Russo-Ukrainian Conflict: Update and Forecast

The Russo-Ukrainian war has three main tracks, as we all know - there is a political track, economic one and, of course, there is a military track.

On the political side we see on one hand NATO and the West in general taking steps to scare Russian leadership into submission - both parliamentary assembly of NATO countries and European Parliament declared Russia a terrorist state and state sponsor of terrorism correspondingly. This basically means that diplomatic relationship between Russia and EU will be possible at the national level only, as EU as a union can't maintain a diplomatic relationship with a terrorist entity. Well, here we need to understand, EU as political organization, always takes a more aggressive stance because their position doesn't play as big of a role in practical relationship between countries. Also European Commission came at the end of November in support of creating International Tribunal on Ukraine that they also hope UN will support, but this would be difficult to accomplish because of Russia's veto power in UN's Security Council. EU's discussions on how to proceed with creating of such tribunal are happening now and according to Europe's chief diplomat, Josep Borel, there is a polemic among EU countries on this subject and they can't achieve a unanimous position at this point. US State Department came up with the statement today that they are reviewing their support for International Tribunal against Russia. Among European countries France and The Netherlands expressed their strong support for Tribunal. So nothing is decided yet, but nonetheless, strong desire for Putin to become Slobodan Milošević II was expressed and this perspective is going to be gaining more prominence if Putin's personal power inside of Russia is going to be on decline. Remember, Milošević was handed over to tribunal in Hague by the Serbian authorities for the promise of... Nobody remembers anymore what they were promised since none of the promises came true anyway.

So on one hand in political space we hear war drums beating louder and louder, but on the other hand there are signs that West wants the way out of the situation. Looks like Crimea is left outside of discussion and will continue to be a part of Russian Federation in case of any agreements. As for the republics there are two options, DPR and LPR go to Russia in the borders as they were before February 24 or in the borders of administrative regions of Donetsk and Lugansk as they were marked in Ukraine and before that in USSR. Republics and especially Donetsk Republic have suffered the most destruction during this war, to the point where many of towns and cities are simply leveled and can't be restored anymore so Ukraine may be agreeing to hand these territories to Russia, especially considering how population there is against Ukraine. Western position insists on all the territories of Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, now partially occupied by Russia, to be handed back to Ukraine. While the background negotiations are clearly happening, as one sign of the ongoing process we can see exchange of Brittney Griner for Viktor Bout (pronounced as Boot, like in leather boot), but on Ukraine issue Russia and US are too far apart as it comes from reading the "intelligence signals".

For the economy, Russia continues doing relatively well despite being the most sanctioned state in history ever and the efforts of internal Russian system liberals, like minister of Finance Siluanov and head of Russian CB Nabiullina, to sabotage the economic situation from inside. Starting December 5th price sealing for Russia crude mix, Urals, was set at $60 by G7 countries and EU (with minor exceptions for countries like Hungary) but continues trading below that level in Europe. In Far East Russian oil is selling above $60 as this price also includes expensive tanker delivery of Russian oil to the Asian market. Despite of earlier statements by Russian officials, including Energy minister Novak, that Russia won't be selling oil to the countries that capped the market price for Russian oil, so far, after cap was enacted there were crickets on this subject and as far as we know Russian oil continues selling in Europe and even in US. EU is preparing a sanctions packet #9 against Russia that is rumored to be mostly personal sanctions, where among other things many artists, writers and other people of prominence that didn't express a public condemnation of Russian invasion of Ukraine are going to be banned from coming to EU, holding there bank accounts etc. This in a way tells us that EU has ran out of options for real sanctions against Russia. The option to cap Russian gas price was also discussed in EU, but at this point agreement could not be reached.

So, this was a brief on the political and economic track of the ongoing conflict. But what about military situation? Well, outside of the events like drone attack on the airbases deep inside of Russia, that I covered in the previous article "...and World Peace", the front is relatively stable where Russian forces seem to be showing more success as of recent and we can expect the "musicians", e.g. PMC Wagner, to take over the town of Bakhmut after two months of the fiercest fighting with most casualties we have seen in this war so far. To reiterate my earlier point - this type of fighting with heavy use of artillery and tanks leaves nothing of the cities and towns they fight for. Looking back at the WWII, Soviet troops occupied Berlin seemed to have more buildings standing per square kilometer than today the town of Bakhmut. So we can probably say "territory that used to be called the town of Bakhmut is going to be taken over by PMC Wagner". Sad... But for more general analysis of the military situation couple of days ago I ran into a series of texts by @atomiccherry - Russian Telegram channel that provides fairly objective analysis of the military situation at the Russo-Ukrainian war. This report consists of 6 separate posts, author calls them texts and focuses primarily on military aid given by NATO to Ukraine. I think this review of the situation has a great degree of objectivity and I agree with his projections for 2023. This is a long text that I machine translated and done necessary editing to make it more readable in English. I didn't spend too much time editing text this time, but I think it still gets the point across. Please let me know in comments what YOU THINK of author's conclusions.

NATO military supplies delivered at Kiev International Airport in Borispol

Below is a translated text by Telegram channel @atomiccherry

TEXT 1: Der Totaler Krieg in the XXI century?

During the months of hostilities, Western military aid for Ukraine is undergoing significant structural changes, the essence of which often escapes the casual observer.

By default, it is assumed that with each new stage of the conflict, the volume of supplies only increases in order to strengthen the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but this statement is only partially true – a certain increase in the volume of assistance is primarily due to replenishing the losses of the Ukrainian army in military equipment, ammunition and military property, but not increasing its capabilities.

Europe and the United States from the first days of hostilities follow a very specific logic, the essence of which was that after inflicting a certain percentage of losses in manpower and equipment to the Russian Federation, it was believed that Moscow had to abandon its plans and agree to peace negotiations. For this reason, deliveries took place point-by-point, their purpose was to stop certain advantages of the Russian army: superiority in tanks, artillery, naval forces.

The problem with this approach lay in the very logic of the fact that the notorious "percentage of losses" in general can have at least some influence on the Kremlin or the internal situation in the Russian Federation. Western planners have thrown out of their calculations a fact that should have been taken into account at least from the point of view of military history – Russia is a country with extremely low sensitivity to losses. You can laugh at this, you can dispute it, you can consider it insignificant, but building a strategy based on ignoring such basic principles of national psychology and perception turned out to be not only absurd, but also a fatal mistake.

From the point of view of military art, Russia has always been a country that does not adapt well to rapid changes in the situation and is poorly oriented in the conditions of wars, the nature of which lies in the high speed of decision-making. Examples of the Russian-Japanese war of 1905 - 1906 or Soviet-Finnish war of 1939 - 1940 are quite appropriate here – faced with a strong rival, the country reacted too slowly to the defeats inflicted, and having received more or less acceptable conditions for concluding peace, preferred to retreat. But sometimes events developed according to a different scenario: one way or another, Russia was readjusting itself and was coming to the most comfortable format for it to conduct combat operations – a war of attrition.

After the events of the first half of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Moscow, which did not suffer serious (they may seem catastrophic to you, but ask yourself a simple reasonable question – did Kremlin, as the main actor of all processes in the Russian Federation, do they consider them the same?) economic or resource losses, resorted to this historically proven model.

This fact also had a direct impact on the structure of military assistance for Ukraine from the NATO bloc countries, which were forced to adapt to the realities of large-scale attrition fighting in conditions of limited capabilities of their own military industry.

TEXT 2: A campaign of attrition

During the summer-autumn period, NATO actively provided a significant amount of artillery ammunition and tactical missiles in the interests of the Ukrainian army, which ensured the short-term superiority of the AFU over the forces of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation: the accumulated data on the targets of the supplies infrastructure of the Russian troops, coupled with a significantly expanded arsenal of precision weapons, allowed the Ukrainian army to conduct a number of successful offensive operations near Kharkov, Izium and Liman. The targeted elimination of Russian ammunition depots, combined with an increase in the supply of traditional artillery systems, gave Ukraine the necessary advantage in firepower.

During the implementation of offensive operations, it was probably expected that upon completion of such Moscow would request negotiations, and no further high-intensity hostilities were planned. For this reason, Europe and the United States freely provided Kiev with ammunition from their own military reserves: counting only 155-mm shells from July to October there were more than 1 million pieces delivered during this period. By November, Western arsenals were significantly depleted without the possibility of rapid replenishment – during the subsequent audits, it turned out that it took from 3 to 5 years to restore the Alliance's reserves due not only to the lack of sufficient industrial capacity, but also in some cases the complete elimination of such (such a story happened, for example, with the German SMArt 155 military-technical complex).

The reason for this is simple – Europe and the United States were actively looking for ways to reduce their own military spending during the Cold War. If the USSR actively followed the principle of "guns instead of butter" throughout almost its entire existence, then the population of Western countries categorically refused to make such sacrifices. Maintaining the combat readiness of the armed forces in itself is an extremely costly and even unprofitable enterprise, and providing a strategic and mobilization reserve from the point of view of the economy looks like a real "black hole". After the 50s, the United States took drastic measures, completely abandoning the very concept of "mobilization reserve" - all the country's military reserves were calculated for a period of super–intensive hostilities in Europe for no more than six months. At the end of this period, it was believed that NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries had to come to some kind of peace agreement – otherwise America began the process of deploying new military productions, designed for a period of 5 to 8 years (we are talking, of course, about conventional war scenarios)…

At the same moment, events began to develop in a completely different way – Russia began the process of mobilization. The saturation of the army with manpower contributed to a change in the logistics structure (the practice of forming large warehouses of military equipment and ammunition was abandoned), and also allowed the restoration of the capabilities of rocket and artillery units due to the deconservation of weapons from the strategic reserve. In addition, it is impossible to dismiss the factor of expanding the capabilities of the Russian military industry – there are a number of interesting stories related to the supply of large quantities of European-made industrial equipment to Russia after February 24 of this year, i.e. under the sanctions regime. To date, the Russian artillery has restored the pace of fire power capabilities and is again shooting more than 20,000 shells per day.

In a word, the conflict has not just not waned – it has moved into the format of a war of attrition, which for a number of reasons cannot be considered desirable even for powerful Western economies.

Text 3: Lend-lease and why was it not?

Since the beginning of autumn, many rightly expected the intensification of Western arms supplies for the Armed Forces. Such a step seemed logical – by that time the Ukrainian army had demonstrated the ability to both defend and attack, while NATO countries had six months to prepare and organize processes related to increasing the volume of military assistance.

But that didn't happen.

As mentioned above, the North Atlantic Alliance historically sought to cut defense spending, and with the end of the Cold War, this trend became even stronger – NATO de facto became a hegemon, and did not need any military reserves at all. The volumes of such were reduced based on 1 month of intensive hostilities, military factories were reduced or repurposed, and funding for defense departments was cut.

For example, let's talk about heavy armored vehicles.

Currently, Germany can produce 100 Leopard-2 tanks in... 65 months. At the same time, Germany does not have the ability to simultaneously produce both tanks and self–propelled howitzers – the PzH 2000 uses components of the Leo tank chassis (by the way, a few months ago Kiev signed a contract with Berlin for the supply of 100 self-propelled howitzers - and they will be produced, according to its terms, in more than 5 years).

In the USA, the situation is somewhat different, but there is no production of new tank hulls (the current stocks of tanks are necessary for the United States to meet its own needs, because new modifications of vehicles are produced on their basis). America can restore and modernize the old Abrams at a rate of 30 units per month at the moment, 60 units with an increase in the financing of the production line, 88 – with a radical increase and expansion of the capacity of the only tank factory in the country (this is open data provided in the budget documents of the US Armed Forces).

With most other positions (with the exception of military vehicles and aircraft of various types), Western mobilization capabilities are the same as with tanks – they function exclusively to meet the needs of NATO in peacetime. There have been no colossal reserves in the Alliance for several decades, which is why it is absolutely impossible to supply the million-strong Ukrainian army with European and American weapons (taking into account the fact that, according to the most modest calculations, armies lose 1% of equipment per day of war of current intensity). No one plans to radically change this situation – the process of expanding military production itself is extremely expensive and takes at least five years, but in 2027, most likely, the relevance of this issue will be lost. The NATO countries themselves do not need excess military capacity or strategic reserves – on the contrary, the extremely difficult global economic situation dictates the need to reduce defense spending (Britain, which has cut its already modest military production, is an example). As a result, Europe and the United States are finding it difficult to find the necessary equipment for Ukraine, and it is for this reason that Kiev receives either Soviet-made equipment, or old M113 armored personnel carriers and police armored personnel carriers.

Nevertheless, NATO countries are forced not only to ensure the functioning of the Ukrainian army, but also to increase the volume of supplies – and in this matter the heavy legacy of Socialism turned out to be a serious help…

TEXT 4: The arsenal of democracy with communist roots

The Czech Republic can historically be called one of the key weapon forges of Europe. So it was in the era of the existence of Austria-Hungary, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. A significant part of the Soviet export weapons systems, supplied, for example, to Africa and the Middle East, were produced in Czechoslovakia, which, thanks to the enormous volumes of military orders, had the opportunity to maintain a powerful and developed weapons industry.

But after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, and then the USSR, Czech and Slovak military factories were left out of business. It could be the end of their story ends at this point, but the Czechs turned out to be much smarter and more visionary than their new partners from Western Europe and former allies from the Soviet Union. The production facilities were mothballed until better times, and have been waiting in the wings for several decades.

Of course, in this matter it is pointless to discuss exclusively the production of the Czech Republic and Slovakia – we are also talking about Poland, Bulgaria, Albania, Romania. The military factories of the designated countries have been supplying weapons and ammunition to Ukraine since the very beginning of the conflict, and continue to steadily expand their capacities (for example, the Polish state concern PGZ increases the production of missiles for portable anti-aircraft systems from 300 to 1000 units per year). The Czech Republic, ironically enough, turned out to be the only NATO country capable of restoring and modernizing more than 100 units of heavy armored vehicles per month: back in the spring, the pace of work at Czech defense plants allowed 150 tanks and 150 BMP/APC to be shipped to Ukraine within 30 days.

During the summer period, factories in Eastern Europe reactivated and expanded the production of spare parts for Soviet-type artillery (in particular, new gun barrels), as well as 73-mm, 122-mm, 125-mm and 152-mm shells. This made it possible to significantly improve the supply of Ukrainian artillery, although the situation is still far from covering at least 50% of the needs of the AFU artillery brigades.

However, it should be noted that in the former Warsaw Pact countries, the production of full–cycle weapons was practically destroyed - that is, they can successfully repair and restore a large number of Soviet-type equipment, but not produce it from scratch. The production of new weapons, as the example of the Polish self-propelled howitzer "Crab" and the Slovak self-propelled howitzer "Zuzana" shows, takes considerable time and is possible only in limited batches. Otherwise, the volume of work carried out by defense factories in Eastern Europe is enormous: they repair damaged vehicles, remove them from conservation, restore equipment from burial grounds located in Ukraine, modernize Soviet equipment, produce mortars, recoilless guns, shells, cartridges, mine-explosive equipment, anti-aircraft missiles (if not for them, Ukrainian air defense would have exhausted its missile reserves long ago).

The trend, in a word, is obvious – the abandonment of Soviet weapons systems in Ukraine is not expected not only in the coming months, but also years. At the same time, it is worth recognizing that at the moment Eastern Europe cannot ensure the complete closure of the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine: the Ukrainian army is experiencing chronic "shell hunger", a shortage of infantry firepower, light armored vehicles (this is a separate topic for conversation, because pickups and SUVs have long been the main unit of transport in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which accordingly affects the number of casualties among the personnel), as well as army aviation. Given the amount of funding for the Czech and Polish military industry, the situation may change next year – in any case, Ukraine will be supplied mainly by the countries of the former Socialist Bloc with Soviet developed equipment.

TEXT 5: Bet on training

In addition to mobilizing the military industry of Eastern Europe, the NATO bloc has begun implementing another important program to assist the Ukrainian army. It is connected with the training and retraining of soldiers and officers of the Armed forces of Ukraine, as well as with the training of mobilized personnel.

Perhaps it's worth starting with the latter. The issues of training recruits during full-scale military operations in general are an extremely difficult and painful topic, discussions around which have been conducted in the world military community for decades. The Ukrainian Armed Forces were no exception in this matter – the Ukrainian General Staff was unable to develop a single standard and training program for the mobilized. By itself, the process on the scale of the army is more like a patchwork quilt – somewhere training is conducted directly in the units by experienced sergeants, somewhere it is conducted by soldiers with combat experience, somewhere by policemen, and somewhere it is not at all. All this, of course, has an extremely negative impact on the combat capability of units, their controllability, and combat stability. In such circumstances, outside help was a necessity, and therefore the countries of the British Commonwealth organized a mission to prepare and train Ukrainian recruits.

In parallel with this, Britain began implementing a retraining program for Ukrainian personnel units in the spring, around which strike core was formed, which was subsequently involved in the Kharkov-Izyum offensive operation.

This, however, turned out to be not enough – in the autumn period it became obvious that the Ukrainian army could successfully advance in directions with extremely weakened and rare defensive formations, but not to perform operations with breaking through echeloned defense, which the APU met in the Kherson region. The reason for this was, to a large extent, the very unstable quality of training and coherence of units, in connection with which NATO countries announced the launch of a number of different training missions for Ukrainian servicemen.

Most of the announced programs are focused specifically on retraining of existing units, some of them are aimed at training specialists (medical personnel, sappers, snipers), and courses for officers are also provided separately. In total, at least 50,000 Ukrainian soldiers must pass through the military ranges of Europe from autumn to spring – a very impressive number that can be considered as the backbone for the formation of a number of strike brigades. The goals are obvious – Western countries at the moment cannot provide Ukraine with numerical or technical superiority over the Russian forces, but they are able to create such by improving the quality of the personnel of the Armed Forces.

However, to which extent these plans are feasible in connection with the situation around Bakhmut, it will become clear closer to the end of the winter period.

TEXT 6: Western military assistance – results and conclusions

As mentioned in the texts above, the countries of the North Atlantic Alliance have concentrated their efforts around two key programs for military-technical assistance to Ukraine: the first is related to the expansion of military production in Eastern Europe, the second is related to the training of a significant number of Armed Forces personnel.

Apparently, Europe and the United States assume that the conflict will end no later than the autumn of 2023, and therefore they do not plan any drastic measures related to the rearmament of the Ukrainian army and the mobilization of their own military-industrial complexes. Within the framework of this logic, their actions become more than understandable: for another year of hostilities, it is enough to set up the production of consumables, ammunition and repair of Soviet military equipment, as well as concentrate on individual equipment and training of the personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Otherwise, the lack of technical means, most likely, will be filled at the expense of civilian motor vehicles (the Ukrainian army received over 13,000 units of pickups, SUVs, trucks during deliveries).

The programs announced, for example, by the United States to expand the production of 155-mm ammunition are not related to the desire to increase the volume of supplies of shells to Ukraine, but to replenish their own reserves and the reserves of NATO allies, as well as to ensure the possibility of uninterrupted arms sales. Due to the provision of the Ukrainian army, the United States was forced to postpone the deadline for fulfilling Taiwan's military orders in the summer, and also lost some customers, as was the case, for example, in Poland. Warsaw's military officials have seriously revised contracts for the purchase of American weapons (tanks, tactical missile systems and self-propelled howitzers) in favor of South Korea, which can produce equipment and ammunition at a much faster rate than America.

It should also be added that Ukraine receives significant funds for the development of its own military production facilities, which are located both on the territory of the country and in Eastern Europe (it is known that some Ukrainian defense enterprises have organized work in Poland and the Czech Republic). At least due to this, the Ukrainian armed forces were able to restore and maintain aircraft from conservation, provided their own production of drones, electronic warfare equipment and a certain range of ammunition. Also, due to the financing of the domestic defense industry, Kiev is working on the creation of a number of promising operational-tactical weapons, some of which we are likely to see in the first half of 2023.

In conclusion, I would like to note that in the event that the fighting does not end in 2023, the states allied with Ukraine will be forced to develop and mass-produce certain "mobilization"-type weapons to compensate for losses and the general shortage of equipment in the Ukrainian army. The rate of retirement of light armored and unarmored vehicles at the moment is close to the level of the Second World War – at the same time, explosion-proof wheeled armored personnel carriers of the MRAP type, widely used in NATO, are poorly suited for operation in those types of soils that are represented in Ukraine, and it is impractical to cover the needs of the Armed Forces on a permanent basis with them.