Weird War

Top reasons making Russia-Ukraine conflict a "strange war"

Russia at war with Ukraine! Take 735

Not just myself, but many people on the "pundits" side as well as regular folks that leave their comments detect something strange about the war that is happening between Russia and Ukraine. To give this sense a more material feeling I thought it would be appropriate to highlight some of the facts that make this war very different from anything else we have seen. Here, in no particular order, are eight things that make this war "weird" in my view:

1. Despite all the angry rhetoric from both sides Russian natural gas continues to flow to EU. Even more, with EU refusing to certify operation ready NordStream-II and Russia coming up with technical excuses not to send gas via NordStream-I, where they blame it on Siemens' inability or unwillingness to bring back to standard gas pumping turbines, the only European route by which Russian gas is reaching EU today is through Ukraine. Under the current contract active through 2024 which includes the provision of "pump or pay" Russia must pump 40 billion cubic meters of natural gas through the territory of Ukraine or pay for the promised transit volume even if they pump less. Ukraine refused to count toward that number gas entering Ukrainian territory though the gas measuring station under control of LPR so now there is only one route, through the station of Sudzha on the border with Kursk region of Russia. This results in less than half of the committed volume entering Ukraine, yet, according to contract, Russia pays Ukraine for transit of the entire volume prescribed by the contract.

2. Europe's underground gas storage facilities are more than 80% full that makes them more full on average than during the same time in previous years. This happened because Gazprom didn't stop pumping gas through NordStream-I until EU gas resellers had a chance to fill their underground storage, that will definitely help European consumers to get through winter.

3. The way how Russian SMO was and is conducted to this day calls for many questions. Americans and their NATO allies made a clear case since Vietnam war on how successful military campaign should be executed and from what we have seen during the two wars in Iraq, bombing of Yugoslavia, invasion of Afghanistan, campaigns in Libya and Syria in the last three decades the pattern is pretty clear - destroy command centers, destroy critical infrastructure, attack political leadership making them go on a run (just remember Hussein and Gaddafi), buy generals and local leaders - declare victory without prolonged and destructive military action on the ground. What happens after military victory is a different matter, but we have to recognize successful “first phase” of the conflicts initiated by NATO. Russians on other hand did everything in reverse - they preserved critical infrastructure in most of Ukraine, didn't touch decision centers in Kiev, instead of separating largest Ukrainian troops formation in Donbass region from the rest of Ukraine, thus cutting off their supplies, they engaged in a frontal attack of the heavily fortified defense structures that were built and strengthened over 8 years since 2014. Instead of using the tactic of slow but certain suffocation of the enemy they allowed NATO armaments, fuel and food to flow uninhibited from the Western borders of Ukraine, burning meanwhile in a fire of combat lives of Ukrainian and their own soldiers.

4. Despite the constant nagging by the Russian military analysts about the river crossing bridges in Ukraine, why are they still intact thus allowing for the normal functioning of the wartime and peacetime logistics. Russian MoD stubbornly refuses to deploy weapon systems capable of destroying bridges and railroad depos in Ukraine.

5. At the beginning of the SMO Russian MoD did target Ukrainian air defense systems, but starting already in March this activity was completely ceased and today mostly intact Ukrainian air defense prohibits Russian dominance in Ukrainian sky. Russian air support of SMO is limited to the tactical level where at the frontline they use helicopters and attack aircraft like Su-25 taking its origins in 1970's. All this is happening despite of Russia having necessary weapon systems to target radar stations, like American HARM rockets a.k.a. radar killers.

6. Prisoner exchanges. This is a theater that upsets a lot of people in Russia. Ukraine is not showing much interest in getting back regular soldier PoWs and there are over 10 thousand of them over on the other side. Their position - let Russians and the Republics feed them, treat them, guard them etc. Instead Ukrainian focus has always been to free the captured combatants of the nationalist (Nazi?) units and other fighters of prominence like woman-combatant Tara that was accused by Russia of killing parents of the two kids she used as a cover to get out of surrounded Mariupol, but then she was promptly released by Russians in exchange for freeing a son of a prominent Chechen official close to Ramzan Kadyrov that was detained by Ukrainian secret service, SBU "just in case". The funniest part of that story is that freed son of the Chechen official refused to go to Russia after he was set free, saying Ukraine is his country, which is true - he was born and raised there. Latest PoW exchange where to free 55 Russian PoWs and Ukrainian politician Medvedchuk Russia had to release all of the remaining in captivity Azov soldiers and all of captured Western mercenaries (some of them given death sentence by the cort in DPR) - all in all 215 individuals were exchanged for 55+1. This act did upset pretty much everybody in the patriotic community in Russia except for the official propaganda outlets that basically put forward a position of "we don't care what you think, plebs, because giraffe is tall and can see farther".

7. From the Ukrainian side, that we have to admit takes this war much more seriously, they managed to mobilize the population making even out of moderate russophiles total russophobes, they also exercise some caution in actions against Russia. Despite of reported capabilities by Ukraine to strike much deeper into the Russian territory, to at least 300km, Ukrainian attacks on the Russian villages and towns are limited to mostly mortar attacks that are few kilometers deep from the border. So, as we can see, fighting with one hand tied behind the back is not only Russian style in this conflict.

8. The famous recent retreat from under Kharkov in places like Balaklea, Izium and other towns. As more information pours in, including from the people who were among retreating troops, it becomes clear that this retreat was not a military necessity, but an act of political will. During the duration of this campaign many of towns were slowly captured by the advancing Russian troops, with hard fight, but they advanced, and then suddenly in a space of 3 days Russian front collapses and they give away 3000 km2, including many towns to the north that were not attacked by Ukrainian army at all, like Kozachia Lopan'. People who were a part of retreating Russian troops report that order was given to get ready to give up certain territories within 24 hours. Some things including ammunition could be successfully loaded on trucks and carried away, but many were left in place for the enemy. They also report that Ukrainian troops allowed Russians and Republic's militias to retreat peacefully, their miles long columns were not attacked by Ukrainian artillery. Most likely decision of the latest inequivalent PoW exchange and decision to retreat from most of Kharkov region are coming from the same source, the very top, and are reflective of the very active negotiations in progress with uncertain, at least at this point, results.

Taking into account facts I have mentioned, as well as there many others not mentioned here, we can observe that we don't see an all out war, but a conflict guided by certain rules that someone set forth and both sides, including NATO, are trying not to step over those boundaries despite of outrageous war mongering rhetoric that we hear. I'm guessing that in principle agreement about this conflict and the outline of the rules of engagement was achieved during Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin meeting in Switzerland in June of 2021. Since then we have seen gradually escalating media campaign that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is imminent, though myself as well as an absolute majority of other observes didn't believe in it, since it didn't make much sense for Russia and didn't fit the pattern of the previous decisions by Putin. But, as things often go, events of this magnitude rarely go according to plan and talking about magnitude - this is the the largest military conflict in Europe since 1945 by all parameters, territory, quantities of troops, use of ammo, losses etc. Bets by all sides were that Russia's victory in Ukraine will be swift and decisive. We could hear this from the Western MSM, but more than words were the actions prior to invasion evacuating from Ukraine Western embassies and businesses. As a matter of fact Zelensky and his surrounding were betting on the rapid defeat, that's why just prior to Russian attack they have evacuated their families and even pets from Ukraine. But two weeks into the conflict it became clear that Ukraine's capability to resist was underestimated, that Ukrainian society in Central and Western Ukraine was prepared to hate Russians with even greater conviction than eight years prior (for eight years Ukrainian official message to the population was that they are at war with Russia since 2014).

Very few people from Ukrainian parliament and opposition parties have taken the Russian side. Opposition media and among them most prominent Anatoly Sharij and Olesia Medvedeva stayed true to Ukraine's interests. Russia on the other side have shown unexpected softness and already three days into the SMO rumors of negotiations begun to appear. Later in March in Istanbul, Ukraine was given a pretty sweet deal in my opinion, without having to recognize Crimea as part of Russia or the independence of the republics they were supposed to promise not to take military action to "liberate" these regions, for 15 years, plus Ukraine was not supposed to formally become a NATO member.However, Great Britain and US were sharply against reaching any agreement at this stage so the hostilities continued and following Russian troops withdrawal from Kiev, Chernigov and Sumy regions soon after we have seen staged provocation in Bucha designed to further hostilities.

Is Russian softness in this conflict a result of Putin being mislead by his generals about the capability of the Russian army or does it have to do with the games that he likes to play? I think the latter is a more plausible explanation. But this is what is making situation much more dangerous. I totally agree with Paul Craig Roberts that Putin's capacity to take abuse without properly responding and stopping such actions in their tracks makes our world a much more dangerous place as it makes the aggressor seeing no response to become more and more aggressive leading situation to a potentially disastrous breakdown.

Taking the Ukrainian situation as an example. It didn't have to come to a successful coup d'etat there in February of 2014. Instead of playing into Obama's hands that asked Putin to convince Yanukovich not to take any actions against violent protesters, he could have convinced him to act in accordance with the Ukrainian constitution. But even after successful coup d'etat that brought ultra-nationalists to power, Ukraine was up for taking. It was easy under existing lawful president to separate the regions that didn't recognize the overthrow of the legal authorities into a "real Ukraine" designating those regions that supported the coup as rebellious provinces.

But, I'm seemingly going on a tangent here. Time to wrap up and leave materials for the other posts! Let us know if you can think of other reasons that make this war strange.