A STUNNING TURNAROUND IN UKRAINE

“How did you go bankrupt?”

Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises.

MSNBC reports Ukraine took the city of Kupyansk overnight, which cuts off supply lines to Russian forces in the south. Ukraine pushed all the way to Izyum, taking that key Russian stronghold. British military analyst Lawrence Freedman stat es Ukraine’s offensive is “a dramatic new phase in the more than six-month war.” Izyum is an important railway hub which Russian forces seized back in March after an extended battle. The loss ranks just below Russia’s defeat around Kyiv in the spring. The New York Times reports Russian forces were seen raising a white flag over the Izyum railroad station.

Lawrence Freedman’s analysis is particularly important:

“As with bankruptcy so with military defeat. What appears to be a long, painful grind can quickly turn into a rout. A supposedly resilient and well-equipped army can break and look for means of escape. This is not unusual in war. We saw it happen with the Afghan Army in the summer of 2021.

“The speed of advance has been impressive, as tens of square kilometres turn into hundreds and then thousands, and from a handful of villages and towns liberated to dozens. Even as I have been writing this post paragraphs keep on getting overtaken by events.

“What has happened over the past few days is of historic importance. This offensive has overturned much of what was confidently assumed about the course of the war. It serves as a reminder that just because the front lines appear static it does not mean that they will stay that way, and that morale and motivation drain away from armies facing defeat, especially when the troops are uncertain about the cause for which they are fighting and have lost confidence in their officers. Who wants to be a martyr when the war is already lost?”

Observers have called the Ukrainian offensive “opportunistic,” in that they decided to attempt it after seeing the Russians send additional forces from this region south of Kherson, giving them an opportunity to meet the Russian forces in the Donetsk on more equal terms. Ukrainian sources, however, say that the Donetsk offensive was always their main plan, that all the talk about the “coming Kherson offensive” was meant to get just this reaction from the Russians, and that they struck when they saw the disinformation campaign had worked.

This does not mean the Kherson offensive is not real. The Russian forces in the city are reported to be under random attack from Ukrainian resistance forces inside the city. In the past ten days, the Ukrainians knocked down all the main bridges over the Dnipro River, cutting the Russians off from the majority of their supply depots on the eastern side of the river. The Russians have been forced to make pontoon bridges, which are more vulnerable to attack by the Ukrainian Bayraktar drones.

Additionally, the Ukrainians have deployed High Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARM) supplied by the U.S., which have taken out radar sites of the Russian air defenses, which has given the Ukrainians the opportunity to bring in air support and establish tactical air superiority over the battlefield. The amazing Ukrainian long-range strikes into Crimea last month damaged the Russian air force and cut the Russian forces in southern Ukraine off from air support, not that Russian battlefield air support has been anything to write home about since the war began.

“In practice, as with all good strategists, the Ukrainian Commanders probably prepared for a range of contingencies. Their choices depended on what the Russian did. Once they saw the extent of the Russian troop movements, and the developing vulnerability this created, then the plan for Kharkiv will have firmed up in their minds. I also suspect that they wanted to make sure that the Kherson offensive was well established before risking opening up another front and that this governed the timing.”

“The Kharkiv offensive was not impulsive. It required careful preparation, including getting troops and their equipment into position without their intentions becoming too obvious. A sequence of moves has unfolded over the last few days designed to shock and disorient Russian forces, breaking through thin lines of defence, avoiding distractions by bypassing Russian positions that were in no position to interfere with their movement, and threatening them, and the rest of the Russian force in the region, with being cut off from their sources of supply and reinforcement, and also means of escape. The aim was not simply to grab territory and inflict blows on Russian forces, though that has been done. One aim was to get to Kupyansk,; the other was to take Izyum, with its substantial garrison and command centre.

“When the operation started the first target was the city Balakliya which was encircled before the Russian defenders were pushed out. From there the Ukrainians drove forward, achieving a pincer movement by also pushing forward to the Oskil River, south of Kupyansk. To prevent reinforcements coming in, , Ukraine damaged the bridge across the Oskpil river to Kupyansk. On Friday, another offensive line opened up with an attack on Russian positions in Lyman which had been taken by the Russians after a fierce battle at the end of May. This opened up the move against Izyum. According to the Ukrainians hundreds of Russians have already been killed and many captured. Ukrainian sources have described whole units wiped out. It is not clear how many Russian troops may be caught by these manoeuvres – perhaps some 10,000.

“Unsurprisingly the Russian Ministry of Defence has insisted that all will be well and that reinforcements are on the way. Some footage was supplied showing vehicles on the move, although doubts were soon expressed about how real these reinforcements were, what they could do when they arrived, and if they could arrive at all. The main Russian response, as per normal, has been to send random rockets into the city of Kharkiv, killing civilians.”

However, with all this good news, there is still the possibility of failure for Ukraine due to problems on the home front. Economist Adam Tooze has posted about the problems Ukraine faces now:

“As the summer comes to a close, its economic situation is increasingly alarming. The Russian invasion dealt a devastating blow to Ukraine’s economy, its public finances are in free fall, inflation is surging and millions are threatened with misery and deprivation. Unless Ukraine’s allies step up their financial assistance, there is every reason to fear both a social and a political a crisis on the home front, which will massively compound Kyiv’s difficulties in continuing the war regardless of its progress on the battlefield. “

All told the bill for recovery and reconstruction comes to $104 billion in immediate and short-term spending and $243 billionn over the longer term.

Under the immediate impact of Russia’s assault, in the first quarter of 2022 Ukraine’s GDP shrank by 15.1 percent year over year with a gigantic 45 percent fall in March. In the second quarter, the contraction was measured at 37 percent. This is far worse than the shock suffered by Ukraine in 2014-2015. Kyiv is now guestimating that the contraction for the year as a whole will be in the order of 33 percent.

One-third of Ukrainians have been displaced by the war. Over 6.8 million Ukrainian residents have left the country, a large majority of them women and children.4 An estimated 6.6 million people are internally displaced—fewer than in the previous month5 —with many individuals displaced more than once since leaving their homes of origin.6 According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the humanitarian situation is deteriorating rapidly, as access to critical services such as clean water, food, sanitation, and electricity declines, and 17.7 million people are left in need of humanitarian assistance

A population of millions, facing a freezing winter with windows and doors blown out, is a grim prospect indeed. Without a dramatic step up in international financial assistance, Ukraine will face a tragic choice between continuing the war at full intensity and risking a social and economic crisis that will destabilize the home front.

In conclusion, there is now talk of defeat on the Russian side. There was no sense of this in President Putin’s at the Vladivostok economic forum, with Russia’s isolation notable by the lack of international presence.

Freedman notes: “Because of the opacity of Putin’s decision-making and his delusional recent utterances, presenting Russia as the keeper of some core civilisational values, there is no suggestion that he has reached the point where he can acknowledge the position into which he has led his country. Prudence therefore requires us to assume that this war will not be over soon. But nor should it blind us to the possibility that events might move far faster than we assumed – first gradually, and then suddenly.”

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