Eamon Dyas

The idea that Kiev is “in ashes” [report 2 July 2-26] or that a single night of a Russian attack of such intensity represents a change in Russian tactics is what I find difficult to believe. What Russia did the other night was retaliatory rather than the expression of a new tactical perspective.

Russia would have to repeat the intensity of that night over many nights for it to have any real impact and I don’t believe it has the arms manufacturing capacity to do that. Although it has surprised the West, and in many ways surpassed the West in this area, Russia, for all its hopes, has a limited arms production capacity and while that enables it to strike hard against Kiev in short bursts it is not capable of sustaining those bursts over a long enough period to defeat Kiev. 

Such an outcome would be possible were it not for the fact that the war against Ukraine is historically unique. We have in this war the unprecedented situation where one of the adversaries is supplied with the means of sustaining its war effort largely from outside its borders and the source of that sustenance is beyond the military reach of the other adversary. 

The role of the US in the early years of the two World Wars could be pointed to as a precedent but it would be an inadequate one. In both wars the neutrality of the US in the early years of these wars enabled it to supply the Allies with critical supplies. When Germany protested Washington replied that, as a neutral it could trade with both adversaries and its industries would no doubt replicate these trading arrangements with Germany if Germany was capable of availing of them in the same way that Britain and France were. Of course what was being referred to was the relative strengths of the British and German navies in protecting the sea trading routes and when it came to the German navy neither US traders nor insurance companies had the same political and logistical faith in it as it had in the Royal Navy. 

This meant that despite US-German trade continuing for a while after the start of both wars it soon became obvious that Britain was more favourably positioned to blockade trade with Germany than Germany was in blockading US trade with Britain. It was the realisation of this disadvantage that led to Germany investing in submarine warfare in both wars – the outcomes of which enabled the war-mongers in the US to justify the US joining the war, at least in the case of the first one.

But what we have in Ukraine is some of the most industrialised centres on the planet having direct overland access to the front line and where NATO arms exports to Ukraine do not have to transit over international transit routes which the sea provided during both world wars and where at the time such transit was vulnerable to military interception by Germany. The result is that Russia has no ability to intercept these arms exports until they reach Ukraine as to do so would risk a direct confrontation with NATO. It is this that constitutes the most difficult challenge for Russia and it is this that determines its strategy. Russia does not have unlimited military production capacity. It certainly has the capacity to overrun Ukraine if it was only dealing with Ukraine but it hasn’t only been dealing with Ukraine since the early part of the conflict. Within months of the start Russia realised that Ukraine was not going to be abandoned by NATO and so it increased its investment in military production. But so did NATO (and was prodded into doing so by the US) and it continues to increase its military investment while at the same time expanding the border between Russia and NATO in ways that compel Russia to deploy an increasingly bigger part of its military capacity into defending this enlarged border.

In the meantime, I don’t think that Russia has any other option than to continue its war of attrition in the hope that it can outlast Europe’s willingness to continue to supply Ukraine with the lifeline it is currently supplying. But at present at least, there is no sign that this will happen anytime soon. It could be that the people of Ukraine will decide at some point that they have made enough sacrifices to keep hold of an area of the country that never wanted to be part of them in the first place. But again, I don’t see that happening as the bulk of what may have supplied such opposition to Kiev’s military effort has been successfully decanted out of the country where they can wave Ukrainian flags from the safety of comfortable homes supplied by other European countries. Were those same people who are now living comfortably in the west still living in Ukraine their pro-war enthusiasm would likely be tested to the point of dissent but its absence inside Ukraine means that the civil pressure on Kiev is correspondingly absent. 

I have long believed that at some point Russia will have to reach a settlement that falls short of its initial aims unless it’s prepared to engage the tactical nuclear option – something that would represent a change in tactics.  But the threat from Ukraine may be seen as an existential threat by Russia. However it is a threat that isn’t as immediate as the results of a nuclear war would be and so I don’t believe that the people in the Kremlin are willing to gamble on such a thing. The other problem for Russia is that in order to reach a realistic settlement it will have to come through the opening of the right diplomatic channels. In the current circumstances if it is to offer to open peace negotiations without those diplomatic channels being in place that offer will be interpreted as weakness by NATO and the EU and only encourage those forces to continue. At one point it looked like Trump was about to supply those diplomatic channels but the EU, paralysed by its political fusion with the rabid Baltics and the UK, sabotaged the possibility. So I expect to see more of the same for some time yet.