAINE CAN DO
Compared to 2014, the year of the Russian annexation of Crimea, the Ukrainian army has improved a lot: it has received assistance from Western countries and has developed combat experience with the conflict in Donbass against separatists. This experience – Kofman and Edmonds point out – is however limited to trench warfare and the exchange of artillery shells. The armed forces of Kiev are not yet sufficiently numerous and prepared to resist a large-scale Russian invasion; the Ukrainian air force is moreover dated, the navy is made up of small ships.
According to estimates reported by Foreign Affairs , the Ukrainian ground forces amount to fifty-sixty battalions against over one hundred and twenty Russians. Who, in addition to the numerical advantage, have more experience and are better equipped.
For Kofman and Edmonds, the Ukrainian army would agree to focus on an organized retreat, position itself on more easily defensible terrain (the Dnieper River) and try to impose on Russia the highest human cost possible, to discourage the advance. However, Moscow could bomb Ukrainian positions and enter Ukrainian territory from the north (Belarus), bypassing the need to cross the Dnieper. Subsequently, the Russians could attack the capital Kiev from both the east and the west; it would become difficult for the Ukrainians to win it back.
But Russia may also find it difficult to maintain control of Ukrainian territory. The Kiev army could choose the guerrilla path, fragmenting into small formations with large autonomy and renouncing heavy weapons to give priority to infantry and portable missiles. However, the authors of the article highlight the limits of this approach, which is no longer effective as in the past due to the spread of drones and high-resolution satellite surveys that allow soldiers to be found and hit more easily.
Another possibility for the Ukrainian army is to force Russia to fight in the cities, to wear it out slowly: but the repercussions on the population and the economy would be very heavy. In addition to conventional forces, forms of organized rebellion against the occupiers are likely to emerge.
WHAT DOES PUTIN WANT TO DO WITH UKRAINE?
For months now, analysts have been repeating that Russia has no interest in starting a war in Ukraine, which would prove complicated and costly, both for the human losses and for the economic effort and for the sanctions that the West – and in particular the States United – they say they want to impose.
Analysts have often pointed out that, from a geopolitical point of view, a return to the pre-crisis status quo is more convenient for Moscow than an extended conflict. And this is because the Kremlin, through the clashes in the Donbass between the central government and the separatists, manages to "distract" Kiev from its intentions of approaching the West; on the other hand, neither NATO nor the European Union will ever accept among their members a state with a war within it. According to this reconstruction, therefore, Russia would not aim to take Kiev but to negotiate with America some agreement on the security of its borders, which it perceives in danger for the advance of NATO.
It was then pointed out that the entry of Russian troops into Donetsk and Lugansk yesterday represents the formalization of a reality that has existed for some time: Russia, in fact, has exercised de facto control over the two territories since 2014. According to this reconstruction, the military operation would be little more than a symbolic gesture, perhaps aimed at increasing Moscow's leverage in negotiations with the West, rather than the beginning of a total invasion.
Yesterday, however, Paul Sonne, who is in charge of national security at the Washington Post , pointed out one thing: the speech with which Putin recognized the two self-proclaimed republics was very hard (he said, among other things, that Ukraine is a nation that does not exist because it was created by Lenin). Putin, wrote Sonne, “is furious. [The issue] is personal and emotional, not simply geopolitical ”.
The thing that is most striking to me about this speech is how deeply angry Putin is. He's seething. This is personal and emotional – not simply geopolitical.
– Paul Sonne (@PaulSonne) February 21, 2022
In other words, according to Sonne, Putin is not moved by cold tactical calculation, but by a personal anger towards Ukraine and its political evolution. And he is therefore intent on bringing it back into the Russian sphere, even if this could entail human and economic suffering for Russia itself.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/russia-attacco-ucraina-donbass/ on Tue, 22 Feb 2022 10:36:48 +0000.