Will 2023 be the year Putin takes Kyiv?

There is always a psychological temptation at the beginning of a new year to interpret it as a universal watershed in world affairs when, in reality, most of life proceeds in a seamless continuum from where it left off in the run-up to Christmas. In one instance, however, it does appear to mark a milestone, in that the arrival of a new year is coinciding with a change in the pattern of the war in Ukraine.

Superficially, nothing much has changed. The fighting continues to be fierce, but fairly immobile. The weather has inhibited large-scale operations and a mild winter has delayed the freezing of the ground that would permit a tactical escalation of hostilities.

So, no change there. Yet, in fact, there is change, some of it highly significant. Firstly, though, how are we to interpret the increasingly incomprehensible situation around Bakhmut, a town of little strategic importance that repeated bombardment has reduced to an archaeological site? It is being besieged by troops of the Wagner Group, a private army 50,000 strong, composed of 10,000 mercenaries and 40,000 convicts released from Russian prisons on the bargain of being amnestied after they have served for a period of time that is becoming more elastic as the weeks pass. Desertion from the Wagner Group is discouraged by a policy of smashing any attempted deserter’s skull with a sledge-hammer.

The Wagner Group is owned by the ambitious Yevgeny Prigozhin, nicknamed “Putin’s chef” because of the lucrative catering contracts he was formerly awarded by his crony, the president. Bakhmut was selected for capture, so that Prigozhin could point to his own army of cut-throats raising the flag of the Russian Federation over the rubble of that small town and compare their performance favourably with that of the official Russian army. Prighozin’s ambition was to secure a status for his “elite” corps, in relation to the Russian army, analogous to that of the SS vis-à-vis the Wehrmacht, with all the political power that implies.

That ambition, well known to Putin, presented the paranoid president with a dilemma. If the Wagner Group had taken Bakhmut, Putin would, of course, have hailed it as a great Russian victory and basked in reflected glory. However, he would also have been uneasy at such an enhancement of Prighozin’s credit, since he is obviously an aspirant to succeed Putin. Now, with the Wagner Group having taken appalling casualties in an effort to capture a valueless target, Putin may well be relieved to see his ambitious ally losing his private army in its self-selected Ukrainian meat grinder.

Prighozin betrayed his frustration this week in an interview on social media, when he described the assault on Bakhmut: “It’s a fortress in every home. The guys lock horns for every home, sometimes not just for one day – sometimes for weeks over a single house. They take one home, they take a second, a third. What is breaking through the defences? It’s taking one house. If we say there are 500 lines of defence for Bakhmut, probably we won’t be wrong. A line of defence every ten metres.”

That is hardly a robust propagandist statement calculated to instil confidence and optimism in the Russian war effort. If any other Russian citizen made remarks like that he would be hauled before a judge for spreading defeatist sentiments. Yet this is the leader of the supposedly elite, professional force spearheading the Russian attack on Ukraine. He went on to complain about his men lacking vehicles, BMP-3 and 100mm shells. That aligns Prigozhin with the awkward squad that is increasingly criticising officialdom, both military and civilian, for incompetence in conducting the special military operation.

Prighozin’s complaints are among the recent phenomena that signal a change in the climate of the Ukraine war. The Wagner Group’s inability to advance, when it aspired to be the sole unit of the Russian forces gaining ground, and its supposedly stoical commander whining about the inadequacies of his supply chain, like any battalion commander in the trenches, are canaries in the coal mine signalling the change in the texture of the Ukraine war in 2023.

So is the HIMARS strike on a Russian barracks that appears to have killed 400 Russian soldiers. That the strike was enabled by the troops’ undisciplined use of their mobile phones while within missile range and made more deadly by the inexplicable incompetence that had billeted personnel close to a munitions store that exploded shows that the Russian army, despite General Armageddon’s appointment as supreme warlord, has not changed its character.

How will the Russian armed forces perform in 2023? Formidably, at first, is probably the answer. General Sergey Surovikin lived up to his reputation for ruthless professionalism when he took the strategic decision to evacuate Kherson and managed to withdraw 20,000 troops across the Dnieper River, with all bridges destroyed, in relatively good order.

That contrasts with the fanatical SS-style assaults on Bakhmut by Prigozhin’s thugs. In the first week of the war, as the Russian army approached the outskirts of Kyiv, every amateur British strategist in the bar of the Dog and Duck was parroting the military maxim that being drawn into urban street fighting was lethal, especially for an attacker. Yet the supposedly most experienced Russian unit, the Wagner Group, went out and picked an urban street fight, for which it has paid dearly.

So, the quality of the Russian military leadership is varied. Russia committed about half of its regular forces, around 40 brigades, to the initial invasion. They were severely mauled, representing a damaging depletion of properly trained troops. When the remnants were reinforced last summer, for domestic political reasons Putin insisted conscripts should not be sent to the front, so that the professionals were stripped out of the 40 reserve brigades and sent into the meat grinder, leaving the reserve brigades largely composed of inexperienced men, supplemented by an influx of mobilised men.

Some military experts argue, however, that the situation is not as unfavourable to Russia as that scenario suggests. They point out that the 300,000 mobilisation total makes sense: 200,000 to bring the 80 brigades back to full strength and 100,000 to replace casualties. Russian conscripts are not necessarily untrained: Russia trains 250,000 reservists every year and 200,000 Russian soldiers are currently undergoing intensive training in Russia and Belarus.

The Ukrainians have taken heavy casualties too. Some American and British analysts assess them as equal to the Russians’. That is unpersuasive, considering the skill with which Ukraine has waged war, jealously conserving its soldiers’ lives. A logical estimate would be 50,000 Ukrainian casualties, as against 80,000-100,000 Russians. The American Colonel Douglas Macgregor, an online commentator who regularly forecasts the obliteration of Ukraine and Russian victory, has assessed the balance at six Ukrainian casualties for every Russian, which is hardly a consensus figure among commentators.

The signs are that Russia is preparing for a massive spring offensive, with freshly trained troops and possibly a second mass mobilisation to supply a vast pool of reinforcements later in the year. Some of Russia’s weaponry, such as its Iskander missiles, is formidable and it has no hesitation in employing thermobaric ordnance. On paper, the Russian Federation has enormous manpower at its disposal.

So, Russian military power has to be taken seriously. But any serious assessment must also examine the defects. A general mobilisation would cripple economic activity in Russia, with consequences lasting for two decades. Since the strategic advantage always lies with the defenders, the Ukrainians, fighting for the existence of their country and having given proof of their stubborn resolve, aggravated by Russian atrocities and confidence-boosting successes such as the Kharkiv counter-offensive, would present a probably invincible resistance.

The current snapshot of the battlefield is a long line from Kherson to the Kharkiv region, with the likely axis of a Russian advance from eastern Donbas forming a pincer movement, north and south of Bakhmut, eventually encircling the remains of that town and progressing to Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Lyman and, ideally, Izium. Any such attack would be launched by the Russian Southern military district command group, supported from the north by the Central military district command.

However, any such costly manoeuvres, if Putin were to go all out to win the war, would probably be a secondary offensive, or even a feint. Common sense dictates that, as this is his last throw, Putin would probably revert to his original battle plan and go hell-for-leather for Kyiv, attacking from Belarus. His army has at least gained experience of Ukrainian terrain, which does not mean this would not prove a suicide mission.

The clever money is on Putin throwing everything he has against Kyiv in a concentrated blitzkrieg. If NATO and the West want to remain credible geopolitical entities, they must ensure that Ukraine has large supplies of state-of-the-art weaponry, to convert Putin’s blitzkrieg into an Ardennes offensive.

Ukraine may strike first: the recent fierce fighting in the Zaporizhzhia region, in which Russia has taken heavy casualties, is a contest for the road to Melitopol. That road runs between two different Russian military district command groups, the Southern and Eastern, with consequent potential for poor coordination. A complementary Ukrainian advance via Nova Kakhovka could clear Kherson oblast of Russian forces and open the way to Crimea. If the Kerch bridge were finally destroyed, Crimea would be completely at the mercy of Ukrainian forces.

Putin could not ignore such a threat, even at the expense of abandoning an attack on Kyiv. His presidency could not survive the loss of Ukraine, whose annexation was the foundation of his popularity and total control of the Russian people. Officials and oligarchs, men like Yevgeny Prigozhin, Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Potanin would surely encircle the wounded bear.

President Zelensky might well regard retaking Crimea as a priority, in case Western allies force him into peace talks, in which physical possession would give him a better chance of retaining control of Crimea. Zelensky also has internal problems, as his sacking of Ivan Bakanov, head of the SBU intelligence service, demonstrated. It does not seem likely that his purge removed all his enemies, Russian collaborators and those prone to trousering roubles in exchange for information. That is a worrying issue and a reminder that Ukraine is just as corrupt as Russia: the difference is that Ukraine does not threaten the security of its neighbours or the global economy.

So, in a nutshell, what can we expect in Ukraine in 2023? The truth is that nobody really knows, but the clever money must be on a major Russian offensive, countered by some characteristically creative Ukrainian strategies. Russia remains formidable, but to put things in perspective we should focus on one basic fact: Russia expected to be in Kyiv by the end of February, 2022; that was almost a year ago and Putin’s army occupies far less of Ukraine now. So, whatever forces they are conjuring to wreak further mischief and mayhem, they are far from invincible and – the crucial morale factor – their conscript troops are grimly aware of that fact.

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