Russia: Pain Management

http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/russia/20220225.aspx

February 25, 2022:
Russia finally “invaded� Ukraine yesterday after recognizing the two Russian-created governments in the half of Donbas that Russia has been keeping Ukrainian forces out of since 2014. By declaring these two republics as legitimate, Russia justified sending in troops as peacekeepers and threatening to invade the rest of Ukraine if Ukrainian forces fired back against more attacks by the local and Russian forces in these two republics. Russia reinforced this threat by threatening to base over 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border.

As expected, not a lot of the nearly 200,000 Russian troops now near the Ukraine borders actually entered Ukraine. All, or most appeared to be volunteers, rather than the one-year conscripts that comprise half the strength of the armed forces. Few of the conscripts and even fewer of their parents are eager for the conscripts to be fighting neighbors.

Russian airborne forces managed to take an airport ten kilometers outside Kyiv. Efforts to use that airport to bring in additional troops were disrupted by the Ukrainian use of Stinger portable anti-aircraft missiles as well as rifle and machine-gun fire at low flying aircraft. The airport was quickly attacked by a Ukrainian army rapid reaction force organized and trained for retaking key locations seized by Russian airborne forces. While the area around the airport was soon surrounded by regular reservists and armed volunteers, the Rapid Reaction unit retook the airport before the Russians could use larger transport aircraft to bring in more troops. Russia appears to have underestimated the preparations Ukraine have made since 2014 to deal with this kind of invasion. In addition to 150 local defense units (of at least battalion size) arrangements were made to quickly arm, train and deploy volunteers, which includes all physically able males aged 16 to 60. The regular army obtained more portable anti-aircraft weapons and trained special units to deal with any Russians that seized key objectives. All those armed Ukrainians were more of an obstacle that the Russians expected. The invaders are using about a dozen main roads from the border to objectives inside Ukraine. Within hours all those roads were under fire from the armed locals. Even convoys with numerous armed escorts were fired on and the Russians did not have enough troops to clear the roads of armed hostiles. Some convoys were halted by roadblocks and at least one Russian reconnaissance platoon was captured. While the Russians control most Ukrainian airspace and coastal waters, land areas remain under Ukrainian control.

An amphibious assault on the major Black Sea port of Odessa failed and most ground advances appear to have stalled as well. One Russian column that did not encounter any resistance was the one into the Chernobyl radioactive zone. A large region around the Chernobyl power plant is still highly radioactive because of the 1986 nuclear meltdown of one of the reactors. This nuclear disaster, which the Soviets tried to keep quiet, was quickly exposed as major disasters and one of the reasons Ukrainians were so eager to leave the Soviet Union five years later. Most of the victims of the radioactivity were Ukrainian. The invading Russians replaced the Ukrainian security guards keeping people out of the 2,600 square kilometers (thousand square miles) radioactive exclusion zone near the Belarus border. After 1986 about 250,000 people were moved from the zone and since then only tourists were allowed in, under escort, for short periods. About 5,000 people guard the security zone and monitor the enormous concrete and steel structure now surrounding the still highly radioactive power plant uranium core. Those monitors spend fifteen days at a time in the zone and then two weeks outside it, with their radioactivity levels carefully monitored. Those monitor personnel appear to still be there, but now under Russian control. While Ukrainians comprised most of those killed by the melt down, about 70 percent of the initial radiation fell on what is now Belarus. For that reason, it seems unlikely the Russians would not arrange for an accident at the entombed nuclear core. Most Belarussians oppose Russia and their own dictator, which is currently kept in power by Russian forces. The main reason for taking control of the exclusion zone was that it is a key element of one of the shortest routes to Kyiv. So far Russian forces have not advanced much from the exclusion zone to the beleaguered Russian airborne troops trying to hold the airport.

The outcome of the invasion will be more obvious within a week. Much depends on the effectiveness of the local resistance to Russian forces and the roads they use. It is currently the “mud� season in Ukraine where most of the snow is gone and replaced by weeks of mud, which limits off-road travel by wheeled vehicles.

Another Problem

There was another major flaw in the Russian plan; it is expensive and depends on the world price of oil and natural gas as well as Russian access to European markets. Oil and gas prices are at record highs right now, in part because the United States recently reduced its ability to produce a lot of oil and natural gas. Russia thought their oil and gas exports were safe but the angry response of NATO members to the Russian invasion led to something Russia had not expected, nor can afford to deal with. Not only were the West Europe customers for Russian natural gas willing to halt purchases and shut down the two new natural gas pipelines that go from Russia, via the Baltic, to Germany but also halt most trade and economic activity with Russia. This includes sanctioning major Russian banks that handled most of this trade and seizing billions in Russian assets in Europe.

Russia is now in damage-control mode because Western trading partners are more united and willing to impose more economic sanctions than expected. The Belarus and Ukraine pipelines will continue to supply natural gas to Europe as well as Belarus and Ukraine. If Russia does manage to occupy all of Ukraine that could see an end to all natural gas exports to Europe. Oil and natural gas account for 60 percent of Russian exports and nearly half the government budget. Europe has been a major customer, obtaining 40 percent of its heating fuel from Russia. Even before 2014, growing dependence on Russian natural gas was seen as risky. Germany insisted the Russian were dependable and rational. Germany began having second thoughts after 2014, now agrees with the Russia critics and is ending all trade with Russia because of the invasion. East European NATO members warned Germany that Russia had not changed and continued to be a major threat. NATO is now moving more forces to NATO members that border Russia and these reinforcements may become permanent. During the Cold War, the majority of active NATO forces were stationed in West Germany, because the largest and best equipped Russian forces in East Europe were stationed in East Germany.

The economic sanctions include tech exports and maintenance of any Western tech used in Russia. There are also individual sanctions against wealthy Russians with assets in Europe and the United States. Over the last two decades Vladimir Putin conducted a purge of the newly wealthy Russian oligarchs and soon the only ones left were those who supported Putin.

Improved relations with Russia are only possible by Russia making dramatic changes in how it treats Ukraine and East Europe in general. Russia has repeatedly broken promises and formal agreements, so now only Russian actions have any meaning and Russia refuses to behave. Days before the invasion Russian leader Putin told his French counterpart that there would be no invasion. Now Russia is threatening to close all their airspace to foreign commercial traffic. This would be a return to Cold War conditions, when the Soviets shot down foreign airliners that wandered into Russian airspace or, in some cases, just appeared to. There are also the non-oil/gas exports which consist of many rare ores and gasses that are harder to replace in the West. Before the Cold War ended many of these items were not exported. Since 1991 Russia has also become dependent on the income from these exports. Once more it comes down to who can tolerate the most economic pain. Going back to Cold War rules would cost Russia more than anyone else and increase the economic suffering of the average Russian.

The Russian economic decline since 2014 because of Western sanctions has been very real for the average Russian as personal income declines and the percentage of the population living in poverty increases. Efforts to restore the Russian Empire have some popularity among Russians if the economic cost to them is not too great. The new sanctions will be felt most by the average Russian and that is how the Soviet Union lost so much popular support that it collapsed. When it comes to popular unrest the main reason is usually economic and, if you follow the money, you discover who did what to create the mess.

Ukraine, the target of all this Russian aggression, was motivated to resist militarily. This has been a very active tradition during the last century. Towards the end of World War I (1914-1, Ukraine was briefly independent once more. Ukrainians fought back after World War I ended and a civil war broke out in Russia that led to a communist victory and particularly harsh treatment of separatist Ukrainians. Stalin starved Ukraine in the early 1930s and felt justified because of its continued resistance to communist rule. This Holodomor (Great Hunger) killed over three million Ukrainians as too much Ukrainian grain was exported for hard currency. During World War II Ukrainian partisan fighters fought the Germans but many continued to fight returning Russian control late in the war. The armed Ukrainian separatists remained active into the early 1950s. The brutality with which Russia put down this resistance kept the Ukrainian anger alive into the 1980s and that played a role in Ukraine leaving the Russian empire. In the Russian occupied areas of Donbas, Russia assumed that unless harsh measures were taken there would be armed resistance there. While most of the locals were ethnic Russians imported decades before the Soviet Union collapsed, most spoke Ukrainian and welcomed Ukrainian independence in 1991. Russia spent a lot of money and effort to prevent an armed uprising within their Donbas territory. This was the reason so many ethnic Russian Ukrainians fled to Ukraine rather than take a job with the Russian militias or local governments. Even so there was a lot of violence within and between the local militias and Russia had to bring in specialists to identify and remove (kill) the most troublesome the militia leaders they were paying to fight the Ukrainian troops.

Unlike the past, this time Ukraine has active foreign support from NATO neighbors and NATO in general. Since Putin declared the Donbas republics legitimate, pledges of military aid to Ukraine have increased, along with economic aid.

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