After the initial western celebrations of the Ukrainian invasion of the Russian region of Kursk, with a number of headlines lauding the “Humiliation of Putin” comparing the operation to a number of historical campaigns and describing the even claiming that it has changed the course of the war, the rather less pleasant (for the Ukrainian Neo-Nazis and their backers, anyway) reality is starting to raise its head.
Despite initial gains of, to be blunt, strategically and operationally insignificant territory in the Russian border region, mainly consisting of forest and scattered villages, it appears blindingly obvious that the main objective was to panic the Russians into diverting large numbers of military units from their ongoing offensive to liberate the remaining parts of Novorossiya from Ukrainian Occupation.
To anyone who has observed how the Russian President has operated since 1999, this seems an obvious pipe dream. Putin is not given to panic, and his response has been to use Border Guards, Interior Ministry, Police, and Army conscripts to hold the line in Kursk, while the SMO forces maintain, and increase, their rate of advance towards strategic targets such as Vughledar, Pokrovsk, and Toretsk.
Ukrainian field commander, General Syrskyi, has admitted that the Russians arein fact, massively reinforcing their forces in the east, a fact admitted by Western Intelligence (what on oxymoron) Officials
“We have not seen a major Russian troop movement away from the eastern front,” the official said. U.S. officials also say that Russia has not diverted a large number of troops from eastern Ukraine to counter the Ukrainian forces inside Russia.
What we have seen is a significant increase in the rate of Russian advance, and the difference is, that Russia will keep what it is taking, while Ukraine will have to leave Kursk at some point.
As Nico Lange, a former German defense official who is now a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, stated:
“He[Putin]’s basically telling the Ukrainians: ‘You can stay, you can leave — do what you want. For now, I will be busy with other things,’” he said. “If Ukraine’s goal was to exchange land for land, Lange added, “it’s clearly not working and Putin is calling it.”
“There is an asymmetry: The territory that is lost now in Donbas — Russia will keep it. But Ukraine cannot keep Kursk, and Putin knows it,” he said.
And, despite territorial gains in Kursk, and the taking of prisoners for exchange, the losses that Elite Ukrainian units are suffering in irreplaceable manpower (elite combat veterans don’t grow on trees) and scarce western supplied equipment, the offensive is, as I mentioned previously, basically a re-run of the last German offensive in the west, the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 and January 1945. The current Russian advances in the eastern area of operations are rapidly beginning to resemble another great WW2 battle, Bagration in June to August 1944, which gutted the German army on the eastern front.
A good example of this reality is the relentless pounding of Ukrainian troops by artillery and guided glide bombs, as described by the New York Times, which notes the Russians are launching more than 750 bombs, ranging in weight from 250kg to 3000kg, pulverizing Ukrainian defences, while also maintaining a massive firepower advantage in artillery, both in terms of guns and rockets. Massive use of drones by Russia has severely hampered the Ukrainian ability to defend airspace over the front line, with mobile and even MANPAD systems targeted with a rain of attacks the moment they attempt to engage Russian aviation.
Unlike Ukrainian gains in Kursk, Toretsk and Pokrovsk are lynchpins of the Ukrainian defences in the east. Their capture will “severely complicate” Ukrainian logistics, and we are already seeing the dreaded Russian pincers forming in several areas of the front. Particularly Toretsk after the fall of New York.
In addition, a massive Russian missile strike, the biggest of the war so far, has destroyed most of what was left of Ukrainian power generation, leaving cities dark and the rail network basically un-functional. This severely disrupts logistics for the Ukrainians, forcing them onto ruinously fuel expensive and vulnerable road transportation. Needless to say, the Ukrainians claimed that “the majority” of missiles and drones were shot down (102 out of 127 incoming missiles and 99 out of 109 drones were claimed) which leads me to think that they must be using their energy infrastructure as “improvised air defences”.
What has also been highlighted by the ongoing Russian successes, is the failure of NATO to provide the support it has promised, and that the “war winning weapons” such as the M777, HIMARS, Patriots, M1 Abrams, Leopard 2 and Challenger 2, Marder and Bradley IFVs, IRIS-T Sam systems etc., have all again failed the test of combat.
Crashing and Burning
Even the “mighty” F-16 has failed in its first combat deployment in the country. Reasons given for the loss of the plane, and its pilot, the poster boy Oleksiy Mes (Callsign Moonfish) are crashing while engaging incoming cruise missiles or drones, with some sources claiming pilot error, being shot down by a Patriot Sam in a so-called friendly fire incident, or being struck on the ground by a Russian missile strike.
Another casualty of the incident was the firing of Ukrainian Air Force Chief Lieutenant General Mykola Oleshchuk, who engaged in a heated spat with Ukrainian Parliamentarian Mariana Bezuhla over the possibility of friendly fire due to poor coordination between Patriot SAMs and the fighters.
I personally think it is possible, as I suspect the “staunch” allies of Ukraine in NATO may have stripped such sensitive equipment as IFF transponders from the F-16As delivered to Ukraine out of fear of such sensitive tech falling into Russian hands. It should be noted that if true, this wouldn’t be the first time the overpriced and under-performing Patriot system deleted friendly aircraft, with a number of incidents in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, including the destruction of a USAF F-16 and USN F-18, as well as an RAF Tornado by Patriot batteries.
The end result of this has been, to put it mildly, panic in European capitals, particularly Brussels, with the Nazi-like Borrell demanding:
“We need to lift restrictions on the use of weaponry against Russian military targets, in accordance with international law,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said as the bloc’s foreign ministers gathered in Brussels to discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“The weaponry that we are providing to Ukraine has to have full use, and the restrictions have to be lifted in order for the Ukrainians to be able to target the places where Russia is bombing them. Otherwise, the weaponry is useless,” Borrell told reporters.
This demand was, of course, echoed by such psychopaths as Latvian FM Braze, as well as the usual suspects in the UK, the Netherlands, Finland, Latvia, and Estonia.
Luckily, the majority of European leaders seem rather less keen to glow in the dark for Ukraine, so the EU was forced to admit that there would be no “Union Wide” lifting of restrictions, and that it was up to individual countries to decide.
A further blow to Ukrainian hopes is the Polish refusal to agree to a Ukrainian request to shoot down Russian drones, missiles, or aircraft over the western part of Ukraine. The insane idea on the part of Zelensky and co. that this would not make Poland a party to the war is, luckily, off the table for now.
Trying to make Russia overreact
I also think an objective of the Ukrainian invasion of Russian territory was to try and provoke the Russians into an overreaction, such as levelling Kiev, or use of tactical nuclear weapons (though why anyone thinks Russia would go to such lengths against what is, when all is said and done, a minor incursion), thereby justifying a US led NATO intervention of some sort.
The problem is, NATO is ill-prepared for any such activity, and already the supply of weapons and money is being cut. The US and NATO have completely failed to subdue the Houthis in Yemen, who continue to sink Israel bound shipping with relative impunity. How can they even dream of facing Russia, or China?
Even worse, the expansion of NATO to include countries like Sweden and Finland (noticeably without actually asking their populations, more “democracy”), far from strengthening NATO, has, in fact, made it weaker, greatly increasing the area of responsibility over large unpopulated borders and regions, without any real increase in capability. Added to this is the fact that the more countries are involved in NATO, the harder it is to gain consensus for any action.
This may be why the Russian government seems unfazed by the recent expansion of NATO. It seems the additional stresses on logistics and bureaucracy may cause NATO to crumble from within, perhaps even collapse.
The wheels are coming off the NATO war wagon, and its now obvious that the “NATO Standard” is simply a slogan to line the pockets of American and Ukrainian war profiteers in the killing of people in the developing world. The question is, will NATO try and pull a rabbit out of the hat, and escalate—and such a rabbit that may be difficult to put back?
Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs, exclusively for the online magazine «New Eastern Outlook».
