Ukraine: “really honest discussions”

By Richard North - June 27, 2022

There can be few more ironic things than a fundamentally dishonest man telling us that we must have “really honest discussions”. Yet that is where we’re at with Johnson at the G7 meeting.

“The most incredible thing about the way the West has responded to the invasion of Ukraine by Putin” he says, “has been the unity”. Nato, he adds, “has been solid, the G7 has been solid, and we continue to be solid”.

“But”, he then continued, “in order to protect that unity, in order to make it work, we’ve got to have really, really honest discussions about the implications of what’s going on, the pressures that individual friends and partners are feeling, that populations are feeling – whether it’s on the costs of their energy or food or whatever”.

This is from a man who has probably never had an honest discussion in his whole life, and certainly not about Ukraine. Right from the get-go, I wrote yesterday, Johnson has used the Ukraine crisis as his “dead cat” and there is every indication that he is continuing to do just that.

The point that I would make here is that – whatever one’s view of the war, and there is plenty of room for differences – there is no logic or happy resolution in the way this war is being fought, or in the way the support of the “free world” is being marshalled.

Essentially, one can define the extremes of action necessary to bring an end to the war as follows. On the one side, we have the stance attributed to Macron, who seems to believe that Ukraine should do a deal with Putin which will involve ceding territory to Russia – most likely the whole of Donbass, the Azov Sea littoral and Crimea.

On the other side, there is the Zelensky view – shared by many of his colleagues – that the war should be fought to achieve a complete victory over Russia, the end point being the restoration of Ukraine’s 1991 boundaries, at which point a final deal will be agreed with Putin.

As it stands, the “Macron scenario” may or may not be achievable. Russia has yet to conquer the whole of Donbass and one must assume that Putin will keep going for as long as he is able, until that objective has been secured.

But, if there might be doubt about whether Putin can achieve his final objective, there is very serious doubt about whether Zelensky can achieve his. Short of an almost complete collapse of the Russian military – which isn’t being ruled out – the Ukrainian armed forces do not have the capability to recover the occupied territories.

The Podoliak estimate in that respect was that Ukraine would need 1,000 155 mm howitzers, 300 MLRS, 500 tanks, 2,000 units of armoured vehicles and 1,000 drones – an estimate that is probably realistic in terms of equipment needs, although the Ukrainians will also need the addition of some very serious anti-air weaponry – which may be on its way – as well as the stocks of ammunition and other consumables needed to keep the show on the road.

Additionally, I have surmised, the Ukrainians military will need to regroup and retrain in order to absorb this equipment, and to develop the leadership skills and structures that will be necessary to secure victory – a process that could take several years to complete.

This, then, brings us to the crucial issue. The current level of support delivered and promised by the “free world” may, at a pinch, be sufficient to enable the Ukrainian military to frustrate Putin’s ambitions, but it is by no means enough for Zelensky to achieve his.

And if peace is dependent on one side or other achieving their objectives, then all we can expect is a stalemate, with no possibility of a settlement in the foreseeable future. What we have at the moment is a recipe for a never-ending war.

For this to be any different, things must change. If Zelensky is to be given his head, and allowed to push for a military solution, it must be recognised that sanctions are not going to deliver. At best, they can be regarded as an adjunct to military action.

Then, instead of offering piecemeal support, the “free world” – and especially the Nato members – need to approach the arming of Ukraine on a much sounder footing. With the assistance of the best military brains in the business, they need to work out the resources necessary to defeat the Russians, and then set about providing them.

Rather than dump a miscellany of equipment on Ukraine – which can only intensify its logistics, maintenance and operational problems – supporters should perhaps confine themselves, in the first instance, to providing money. The Ukrainians, thus bankrolled, should set up a purchasing commission, following the Lend-Lease model of the Second World War, and buy the equipment most suited to their operational needs.

Purchasing should go hand-in-hand with a formulation of a battle plan and the selection of a suitable military leader, putting current operations into a holding pattern, simply to ensure that the position doesn’t deteriorate further while preparations are made for the decisive battles.

When it comes to having “really, really honest discussions about the implications of what’s going on”, therefore, the first task of the supporting countries is to admit that the current strategy isn’t working and cannot work.

But not only don’t I see that happening, it seems to be unlikely that more detailed discussions will even get off the ground, much less get the agreement of the parties involved.

For a start, the price tag for this more coherent approach will be astronomical. Not only will the equipment have to be paid for, the military payroll and expenses will have to be funded, while the whole of Ukrainian state will also have to be funded. And the commitment may (and almost certainly will) run to years.

Next, the sort of equipment needed to defeat Russia, in sufficient quantities, probably doesn’t exist. Scaling up the industrial capacity to deliver sufficient quantities and then churning out the equipment would take years – and there are also the ammunition and other consumables to consider.

Finally, there are the Russians to consider. Putin is hardly going to sit around passively, waiting for Ukraine to organise his defeat. As long as his forces have the initiative, he will seek to disrupt Ukrainian plans, and foment disunity amongst the country’s supporters.

Given the internal stresses building amongst supporting nations, probably the best one can hope for is the worst of all possible outcomes – more of the same. As global recession bites, there is unlikely to be any enthusiasm for carrying the full costs of a winning campaign.

But, before even the financial costs are considered, there must be a realistic appraisal of the implications of imposing a defeat on Russia and how Putin might react to what he would undoubtedly regard as a humiliation, especially as the conflict is being cast as a war between Nato and Russia.

The Russian president has already put down a marker with his recent plan to release nuclear capable Iskander missiles to Belarus, and there is always the possibility that the response to a defeat in Ukraine could be nuclear tipped. On that basis, supporting Ukraine just sufficiently to avoid it being wiped out begins to look an attractive proposition.

It is all very well for Johnson to declare, as he has just done, that the financial cost of providing longstanding support to Ukraine was “a price worth paying for democracy and freedom”.

There is more at stake than just the financial cost, and even that alone – calculated at a realistic level gauged to bring the war to an end – could be more than the “free world” collective is prepared to pay.

On perhaps a more optimistic note, it could be that the battle in Lysychansk might be more tenable than at first appeared, given that – contrary to some earlier reports – the Russians have not yet sealed off the salient and cannot prevent supplies getting through.

Separately, something very odd is happening in the upper echelons of the Russian army, giving hope that the organisation may actually be close to collapse.

Maybe, for all of Johnson’s undoubtedly self-serving rhetoric, a Pollyanna-style approach may be the best way forward, keeping a lid on the problem until it goes away of its own accord. Even in the worst of the worst-case scenarios, Putin isn’t going to live forever.