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Disarming Ukraine – Day 1
On February 15 Professor John J. Mearsheimer gave a talk (video) about the Ukraine crisis. He starts out (at 3min) by explaining who has caused it:
The United States, mainly, and its allies are responsible for this crisis.
I recommend to watch it in full.
Like me and many other analysts Mearsheimer did not expect that a Russian move into the Ukraine would happen. Why the Russian government finally decided to take that step is not clear to me. I believe that Zelensky's lose talk about acquiring nuclear weapons for the Ukraine was one of the decisive factors. Who told Zelensky to come up with that?
The Russian operation started with a volley of cruise missiles that destroyed air defense radars and missiles, military airports, ammunition depots and some military harbor. The followed ground attacks by armored forces from Belarus southward, form Russia westward and from Crimea northward. These progressed well though some tanks got destroyed by anti-tank missile fire. The ground moves have air cover and heavy artillery moving up behind them.
This map does not show the progress of the operation but a likely operational plan the Russian military might have.
bigger
The plan seems to be to a. take Kiev, b. encircle the 60,000 strong Ukrainian force that was preparing to attack Donbas c. take the coast.
A large fleet of helicopter with Russian parachuter took the Antonov / Hostomel airport some 20 miles from Kiev. They did not even bother with CNN filming them. A fleet of transport planes from Russia will soon land there and deliver more forces.
The nuclear reactors at Chernobyl have been secured by Russian troops.
The Russian Ministry of Defense claims Russian aircraft have destroyed, 83 ground targets, 2 Ukrainian Su-27s, 2 Su-24s, 1 helicopter, 4 Bayraktar TB-2 drones. One Ukrainian Su-27 has landed in Romania. The pilot was probably not interested in getting killed.
The Ukrainian air-defenses, airforce, navy, most large command and control elements and depots have ceased to exist. The moral of its ground troops will be generally low though some of the Nazi battalions may still be willing to fight.
It is not know yet how far the attack from the north has reached towards Kiev. The attack from Russian mainland is currently fighting around Kharkiv, the Ukraine's second biggest city. The most successful attack was from Crimea as it has progressed significantly. The canal which provides water to Crimea and had since 2014 been blocked by the Ukraine has been liberated. Dnieper water is again flowing to the island.
Russia has so far only committed a relatively small ground force. More troops will follow when the first echelons make more progress. Russia has held back from using ballistic missiles and only used cruise missiles. That is probably a message to the 'west' that Russia could escalate if needed. There has also been little use so far of Russia's electronic warfare elements. Internet and telephone are working in all of the Ukraine except for Kharkiv which seems to have Internet problems.
The Russian stock market is down but gold, oil and gas are up and Russia has so far lost zero money.
The U.S. is pushing its European 'allies' to commit economic suicide by sanctioning everything Russia. The U.S. should be more careful. Its is one of the biggest buyers of Russian oil and its aircraft industry depends on titanium from Russia. Russia surely knows who is trying to hurt it the most and it surely knows how, and has the means to, hurt back.
“When a prediction proves erroneous, a decent respect for your colleagues requires at least an explanation.” Prof. Michael Brenner
[excerpt of his self-description – full version https://sites.pitt.edu/~mbren/Background.htm ]
Consultant to United States Departments of Defense and State, Foreign Service Institute and Mellon Bank on multilateral diplomacy, peace keeping by multinational organizations, and political risk assessment.
Prof. Brenner writes:
Friends & Colleagues
When a prediction proves erroneous, a decent respect for your colleagues requires at least an explanation.
cheers
Michael Brenner
mbren@pitt.edu
SOMETHING HAPPENED
My muse knocked at dawn. Exhausted after catching the redeye from Moscow and then diverted over Finland. He insisted on a full breakfast before whispering in my ear. A week pulling up the grass roots from the permafrost in Gorky Park while subsisting on borscht and boiled cabbage had drained him.. Reanimated, the Truth began to flow – in short, staccato sentences with none of the usual refinements and subtle similes.
Context and background are everything in understanding the Russian attack. Look at the process of decision as dynamic over time rather than sharply focused in the immediate.
Putin is not a dictator. He cannot simply choose a course of action and give commands a la Stalin. Never has been. He has great authority; yet, at the same time, he represents the underlying convictions, thoughts and interests of powerful people in and around the government. Most of them were seated in that semicircle at St. Catherine’s Hall for the televised meeting of the Russian Security Council.
They, along with most all of Russia’s political cum economic class, have felt deeply humiliated by what they see as the shabby, patronizing treatment they have received from the West – led by a crass America – since 1991. The insults in word and action have hit them nonstop since 2014, reaching a crescendo from March 2021 onward. They have known full well that the aim is to denature Russia as a political cum diplomatic power in Europe – and beyond. The West want it neutralized and marginalized so that the U.S. can remain master of Europe as it prepares for a titanic struggle with China for global supremacy. Unfettered access to Russia’s wealth of natural resources is a bonus.
Concrete security concern have sharpened progressively as Washington has broken a series of major arms control agreements, expanded NATO, connived to replace friendly governments with American proxies via the notorious “color revolutions,” sought to undercut energy ties with European states, and deployed advanced weapons systems (above all, the anti-missile systems in Poland and Rumania able to be converted into offensive missile launchers), and via its ‘rules-based international order’ sloganeering and democracy vs autocracy campaign make explicit its intention to do everything possible to rig the game of world politics in its favor.
Ukraine, they believe, became the occasion (not the cause) to pin down a Russia whose growing strength discomforted and annoyed the Americans. It represented a conscious decision of the Biden administration under the sway of reborn Cold Warriors in State, the NSC, the CIA and the Pentagon. The triumph of their will in a government bereft of contrary voices and led by a weak, manipulable President was a sure thing. The Ukraine anti-Russia operation began in March with the Washington encouraged build-up of Ukrainian military forces along the Donbass Line, delivery of large quantities of arms including Javelin anti-armor weapons, renewed talk of heavy economic sanctions, and a chorus of shrill rhetoric from all quarters in Washington and Brussels.
The American objective of putting Russia back in its subordinate place was taken as an obvious given by the Kremlin. Uncertainty existed on the question of what initiatives on the ground to expect: a major assault on the Donbass or provocative acts to force a Russian reaction that could be used as a pretext for imposing sanctions (above all, the cancelling of NORDSTROM II).
It is likely that senior policymakers in Washington themselves had not made a definitive judgment on the issue. Divisions among individual players and a wavering President could very well left have important matters unresolved within a soft, cloudy consensus. There was visible evidence of this in the repeated juxtaposition, and alternation, of bellicose rhetoric and Biden’s mollifying words in public and the “let’s not go to war” telephone conversations he initiated to Putin and reaffirmed at their Geneva Summit.
In Moscow, too, there likely were differences of opinion – or, more accurately, of emphasis. They surely led to some divergences over what actions Russia should take. It is essential to bear in mind that Putin himself seems to have been closer to the dovish end of the continuum among Security Council members on the overarching issue of how to deal with the U.S., with the West, and particularly Ukraine. One could imagine a gradual hardening of thinking among all individuals as tensions mounted and frustrations grew in the Kremlin. A Putin, who might have been trying to fashion an approach that reconciled his own wariness about military confrontation with genuine worry about the threats to Russian security presented by Washington’s hardline, might have found himself in a quandary. I suspect that American official have very little understanding of this reality or appreciate its implications.
That could explain the promulgation of that strange position paper/demarche wherein he laid out in detail a list of demands for a drastic revision of Europe’s security configuration punctuated by an emphasis on time urgency. That is to say, a Hail Mary to stay the hand of a growing consensus that the time had come for Russia to hit back at the West in the Ukraine. Two things perhaps tipped Putin’s thinking into accepting the necessity of doing what he did. One was the West’s unbending and unaccommodating response. The other, was the Ukrainians’ launching an unprecedented artillery and mortar barrage against the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. Who forced that fateful step? Elements of the Ukraine Army and/or security services? The AZOV brigade and associated parties? Zelensky? With how much encouragement from the CIA and/or the White House?
Michael Brenner
Posted by: Housedoc | Feb 25 2022 15:10 utc | 399
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