Category: My Work

I took a few days off last week and on my social media I posted a series of graphics explaining why a no-fly zone over Ukraine is a terrible idea. To be clear, Russia’s deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure is horrific. But when Russia failed to quickly take Kyiv and capture/execute Zelensky, what we are seeing became almost inevitable. There was a great piece from Quentin Sommerville for the BBC that he closes saying:

“This is what Russia does to cities. It bombards them. It besieges them. It surrounds them. It terrorises entire populations. And if these tactics are unfamiliar to you, then you haven’t been paying attention, because this is the Russian attack playbook perfected in over ten years of war in Syria.”

War is horrible and the photos and videos coming out of Ukraine are gruesome. But a NATO-enforced no-fly zone over Ukraine creates a very real risk of escalating this war from a conflict between two nations to a war between Russia and Ukraine and NATO. Ukrainians have every right to want a no-fly zone and I would have been surprised if it wasn’t among their asks of the West, but that doesn’t mean the West should give it to them. And here’s a couple reasons why.

First, Russia is not Libya. Nor is it Serbia. Nor Iraq. Russia is a nuclear-armed power. It has technologically advanced fighters, bombers, and drones. And it has thousands of them. Plus it has a very capable air defence network centred around the S-400 surface-to-air missile (SAM) system.

The system consists of a a radar set to find targets, another to track and engage targets, command-and-control, and finally the missile units above. A number of different missiles can be used, including one with a range of 400km and another with a range of 250km. Obviously I’m not privy to the locations of Russia’s SAM systems, but let me place four of them in hypothetical locations around Ukraine and you can see I’ve got pretty decent coverage of almost all Ukraine. Note that none of those four are actually located in Ukraine.

Most of the worst carnage Russia has inflicted on Ukraine is in cities like Mariupol and Kharkiv. You can see just how well those cities are covered in this hypothetical placement. I wouldn’t be surprised if Russia’s actual locations provide similar dense, overlapping coverage of those cities.

Now, at those longer ranges, it’s harder to hit targets flying low to the ground, e.g. an attack helicopter. So for a no-fly zone, NATO aircraft would have to fly over Ukraine to intercept any Russian fighters, bombers, helicopters or drones. To do that, however, NATO aircraft would have to fly higher up in the atmosphere where there’s less air resistance for more fuel economy and more radar coverage of the ground. That puts them squarely in the targets of these S-400s. Maybe NATO’s first flight goes off without a hitch. But the moment a NATO fighter shoots down a Russian fighter, these S-400s would likely start firing at NATO aircraft.

Thus a no-fly zone needs air superiority to be effective. And to control the skies over Ukraine, NATO would need to eliminate Russian SAM systems located within Russia and/or Belarus. To be clear, NATO would be bombing or using cruise missiles to kill Russians inside Russia.

Second, most of Russia’s killing of civilians is not done with bombs dropped from lanes. In recent days we have seen air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs) destroy numerous targets. These present a distinct problem for no-fly zones as this graphic shows.

It is not easy to destroy an incoming missile, especially when they utilise countermeasures designed to trick defence systems or when the missile is designed for stealth. With the Kh-101 ALCM, Russia has a long-range stand-off weapon, meaning that it can fire the weapon from beyond a range where the Ukrainians can effectively defend against the unit firing the weapon.

The Kh-101 can be fired from a Tu-95 Bear, it’s kind of the Soviet/Russian version of the American B-52. It’s old, slow, but can hold a lot of weapons. And in this case one Bear can launch from their base in Engels, Russia with eight Kh-101s. With a missile range of 2,000 miles, Russia can fire Kh-101s and hit targets from well inside Russia.

For a no-fly zone this means you need the ability to shoot down those missiles at a bare minimum. But keep in mind, this is not easy to do. And so you would probably need to shoot down the Bears in flight or maybe even target the airfield runway, which is even further inside Russia than the SAM systems at which we just looked. More bombing of Russia.

Are you noticing a pattern yet?

Third, we also need to look at what’s actually causing some of the worst damage. Here you can see two of the culprits: a BM-21 Grad and 2S19M2 Msta-S. The first is a multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) and the second is a self-propelled artillery.

The MLRS does what it looks like it does. This model has forty rockets and it can very quickly launch all or just some of them. But it’s more of an area fire weapon, which means that it’s meant to saturate a target area with a lot of fire. Grad translates to Hail and you can get a sense from that word what the system is meant to do. The Msta-S is basically a big artillery gun put onto a tank’s body so that it can move around on its own without having to be towed into place. With the bigger gun, these things can do a lot of damage on their own.

Neither of them, however, would be defended against with a no-fly zone. To engage them would be more of a proper and conventional war, using aircraft and drones to take out targets of opportunity as they emerge from hiding places. Instead of just taking out Russian planes over Ukraine, Russian SAM sites on the Russian side of the Russo-Ukrainian border, and airfields deep inside Russia, now we’d be bombing Russian units operating on the ground in Ukraine.

A no-fly zone means war with Russia. And that’s bad, because Russia’s military is smaller and less capable than all of NATO, but Russia likely would not hesitate to use chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons against NATO targets should NATO become actively involved. Russia would then be effectively put into a corner and it has a sizeable stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons and has the doctrines to use them.

I don’t want to alarm people, so let’s take a brief aside to talk nukes. A tactical nuke is not the same thing as the nuclear weapons we associate with giant mushroom clouds obliterating entire cities. Those are strategic nuclear weapons deployed from an intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which are themselves different from the short-range ballistic missiles Russia has been using throughout this war. A tactical nuclear weapon typically will have a size of 1 to 1,000 kilotons. A strategic weapon could be in the range of 30,000–50,000 kilotons (some smaller, some larger). For context, the bomb that the US dropped on Hiroshima was about 15 kilotons.

Even though the damage would be more confined to the battlefield, we really, really do not want a nuclear war. Radiation is still a thing. And the local effects would be catastrophic. Finally, if Russia deployed a nuclear artillery shell to eliminate a NATO armoured column advancing east from the Polish border, we would have to counter or risk continued Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons. And if we then take out a Russian tank regiment, what stops Russia from escalating to using a nuclear weapon on Polish soil to take out a NATO airbase. And then we take out one of those aforementioned Russian airbases. And then they respond with a nuclear weapon hitting Bratislava, warning us to stop. But NATO’s been nuked, so we respond and take out a smaller Russian city, maybe Rostov-on-Don or Murmansk. They then launch on New York. We respond overwhelmingly. They respond overwhelmingly. Nuclear winter descends upon the planet and lots and lots of people die.

Putin knows this escalatory ladder as well as we do. I don’t think Russia using tactical nuclear weapons is particularly high. But it’s not zero. And given how cataclysmic that non-zero risk is, it’s worth being more risk-averse in this war.

Back to the no-fly zones, to sum up, if NATO declares and then enforces a no-fly zone, NATO is declaring war on Russia. That’s bad because there’s an obvious if not highly likely route to escalation to complete thermonuclear war between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.

So, if a no-fly zone is a bad idea, what can we do? After all, it’s easy to say no and harder to offer an alternative.

The short version is to keep doing what we have been doing.

When President Biden announced the latest aid package from the US, he mentioned artillery radar amongst the thousands of missiles and other splashy hardware. Artillery radar, or counter-battery radar, may not be very sexy, but it is very important because it allows Ukrainians to detect incoming artillery and rocket fire from units like those BM-21s or Mstas. And once you detect those, you can pinpoint their location and direct your own artillery fire or send your aircraft or drones to take out Russian artillery. That would do the most to defend against Russian artillery.

Then there were a number of measures announced with respect to air defence systems and those fall into a number of categories.

We have all heard about Stingers. Those are incredibly effective against Russian helicopters and low-flying aircraft and drones. But there are also other options, here I’ve depicted an SA-13 Gopher, which is a Soviet-made, i.e. Ukrainians know how to use them, which is in use by several Eastern European NATO countries. The United States cannot supply those. We do have a few systems given to us by those same countries so we can train against them, but I think it unlikely we give those up. But can the United States give those Eastern European NATO countries new American-made systems and then those older Soviet-made systems are given to Ukraine?

Top in this list are some S-300 missile systems, in particular owned by Slovakia. The Slovak defence minister announced that Slovakia is willing to immediately provide its S-300 system, but only if it can receive a replacement system from NATO. If you are Slovakia watching your neighbour be invaded by Russia, I think wanting a replacement system makes an immense amount of sense. Just yesterday, Germany and the Netherlands announced they’ll send their Patriot missile batteries to Slovakia. Once they arrive, hopefully Slovakia will follow through and send its system to Ukraine.

These systems differ in terms of what they can do to defend Ukraine’s skies. The Stingers and some of Ukraine’s own short- and medium-range systems can defend the battlefield, but the S-300 could help defend larger area of operations. Ukraine did have and operate the S-300 before the war, although there have been a number of photos of destroyed Ukrainian systems, probably taken out by Russia in the opening hours of the war. So any replacement systems would allow Ukraine to better intercept aircraft at longer ranges, but also cruise missiles like the ones we’ve been discussing.

Ukraine has effectively used its air defence assets to deny air superiority to Russia. That doesn’t mean Russia doesn’t actively control parts of the sky, because it does, but Ukraine successfully contests that on a daily basis. You only need to look at the mounting numbers of aircraft, drones, and helicopters for proof of that.

Keep giving Ukraine SAMs and a lot of them. That’s the best way to “close the skies” over Ukraine.

Finally, I’ll add a few thoughts about those Polish MiGs, maybe 24 or so of them.

The MiGs are old planes compared to the front line fighters Russia has deployed to the conflict. Additionally, Russia does have airborne command-and-control assets to identify Ukrainian aircraft in the skies then vector those fighters to the area and take them out. MiGs do have some advantages: they can operate from dirt airfields and offer some air-to-ground capabilities. If they fly low enough they can mitigate some of the risk from Russia’s S-400s.

For Ukraine to try and achieve its own air superiority, it would need far more than 24 MiGs. At present, Ukraine flies only 5–10 sorties or missions per day. Russia is flying about 200. Ukrainian fighters would need to loiter in the skies over Ukraine, but we’ve already seen how Russia could shoot down those jets with their long-range SAMs. For Ukraine to establish air superiority it would need to do all the things we discussed earlier, but Ukraine has none of the tools to do that. Ukrainian air superiority is likely out of the question for the duration of the conflict.

So if Ukraine is restricted to low-altitude operations, NATO may have better options for Ukraine. Bulgaria has maybe 14 Su-25 Frogfoots. These excel at flying low and taking out ground units like tanks, artillery, infantry fighting vehicles, &c. The aircraft can be taken out by Russia’s own short- and medium-range air defence units deployed with Russian ground forces, but they can take more punishment than fighter jets.

These would be far more useful than MiGs. As with the MiGs, however, 14 is not really a number that will change the balance of air power and we don’t even know if those Bulgarian planes are still capable of flying. Regardless, the ground-based SAM units would be the best bet along with the aforementioned artillery radar systems. If we can get more of those units to Ukraine, that would be immensely more helpful than maybe two dozen MiGs.

In other words, we’re doing the best we can do. Keep giving Ukraine all the missiles it can use. But a no-fly zone should remain off the table for now.

Credit for the work is mine.

A quick little post for today, more coverage on Ukraine of course. But whilst I normally focus on the battlefield because that’s what interests me, we shouldn’t lose sight of the enormous refugee problem Putin has created by invading Ukraine. Putin’s war will likely be the largest European refugee crisis since World War II.

Previously, the worst European crisis had been the breakup of Yugoslavia when 2.3 million people left their homes and fled abroad. But over just the first 19 days of this Russo-Ukrainian war, just short of 3 million people have fled Ukraine. And of course these numbers do not count those displaced internally within Ukraine, for example those who have fled Kyiv for Lviv or Kharkiv for Polatava.

Regardless I wanted to chart the daily flow of refugees fleeing Ukraine for all.

Credit for the piece is mine.

So first, these maps are from last night and by the time this posts, most of the daytime in Ukraine will have happened and things on the ground could have changed dramatically. But let’s start the week out with where things are at in Ukraine.

In short, on most fronts not a lot has changed since my post last week. The only area where you’ll see some differences is in the south in the Donbas and along the Sea of Azov.

In the north and west of Kyiv, the Russian offensive has largely ground to a halt. Russian ground forces appear to be moving south in an attempt to encircle the city in coordination with Russian forces moving east from Sumy. In the meantime Russian artillery continues to devastate Kyiv’s suburbs, though the city proper is not nearly in bad a shape as Kharkiv and Mariupol. Meanwhile, forces moving south from the area around Chernihiv remain stuck, north of Kyiv. Though some forces may have been diverted in an attempt to encircle Chernihiv in preparation to try and take the city. If the Russians could take the city, it would allow for a more direct line of supplies from the north.

Kharkiv remains in Ukraine’s control, but Russian artillery forces continue to bombard the city almost nonstop. Photos of the city show a city that looks more like Grozny in 1999. However, some Russian forces have begun to move south from the city and into the Donbas in the direction of Izyum. This isn’t far from the cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, which were key battlegrounds back in 2014.

Further east in the Donbas, Russian and separatist forces are slogging through heavy combat, but are making progress on the city of Severodonetsk, a key intersection of several highways. Russian forces have been advancing on the city from the north, northeast, and southeast.

South in the Donbas the same Russian and separatist forces have broken through the Ukrainian defences in Volnovakha. They have moved into the interior of Zaporizhzhia oblast and are in position to link up with Russian forces moving east/northeast from the Crimean front.

If Kyiv is Ukraine’s best front, the Crimean front remains Russia’s. Forces have split into perhaps three axes. The aforementioned group has taken the city of Melitopol and is pushing east towards the Donbas in support of another group that has moved to encircle and besiege Mariupol. Mariupol remains cut off from Ukraine and Russian forces have been bombarding the city, the size of Miami, almost nonstop. We haven’t seen many photos of Mariupol, but it’s almost certainly worse than what we’re seeing out of Kharkiv.

Another group from Crimea is moving north towards the city of Zaporizhzhia after having captured the nuclear power plant at Enerhodar.

The other main group moved west towards the city of Kherson. After capturing that strategic city, forces moved northwest towards the city of Mykolaiv. But over the last week, they haven’t been able to take the city. Instead, there we are seeing perhaps reconnaissance forces probing the approaches north towards the city of Kryvi Rih, which controls the western approaches to Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia.

When we look at it altogether, what can we glean about Putin’s plan?

First and foremost, Putin still wants Kyiv. The bulk of his forces are in position to try and encircle the city and besiege it. If he can do that, he can try to then eliminate Ukrainian president Zelensky. That hasn’t changed. I want to focus on the southern theatres of the war.

I’ve highlighted the general area of Ukrainian areas of operation in yellow. In blue arrows I’ve drawn what I think will be Russia’s planned axes of movement. Looking east to west, the first objective is to clearly encircle Severodonetsk and crush Ukrainian resistance in the region. West of the city, we have two clear axes of movement aiming to meet up at probably Dnipro. This would encircle the larger yellow area, the concentration of Ukraine’s best troops, which have been fighting Russian-backed forces in the Donbas for eight years. With the whole region surrounded, Russian artillery and air power could attrit Ukrainian forces and attempt to destroy them without significant ground contact.

You can see a smaller version of that plan just north and west of Mariupol. The forces breaking out of Volnovakha are in position to link up with the Crimean forces, effectively cutting the whole area off from Kyiv’s control. Again, with these being some of Ukraine’s most effective units, this would deprive Kyiv of valuable reinforcements.

Further west, Putin probably wants to capture Mykolaiv desperately. He needs the city to safely cross the Southern Bug river. That’s perhaps the last main natural defence for Odessa. Whilst Russia has created an effective blockade in the Black Sea, controlling Odessa would put Ukraine’s third-largest city in Putin’s hands.

Extending north and west from Mykolaiv we have another new offensive focus: Kryvi Rih. If Putin could take this city he would open up another axis of advance upon Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia.

But this all points to what I think is an under-discussed strategic goal: the southern land bridge linking Crimea to Russia. In 2014, when Russian and Russian-backed forces agreed to a ceasefire with Ukraine, the Russian forces never left. Crimea was fully annexed and constitutes an integral part of Russia whilst the Donbas saw two semi-states carved from the Ukrainian oblasts.

If Ukraine cannot force Russian units to retreat, I fear that any negotiated peace with Russia will see these areas—if not along with others—ceded by Ukraine to Russia. This could either take the form of territory added to Russia or as a new state that would be de facto under the control of Moscow.

And while Putin’s advances in the north have thus far ground to a halt, he continues to make good, if not slow, progress in the south.

Credit for the piece is mine.

I’ve been posting a lot of map updates to my personal social media accounts instead of to the blog here. In part that’s because at the end of the night, it’s the wee hours in Ukraine and I can post something that will hold up fairly well for a few hours. But right now in the morning, it’s the middle of the afternoon and whatever I post here could change by the time I finish this post. So timing has been tricky. But I’m trying to figure out a way of making the posting/graphic-making more efficient to keep you, my readers, updated. And don’t worry, I’m still bookmarking plenty of non-Ukraine things for when this war calms down. But priorities.

This morning, Russia and Ukraine agreed to several ceasefires to allow civilians to evacuate several towns. Most notable for many will be the northwestern suburbs of Kyiv, whose inhabitants can flee to the south to another suburb of the capital.

To the south and east you can see the trend emerge. Cities or towns at the edge of the red areas, which is usually the line of contact, are those begin evacuated. And in the cases of Sumy, Kharkiv, and Mariupol we have three cities that have been under sustained bombardment and are in desparate need of supplies.

On the military front, after several days of relative inaction from Russian troops, they began to move again yesterday. There were no gains on the main thrust from Belarus into northern Kyiv, but east of the capital, Russian armour and mechanised troops have now pushed into the eastern suburbs. This shows their intent to try and encircle and besiege the city. But Russia is likely several days away from being able to accomplish that objective.

In the east, Russian troops appear to be moving beyond Kharkiv, perhaps content with its partial siege, and moving to the south. This could potentially link them up with separatist and Russian regular army forces trying to break through the Donbas’ Line of Contact, where some of the most seasoned and well-equipped Ukrainian troops have been stationed for years.

Southwest of that we have Russian troops still bombarding Mariupol in an attempt to I would guess force its surrender. But north of the city, Russian troops are beginning to move north and northwest. That would allow them to threaten Zaporizhzhia and then Dnipro, both of which are major cities and control Dnieper River crossing points. If successful, they could then cut off the Ukrainian troops in the Donbas from falling back to reinforce Kyiv.

And in the west, Russian troops have begun to move around Mykolaiv, perhaps content to simply besiege the city whilst sending small patrols further north to try and find a secure river crossing. Their ultimate goal is almost certainly Odessa.

Credit for the piece is mine.

Undeniably, Russia outnumbers and outguns the Ukraine on the ground, on the sea, and in the air. The latter matters because Ukraine’s air attacks have devastated Russian convoys. But beyond drones, Ukraine could use additional combat aircraft: both ground attack aircraft and fighter jets to try and defend Ukrainian airspace.

The problem is that Ukrainians would need to be trained how to to use any new aircraft they purchase or receive. American F-16s would make sense, but they would require significant training time to make the switch from Soviet-made to American-made hardware. Enter European countries. A few former Eastern Bloc countries still have Soviet-made equipment and Ukraine has asked them for those same aircraft.

Bulgaria, Poland, and Slovakia all operate MiG-29 Fulcrums, which Ukraine does as well. Bulgaria also operates Su-25 Frogfoots, which is a ground attack aircraft the Ukraine flies (and has already lost at least two in combat). It’s not clear how many Fulcrums Ukraine may have lost thus far in the war.

Ukraine claims that the three countries have announced they will provide 70 aircraft to Ukraine and bolster the Ukrainian air force. Here is how that breaks down.

I should note that after I wrote this and designed this, there are indications that Bulgaria has now refused to send the MiGs. Things change fast in war, so take this all with a grain of salt.

Credit for the piece is mine.

Last week I wrote about what I considered Russia’s most likely plans of attack in a war with Ukraine. For the next day I had a post planned about what we could perhaps glean from Russian troop movements in days prior. But, the day I posted the first piece, late that night (US time), Russian forces began their initial artillery and cruise missile barrage. Helicopter assault forces followed as ground troops then began to roll across the border. Suffice it to say, my planned post no longer made sense and I scrapped it.

But we’re now into day five of the war and to start the week I wanted to show where we are at and how my thoughts played out. Unequivocally we are looking at one of the worst case scenarios. That day I wrote:

Finally there is the least likely, a full-out invasion of Ukraine west of the Dnieper River…[this] would likely take many months and occur over multiple phases…But it likely would involve almost all of the above to some degree or another.

If you blend together all the maps from that day, you see this:

You have an invasion from the north, via Belarus, with an objective in Kiev. In the east, a group tries to take the city of Kharkiv whilst a portion also makes a drive towards eastern Kiev. Troops continue to press north and west out of Donetsk and Luhansk into the broader Donbas. And finally troops from the south and Crimea attempt to create a land bridge whilst a small group heads towards Kherson to take the crossings over the Dnieper and protect that group’s flank and rear.

So after four days of warfare in Ukraine—a still very early phase, mind you—where are we?

To be clear, the shapes and arrows here are for illustrative purposes. They are not necessarily the exact routes taken by Russian forces. And the light fill does not mean these areas are not wholly under Russia’s controls. After all, the numerous photos and videos of destroyed Russian supply convoys make it clear Ukrainian troops behind the lines continue to wage effective resistance.

You can see we are looking at one of the worst case scenarios. But, all is not lost because the Ukrainian troops’ organised resistance has stymied much of the Russian advance. Only in the south do you see any real Russian progress in trying to complete a southern corridor or land bridge linking the Russian mainland to Crimea. I don’t think this is the primary goal of Putin’s invasion, that clearly appears to be to take Kyiv and remove Ukrainian president Zelensky. But you can imagine that should Putin realise he’s failed in his main objectives, his ask to withdraw troops from the rest of Ukraine would be to keep the southern corridor. And it’s not like Ukraine would have the troops to necessarily force the Russians out.

But the other thing about this new map is that it’s from yesterday, not today. There would only be a few changes and updates I’d have to make, because not much movement has happened on the ground thus far today. Unfortunately, it looks like Putin is changing tactics, as I and many had feared. With his advances largely halted, he is resorting to a tried-and-true approach: bomb the shit out of everything.

Today we have video of multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) fire raining down upon the densely populated residential areas of Kharkiv. Undoubtedly this will result in dozens if not hundreds of casualties. (Though if we’re lucky, most Ukrainians huddled safely in bomb shelters throughout the barrage.) Kharkiv, like Kyiv, has fiercely resisted the Russian advance. What happens to Kyiv when Putin is able to bring his ground artillery within range?

Sadly, Russian troops continue to advance towards Kyiv, albeit at a crawl and not the blitzkrieg-like pace I think they expected.

Credit for the piece is mine.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to start several days’ worth of coverage about Ukraine and Russia’s “further invasion”. For those that haven’t followed me here at Coffeespoons for very long, eight long years ago, in addition to covering other media outlets’ work, I did quite a lot of research, designed several pieces trying to explain the last Russian invasion of Ukraine: when Putin seized Crimea (ultimately annexing it) and then supported separatists in the oblasts (provinces/states) of Donetsk and Luhansk. You can see that work on this tag for Ukraine.

Perhaps then it should come as no surprise that in the last several weeks my old Ukraine content about Russia’s invasion of Crimea and the Donbas has suddenly become my most popular content. By far. I figure as the first of likely a number of posts on a new invasion, I would outline some options that seem plausible to me, an armchair general.

At this point, it is now clear that Russia has begun to invade Ukraine once again—although the Russians never left at 2014. In Crimea, Russia exercises de facto jurisdiction having annexed the territory and incorporated it into the Russian Federation. The Donbas, on the other hand, remains under the de facto control of the separatists whilst remaining an integral part of Ukraine.

The Donbas consists of the aforementioned oblasts, Donetsk and Luhansk. Importantly, the separatists only exercise authority over approximately 1/3 of the territory with the Ukrainian government in control of the remainder. The separatists’ area of control, however, does include the region’s two largest cities, the eponymous capitals of the two oblasts. Yesterday, however, President Putin announced he supported the “sovereign” borders of the separatists, which claim the entirety of their oblasts.

You don’t need to stretch to see the impact of that statement. Russian troops will “maintain the peace”, or “piece keep”, as they help the separatists forcibly remove Ukrainian authorities from the remainder of the Donbas. The first question is will Putin go that far? Or could Western sanctions stop Putin from advancing beyond the current Line of Contact that divides the separatists from the Ukrainian government?

Of course Russia made a number of demands upon Ukraine: Recognise Russian annexation of Crimea, cede control of the Donbas to the separatists, withdraw plans to join NATO, declare neutrality, and demilitarise. Of course the Ukrainians could never accept any of those. So will Putin use a refusal to send the Russian army in to push back the Ukrainians to the borders of Donetsk and Luhansk? Personally, barring some significant ramping up of sanctions when the first T-80 tanks cross the border, I don’t see these as likely. You just don’t need to assemble 190,000 troops and your elite armour and mechanised infantry units to do this.

That leaves of us with the sadly more likely, but worse to worst case scenarios. To the south, along the shores of the Sea of Azov, would Putin seek to create a land bridge to Crimea? In 2014, the separatists advanced as far as Mariupol before being repulsed by Ukrainian government forces. After Crimea’s annexation, Russia built the Crimea Bridge, linking the Crimean city of Kerch to the Russian mainland via a road-rail bridge that crosses the Strait of Kerch. But in a hot war with Ukraine, I wouldn’t at all be surprised to see those bridges as targets of Ukrainian forces. Ukraine’s goal would be to significantly restrict Crimea’s access to reinforcements and resupply. Having an overland route would make it easier for the Russians to keep Crimea and Sevastopol. For the Ukrainians, that would mean the loss of several economically important (and large) Ukrainian cities, notably Mariupol.

Would Putin move on Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkov? Its population is roughly the same size as that of Philadelphia with 1.5 million people, largely Russian-speaking and split between ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians. The city is located only 20 miles from the Russian border and during the 2014 rebellion, separatists raided and ransacked government offices there, though Ukrainian forces ultimately reasserted control. Holding this oblast or a portion of it would create a new conflict zone, much like the Donbas has been for the last eight years. Those eight years with the world focused on the Donbas allowed Putin to consolidate his hold over Crimea. Could a frozen conflict in the Kharkov region take the world’s eyes off the Donbas and allow Russia to integrate Donetsk and Luhansk into western Russia?

To the north is the more remote possibility of a lightning strike—perhaps in concert with one of the above options—to besiege or even attempt to take the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. Could a siege resemble the utter destruction of Grozny back in 1999 when Putin “handled” the Chechen rebels? One certainly hopes not. But it’s not out of the realm of likelihood. One hopes that Putin is keeping so many troops in Belarus to force the Ukrainians to hold back their best troops from engaging in eastern Ukraine.

Finally there is the least likely, a full-out invasion of Ukraine west of the Dnieper River, which bisects the country from north to south similar to the Mississippi in the United States. This type of invasion would likely take many months and occur over multiple phases. And too many variables make it difficult to simply illustrate the geography. But it likely would involve almost all of the above to some degree or another. One could see this being the ultimate goal: utterly crippling if not destroying the Ukrainian state, showing the rest of Russia’s neighbours what happens to states that seek to align with the West and follow the path of liberal democracy. Subjugating Ukraine like it’s (peacefully) doing to Belarus.

Russia has already moved a significant portion of its heavy armour and lead units to the border, away from their forward bases. This means that Russia likely needs to commence operations in the next few days or then rotate them back for rest and resupply. This week is likely critical to Russia’s plans.

And as some housekeeping you may note that I’ve temporarily disabled commenting on new posts. Eight years ago as I started posting about these Ukraine articles, my site was hit by spam comments originating from Russia and Ukraine, unfortunately in sufficient numbers to bring down my site for a number of weeks. I will probably leave commenting disabled for the foreseeable future.

Credit for these pieces is mine.