Ukraine: escalation

By Richard North - September 21, 2022

By the time most of you read this, Putin will have addressed the Russian nation (and the world) in a televised speech. Originally set for last night, it was postponed without explanation and was due (at the time of writing) at 8 am Moscow time, putting it at 5 am BST.

It is probably no coincidence that, this same morning, Biden is due to speak in New York at the UN general assembly, where the clock in seven hours behind Moscow. Ukraine is expected to be Biden’s main focus, and he will – as long as Putin doesn’t postpone again – have the benefit of knowing what the Russian president has said, allowing a measured reaction if that is deemed necessary.

Some reaction may well be necessary as the Kremlin has already signalled that Putin intends to announce his intention to annex the four main occupied regions of Ukraine, formally absorbing them into the Russian Federation,

Putin’s plan is – the Kremlin says – to hold referendums in Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts, between 23 and 27 September, whence in the nature of such polls, the votes are expected heavily to favour ceding from Ukraine and joining Russia, leading the way to them being declared Russian territory.

Should such a move go ahead, it will be deemed to be a major political escalation, sending a message to Ukraine that any negotiations are off the table. More dangerously, it changes the dynamics of the Russo-Ukrainian war, as Russia will cast itself as defending its national territory, permitting the use of nuclear weapons if the country faces what is considered to be an “existential threat”.

This has been implicitly confirmed by Dmitry Medvedev, former president and prime minister and now the deputy head of Russia’s national security council. He states that “Encroachment onto Russian territory is a crime which allows you to use all the forces of self-defence”.

More explicitly, Tatiana Stanovaya, a prominent political analyst, writes: “This is an unequivocal ultimatum from Russia to Ukraine and the West. Either Ukraine retreats, or it is nuclear war”.

Ominously, Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu is also preparing to make a national address today, while the State Duma yesterday rushed through legislation introducing stricter punishments for desertion, refusal to fight and disobeying orders in time of martial law. This is taken to be a clear signal that the Kremlin is considering a general mobilisation of its forces, something the Kremlin has previously said it was not planning.

Collectively, these moves will have the effect of transforming Putin’s “special military operation” into a fully-fledged war, where the prospect of the Russians using nuclear weapons becomes a distinct possibility.

This possibility I was rehearsing back in April, when I observed that it was probably impossible to turn a corrupt, inefficient, badly structured and ill-equipped army into the semblance of a modern fighting force capable of subduing Ukraine.

Almost inevitably, therefore, I felt that Russia would eventually be driven to using these weapons, specifically tactical nuclear weapons, of which Russia is thought to have about 2,500 operational. About half of these are thought to be available for use in Europe, ranging in yield from less than a kiloton to Hiroshima level, equivalent to 15 thousand tons of TNT.

The threat is now serious enough for The Times to consider Putin’s options, with more detailed analysis in today’s Guardian.

This has Moscow correspondent, Andrew Roth, who argues that Putin, having backed himself into a corner, is ready to escalate, perhaps up to the brink of nuclear war, rather than admit defeat.

Under the weight of the Ukrainian counter-offensive, it is not impossible that Russia will face the humiliation of losing territories that it has held since 2014. With Ukrainian troops already nibbling at territory in Luhansk, Roth cites Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of the state-owned broadcaster RT and a vocal lobbyist for the war.

She effectively backs up Tatiana Stanovaya, saying: “Judging by what is happening and what is about to happen, this week marks either the threshold of our imminent victory or the threshold of a nuclear war. I can’t see any third option”. Since victory is hardly on the cards, nuclear war seems the inevitable option.

Addressing the question of whether Russia is ready to go all the way, Roth then cites Alexander Baunov, another Russian political analyst. He has written that Moscow’s actions “are being taken to either end the war as soon as possible or, if that doesn’t work, to put the blame for that on other people and turn Russia’s invasion of a neighbouring country into a defensive war”.

“Moscow hopes that that distinction will make the conflict more legitimate in the eyes of ordinary Russians”, Baunov says, “leaving the Kremlin free to make whatever decisions and take whatever measures it deems necessary”.

Putin, Roth says, has sometimes been called an expert in the strategy of “escalating to de-escalate” – averting conflict by threatening a massive retaliation. But, he adds, Putin does not seem to want to de-escalate. A more apt description of his strategy may be “win or escalate”. And as Simonyan puts it: Russia is going all in.

However, while the pundits are ready to accept that nuclear warfare is now a realistic possibility, albeit restricted to the use of tactical weapons, no one as yet seems to be discussing how such weapons might be used.

The most obvious target might be Ukrainian troop formations or other military assets, but attacks in close proximity to Russian troops or claimed Russian territories might prove counter-productive. Even low-yield weapons might create fallout problems for Russian forces.

Given that Putin has to date included in the prosecution of his war the use of the “energy weapon”, in particular reducing pipeline gas supplies to the West, rather that attack overt military targets, Kremlin planners might consider attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

Productive targets in this context might be Ukrainian gas storage facilities. In total, Ukraine’s Ukrtransgas operates 12 such facilities with a total design capacity of 31 billion cubic metres (bcm). This gives Ukraine the largest underground storage system in Europe, substantially more than the 23 bcm operated by Germany, which ranks fourth among the world’s largest storage countries.

An especially juicy target might be the giant Bilche-Volytsko-Uherske complex, with a capacity of 17.05 bcm, more than half Ukraine’s total capacity, centred on the village of Bilche, conveniently located in the west of the country, south of Lviv and close to the Polish border.

As part of the European gas pool, directly connected into the European pipeline gas transmission system, this forms part of Europe’s strategic reserves which will help keep the lights on over winter.

Targeting the highly vulnerable gas injection and recovery sites would require only a small number of low-yield weapons and, at some distance from Russian territories, fallout impact could be confined to Ukrainian territory, while having a significant strategic effect in damaging European gas supplies.

What is completely unknown is how Nato members would react to such an attack, especially as the carefully targeted use of low-yield nuclear weapons might have no direct, physical impact on Nato member territories.

The economic damage, however, would be significant, destroying substantial quantities of gas, and interrupting key pipelines for the foreseeable future – with the incidental advantage (to the Russians) of making the Nord Stream 2 pipeline essential for the delivery of gas to Europe.

Such use might also wipe out the more optimistic projections for gas prices over the winter and into spring and inject a degree of uncertainty into the economies of Western nations that might be hard to overcome.

Certainly, the Russians have the means to deliver these weapons, the most effective probably being the Iskander-M missile system (pictured), which could prove hard to stop. Their use would introduce a completely new dimension into the war, presenting a challenge for which the Western powers are ill-equipped, at a political if not military level.

Once Putin has spoken, and Biden answered, we may be on our way to a very different world.