Ukraine: who needs whom?

By Richard North - June 26, 2022

One thing both sides now agree on is that Sievierodonetsk is firmly under the control of the Russians. There was no last stand at the Azot plant, and the Ukrainian troops evacuated the city, apparently in an organised manner, to take up better-fortified positions.

In the view of the Pentagon, the Ukrainian armed forces are performing “a professional, tactical retrograde” in order to consolidate their forces in positions that they can better defend themselves.

This, we are told, is occurring on the heels of their ability to continue to pin down Russian forces over a very long period of time in a very small geographic area, despite being hampered by premature publicity.

It appears, though, that some Ukrainian soldiers may have been forced to surrender, although the bulk of the troops seem to have escaped across the Siversky Donets in small boats, into the twin city of Lysychansk.

There is no firm word as to the intentions of the Ukrainian forces, although Kharyton Starskyi, a press officer with the Rapid Response Brigade of Ukraine’s National Guard, announced that they would be able to launch more effective counterattacks from Lysychansk.

In some respects, with its higher ground dominating Sievierodonetsk and the surrounding countryside, this second of the twin cities is an ideal place for the Ukrainians to thwart Putin’s ambition to take the whole of the Luhansk Oblast. Much will depend on whether the supply lines can be kept open or whether, in fact, they have already been severed by Russian forces, about which there is no reliable information.

Some reports have suggested that Russian and separatist forces have entered the city and that fighting is under way, but there is no confirmation of this. If indeed there is fighting, it could represent rear guard actions by the Ukrainians or the first skirmishes in a determined stand. There is simply no way of knowing.

Once thing is certain, that attacks are intensifying throughout Ukraine, which has Ukrainian defence minister Oleskii Reznikov complaining that the Russians are using up to a thousand projectiles every hour. Unfortunately, he says, their resources are limitless.

According to “Western intelligence predictions and military experts”, though, the Russian military will soon exhaust its combat capabilities and be forced to bring its offensive in Donbass to a grinding halt.

The “creeping” advances which characterise the current campaign are dependent almost entirely on the expenditure of vast quantities of ammunition, notably artillery shells, which are being fired at a rate almost no military in the world would be able to sustain for long, says an anonymous senior Western official.

This has allowed prime minister Johnson to assert, in an interview for the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (via Reuters) that Russia would be able to continue to fight on only for the “next few months.” After that, it “could come to a point when there is no longer any forward momentum because it has exhausted its resources”.

This may be behind the extraordinary optimismof Major General Kyrylo Budanov, the Ukrainian intelligence chief. He argues that, beginning in August, events will take place that will demonstrate to the whole world that the turning point has been reached.

“Ukraine will return to its 1991 borders”, he says. “There will be no other scenarios, and we are not considering any other scenarios. (…) Before the end of the year, active fighting will decrease virtually to nothing. We will regain control over our territories in the foreseeable future”. However, Budanov reaffirmed that part of the Ukrainian Army’s success depended on “international support”.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken seems to go along with that view. Despite statements by Kremlin propagandists and their distorted accounts of the ongoing fighting in Ukraine, he says that Russia has already lost the war, both politically and militarily, and is suffering daily losses in manpower, weapons, and equipment.

Cue Liz Truss and Dmytro Kuleba, respectively foreign secretaries of the UK and Ukraine, who have jointly written in the Sunday Telegraph, telling us that “We must ignore the defeatist voices who propose to sell out Ukraine”. The Ukrainian people do not have the luxury to feel fatigued, so neither can the rest of the free world.

Mainly, though, it turns out that this is a plea directed at the G7 and Nato summits this week, at which Johnson will be present. It calls for continuing sanctions on all those colluding in Putin’s war, cutting off imports of Russian energy completely and increasing and speeding up the supply of heavy weapons.

A little behind the curve, the pair tell us that every weapon delivered will help the people of Ukraine repel Russian forces, retake cities currently under fire like Sievierodonetsk and those controlled by Russia like Kherson. The Ukrainian people are “fighting fearlessly for their homeland” and “will win it with the free world’s unyielding support”.

In fact, Johnson has already set out his position for the summits, arguing that “In as much as the Ukrainians are in a position to start a counter-offensive, it should be supported. With equipment that they demand from us”.

A somewhat different perspective is on offer from Izvestia, as one might expect, citing a long article from the Indian newspaper The Economic Times.

This in turn picks up on multiple reports from different sources, the thrust of which is that plenty of sophisticated Western weapons are reaching Ukraine but its armed forces are increasingly finding it difficult to use them. Besides, some of the key Western weapons like M777 howitzers are also reportedly getting destroyed in the hands of the Russian forces.

According to a CNN report, there are also cases when Ukrainian military personnel refused to use American Switchblade drones, preferring the drones of commercial companies that could be loaded with explosives

There are limited number of Ukrainian personnel in the armed forces with the proper level qualification to use sophisticated weapons. Some of the Western weapons are therefore losing effectiveness, often falling into the hands of the Russian army. Training soldiers how to use the equipment has become a significant hurdle in the battle.

Analysts say that providing weapons without sufficient training risks repeating the United States’ failed approach in Afghanistan, where it supplied the Afghan military with equipment that couldn’t be maintained without massive logistical support.

Earlier, Izvestia had cited the editor of The Economist, Shashank Joshi, who said that artillery supplied by the West quickly fails on the battlefield due to poor maintenance. Ukraine was given only weapons but not the spare parts for them.

For all that, The Sunday Times argues that Nato has no choice but to support Kiev, as our future security depends upon it. It must provide Ukraine with constant supplies of new weapons and ammunition as well as financial support. This will require, the paper says, member states to increase production of the materiel that Ukraine needs, while replenishing their own stocks.

Andriy Yermak, head of the office of the Ukrainian presidency, addresses his “western friends” telling them, “we can either defeat Russia now with full-scale sanctions and stepped-up military support to Ukraine, or prepare to defeat them in a larger war later – at far greater cost to the global economy and democracies worldwide”.

One cannot help but ponder though whether Johnson’s advocacy of Ukraine is motivated more by his domestic troubles and his desperate need for a “dead cat” to distract attention from his own deteriorating position. Right from the get-go, the Ukraine crisis has performed this function for the prime minister, and it now seems as if Johnson needs Ukraine more than it needs him.