Can't sleep (nothing to do with this)
Ben Judah @b_judah
Today’s note from conversations with experts and officials:
— Russia can’t continue the campaign at current intensity beyond a month and will need to pause and regroup with fresh troops.
— Russia has too many fronts and not enough troops on Kyiv, Kharkiv and Mykolayiv lines.
— Russia needs fresh troops to maintain these operations: this can either come from upping military recruitment (prisoners/unemployed/re-enlisting conscripts/Chechens/mercenaries) or a general mobilisation.
— Consensus is Putin will want to avoid unpopular mass mobilisation.
— Militarily Russia no longer threatens Kyiv and is exposed on the western approaches of the city but does seriously threaten the Ukrainian army in the Donbas with encirclement.
— Russia has been improving its logistics in the past week but has serious communication problems.
— Russia’s maximalist regime change initial plan was utterly botched and now has no chance of success. The verdict is still out on the hastily improvised attempt to switch to a classic high intensity campaign to focus on conquering Ukraine’s southern and outer Donbas regions.
— Risk of a Russian military assault on Odessa is largely seen as passed as the numbers simply aren’t there and the Ukrainian army has held the line on the Mykolayiv front.
— However officials and experts are more worried than the conversation on Twitter where Ukraine advocacy predominates with a narrative of Kyiv having a chance of victory.
— Fears of a long, destructive, exhausting war with big ripple effects are high.
— Russia is very literally de-militarising Ukraine’s military industrial capacity from the air. Some think this impact could take over a decade to rebuild.
— Russia’s use of air power continues to be minimal due to Ukrainian denial and aversion to even greater civilian deaths.
— The exact state of the Ukrainian military in terms of losses is unknown but believed to also be considerable.
— Like Russia, Ukrainian military effectiveness is believed to also have peaked due to exhaustion and war damage on its terrain.
— There us a risk of Ukraine exhausting its armies in counter attacks.
— Officials nervous that Russia could use chemical weapons to terrorise Ukrainians and mobilise Russians for mass conscription with a false flag.
— However military analysts note they will make little impact on the battlefield greater use of explosives cannot already.
— Real apprehension that WMD use could see big public pressure for the West to act or trigger an escalatory spiral that could end up in NATO-Russia clashes.
— Fears if Russia launches serious cyberattack reprisals on Western critical infrastructure, there could be an escalatory spiral into direct clashes.
— Outbreak of general clashes short of nuclear war likely to advantage Putin with domestic moral boost and Western panic.
— However the base case is this settling into a war of attrition.
— One view is the battle lines will like a sort of gigantic version of the Donbas frontlines post-2014.
— Unclear who a war of attrition benefits on the ground: a war on Ukrainian territory is costly to them.
— Growing sense Ukrainian attrition means the West will have to do much, much more in terms of military support and financial support for Ukraine.
— Current support will have to transition from ad hoc to a more structured Lend Lease model such as used by Roosevelt.
— Sense that Western sanctions need to be tightened and have ever so slightly disappointed in impact, both on the ground and in the markets.
— Little credence given to Twitter narratives of Kremlin coups and regime cracks with Russia and its regime viewed as able to withstand.
— Growing sense that the sanctions necessary to do on Russia next if there is escalation are oil sanctions modelled on those employed on Iran.
— Inconclusive debate whether mass sanctions on FSB/SVR/siloviki middle management would be effective or not.
— Sense even if Russia surged troops in the spring no silver bullet to take Kyiv but it could consolidate its southern land bridge and maybe complete conquest of Donbas and advance east of Dnipr.
— Whether this happens depends on the battlefield itself over the next few weeks.
— How Russian and Ukrainian commanders fare in the field in the south-east is key. How quickly can Mariupol fall? Can the Ukrainian army fight off Russian encirclement?
— These highly unpredictable military outcomes will have political consequences for a ceasefire.
— If Putin can achieve those gains many diplomats feel he could declare a halt to regroup or even try for a longterm deal that rewarded him those regions alone.
— Ukrainian opinion fiercely opposed to any territorial concessions though.
More analysis soon.