Ukraine: the home front

By Richard North - November 24, 2022

I sometimes think that this blog has become trapped in its own doom loop. The whole idea of Turbulent Times was to break out the relatively narrow Eureferendum agenda and write about a wider range of subjects. But, after three days of Brexit, the situation in Ukraine has erupted again and we’re back in familiar territory.

After the sustained bombardment of the electricity infrastructure last week, less than a week later there has been another assault which, for a short period, seems to have shut down the entire Kiev region and much of the rest of the country.

Although not directly attacked, much of neighbouring Moldova also lost power after links to the Ukraine system were severed. Lights went out in certain areas of Chisinau, Baltsi, and several other cities, including in Transnistria, areas unfamiliar to western readers but now catapulted into prominence.

As regards Ukraine, even before yesterday’s attacks, the country’s electricity system was already in bad shape, facing prolonged outages with the national grid operating in “emergency mode” as 50 percent of the system was estimated to be non-operational.

Currently, it is too soon to pin down the extent of the additional damage but there is some suggestion that, having wiped out half of the system, the Russians are intent on eliminating the remainder. This would leave the country completely without power, also affecting heating systems and mains water supplies. Internet, mobile communications, and transport have also been affected, and are likely to be degraded further.

Although hardly recognised by the general run of the media, the effect of power outages on the Ukrainian war economy must be substantial, although probably incalculable with any degree of accuracy.

What is more, the situation for Ukraine could well be unique in the annals of modern warfare, where economic capacity ranks as equal to military strength in the prosecution of a long war – now in its ninth month with no end in sight.

As it stands, of course, Ukraine is dependent on foreign charity and the supply of military aid in order to dominate the battlefields, as it is doing. But, even then, armies in the field will rely heavily on the civilian infrastructure, which must have the economic resilience to support the military effort, in a myriad of ways.

With that, I cannot think of an example, in modern times, where a nation state has been invaded by a major neighbouring power and had to sustain both a substantial military effort and a wartime economy – albeit with substantial outside help – all within its own borders, without being able to take the war into enemy territory.

Something of this has been addressed recently by the New York Times in a guest essay written by Rajan Menon, who directs the grand strategy programme at Defence Priorities and is a senior research scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University.

Headed, “Ukraine is advancing, and Russia is retreating, but president Zelensky has a big problem”, Menon notes the obvious, that Ukraine’s economy has been left in tatters, while the current, prolonged war of attrition is subjecting the country to additional strain.

The bare statistics are daunting. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that six million Ukrainians are now “internally displaced”, in addition to the seven million who have sought refuge abroad.

Unemployment had reached 35 percent by the second quarter of this year and the poverty rate – even by Ukraine’s low standards – which stood at 2.5 percent in 2020 may approach 25 percent by December and twice that by the end of next year.

Wartime upheaval and destruction have been especially hard on children; nearly half a million more in Ukraine have been pushed into poverty, the second-largest share in the region.

In cash terms, we are told that estimates for reconstructing post war Ukraine range from $349 billion to $750 billion even before the full extent of the destruction can be foreseen, which can only have increased over the last day.

The more immediate problem, though, is that Ukraine’s monthly budget deficit totals $5 billion, and the government has been forced to seek emergency assistance from the West and the IMF.

Prime minister Denys Shmyhal estimates his country will need $42 billion in aid for 2023. Zelensky added another $17 billion for rebuilding damaged or destroyed power plants and housing. Together, these amounts equal nearly 30 percent of Ukraine’s current GDP.

In addition, Menon writes, the war has caused Ukraine’s trade to plummet. By the end of September, the trade deficit had more than doubled to reach $6.1 billion.

Agricultural exports – which netted $27.8 billion in 2021 and comprised 41 percent of total exports – were particularly hard hit because Russia seized Ukrainian ports on the Sea of Azov and some on the Black Sea and mined others, bottling up 20 million tons of grain plus other food products earmarked for export.

Menon nevertheless acknowledges that Ukrainians have resisted the Russian invasion with remarkable tenacity and ingenuity. But, he says, they may find that the economic problems produced by the war prove far more intractable.

His essay was published on 17 November and since then, in the space of a week, the overall situation has deteriorated further. As rolling blackouts affect the whole country and progressively increase in frequency and duration, economic difficulties can only multiply, while civilian support for the field armies will be rendered far more difficult.

In the bitter cold of a Ukrainian winter, with failing power and little heat, there is only so much a civilian population can be asked to bear. One wonders whether the country could be approaching the situation in 1918 Germany at the tail end of the First World War, when the collapse of the home front is said to have broken the German Army.

Morale in Ukraine, we are told, remains high and western powers continue to pledge support. But as the bills mount and the hardships erode the resistance of the civilian population, sentiment can change.

If nothing else, this must change the priorities of the supporting nations which fortunately, we are already beginning to see. European Union member states plan to collect and send thousands of generators and power equipment to Ukraine, which may well serve to reduce the strain on the existing system – assuming fuel supplies can be distributed.

Biden’s US administration has so far provided $19.7 billion in military aid, and the latest aid package is said to include 200 generators. Many more will doubtless be needed.

Much is also being written about the need to upgrade Ukraine’s air defences, adding to the anti-missile systems already provided. But, as the Ukraine military is already claiming a high kill rate, with 51 out of 70 of the latest batch of Russian missiles and five drones destroyed, it is hard to see how complete protection can be afforded.

And while there have been multiple predictions that Russian missile stock are running low, they keep on arriving, week after week.

Rather than focusing on Ukraine’s military success, therefore, it may well be that greater emphasis will have to be directed to the home front, if defeat is to be avoided. But that then begs the question of how long Ukraine and its supported can passively soak up the damage, without taking the war to Russia.

Putin is, in effect, engaged in total war against the Ukrainian people and, by proxy, an economic war of his own against the western nations. This is not a stable situation which can necessarily outlast the winter.