Putin is obsessed with Ukraine – but his forces may not be strong enough to hold it
Vladimir Putin appeared to be giving diplomacy a chance following his talks at the Kremlin long table with Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Tuesday. Apparently, his commanders in the field had decided to press the pause button on what appeared to be their imminent invasion of Ukraine on at least four main axes.
Despite the announcement that Russian tanks were “pulling back after completing their drills”, no one in the Nato alliance was buying the line that the massive build-up forces around Ukraine had all been a game of bluff. “It still has to be verified that they are moving back,” briefed America’s Ambassador to Nato, Julianne Smith. “It’s too early to assess what they are doing.”
Boris Johnson gave a sobering and succinct verdict after consulting British intelligence chiefs at a Cobra security meeting. While agreeing there were “signs of a diplomatic opening,” he added that latest intelligence from the ground was “not encouraging.” Some 60 per cent of Russian ground combat power was now in place to attack Ukraine. Despite the Moscow announcement of tank units returning to barracks, fresh units were arriving – including military hospital units close to the border.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace gave a clear update before the Nato defence ministers’ meeting in Brussels today, confirming there were still no signs of a concerted withdrawal of Russia’s forward units. There are signs of further intense activity by naval units in the Black Sea, he warned.
Russian forces facing Ukraine now number nearly 100 Battalion Tactical Groups, with tanks, mechanised infantry, and an array of drones, ground rockets, missiles and heavy artillery. Formations in Belarus are configured for a lightning advance on Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, which could be executed in two hours.
“We don’t think Putin has made a final decision yet,” said a senior UK strategic planner. “We shouldn’t get too hung up on dates,” he added, countering suggestions that Russian commanders had set the H-Hour to launch the attacks at 01.00 local time on 16 February, which has now passed. “It could happen at any time,” said the strategic planner, implying that the attacks could be launched even while the Kremlin was talking about further rounds of diplomacy.
There is still some head scratching in the capitals and headquarters of the Nato allies about what Vladimir Putin wants in the short and long term. “We do not know what is going on in President Putin’s head,” said Ambassador Smith after several meetings with Russian officials in the Nato-Russia council.
After meeting Chancellor Scholz, the Kremlin spokesman said that President Putin had asked for “the Nato issue to be resolved,” once and for all.
One of the UK’s most experienced envoys who has engaged with Putin’s diplomacy since he first came to power, said he is a master of switching psychological tactics and goals. His overall aim is the disruption and reduction of the influence of Nato. He believes that his predecessors Mikail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin “gave away too much,” with 1997 and Poland’s accession to the Nato alliance as the turning point. Ten years later Putin gave his keynote speech to the Munich Security Conference in which he attacked the role of Nato in Europe and the dominance of the US in global relations as a whole.
“He is also obsessed with Ukraine, and getting Ukraine back,” explained the envoy. “He thinks it should never have been let go by Russia.”
This has led to the deployment of more than half of the Russian army’s combat power and half the strength and capability of the Russian air force. “The force is superior to Ukraine’s forces,” said James Hackett, editor of the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ annual catalogue of armed forces, The Military Balance, at the launch of the edition for 2022.
Under Putin, Russia’s forces have undergone a huge modernisation programme in training, strategy, and equipment. There are now fewer conscript soldiers and more than half the force surrounding Ukraine now are professional soldiers hired on contract. But the upgrade of weaponry isn’t yet complete, and funds are likely to be tight if Ukraine becomes a long campaign – for instance many of the tanks are refurbished T-72s and not the more modern T-14s launched in 2015.
British strategic analysts and diplomats do not believe that Russian forces could sustain a long campaign, particularly if it involved a difficult occupation of a country the size of France and Germany combined. “Putin has to listen to veterans of the Afghan campaign [1979 – 1989],” which led to bloody and inconclusive occupation, according to one British diplomat.
“He will not want to get bogged down. He is more likely to invade and then pull back; he is clever enough to make it up as he goes along.” Another senior government analyst suggested, “he will want to go in fast. A standoff is unlikely. He wants to get rid of the Zelensky government in Kyiv quickly.”
On Tuesday the Duma, the lower house of parliament in Moscow, introduced a motion to recognise the independence of the “Democratic Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk”, the enclaves of Russian speakers in the Donbas in South East Ukraine. At the same time, the Kremlin said it was alarmed at the “reports of serious human rights abuses of the inhabitants of the enclave, i.e. Russians, by the Ukrainian authorities. This has been taken as a possible “false flag” propaganda ploy by Moscow to justify its military action.
If so, it is uncharacteristically clumsy. Most of the forces in the enclaves are Russian military, militias and volunteers and they are the de facto authorities there.
Moscow’s military planners have to avoid a long and difficult campaign, and an occupation bedeviled by the constant threat of insurgency and resistance from the Ukrainians – a grinding, low level, civil war. The generals and the Kremlin may have assembled potent forces of up to 130,000. But if they get bogged down, or fall apart, there is nothing to replace them. It’s the only army Putin has got.
So now Vladimir Putin is in a psychodrama of his own making. He will have to choose his tactics carefully, or face strategic defeat. “He always sets a hierarchy of aims and he can switch between them,” according to a senior British ambassador.
“So far there are no signs of de-escalation of Russia’s forces. And Putin is very, very good at putting on psychological pressure.”