Stalled War Progress
According to the UK Ministry of Defense, Russia failed to make territorial progress during the last week. The color coded map below denotes three distinct Russian missions within Ukraine
White - Trap Ukrainian forces in The Donbas
Blue - Block Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea
Red - Capture the capital, Kyiv
Based on the previous map, here are the key things to watch for this coming week
How much of The Donbas will Russians take?
Can the Russians force Mariupol to surrender?
When will the Russia make a move towards Zaporizhzhia?
Will the Russian forces push westward towards Odessa?
How far does the Russian pincer movement on Kyiv proceed?
Polish MiGs
On March 5th, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pleaded to the U.S. Congress to replenish his air force with fighter jets. Ukrainian pilots train and operate Russian jets, so Zelensky hoped that a country with excess Russian jets would bequeath them to his pilots. Luckily for Zelensky, Poland offered to give Ukraine its MiG-29s.
This deal appeared likely to occur when U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken gave an interview to CBS Face the Nation the following day, March 6.
MARGARET BRENNAN: If, for instance, the Polish government, a NATO member wants to send fighter jets, does that get a green light from the U.S.? Or you were afraid that that will escalate tension?
SEC. BLINKEN: No, that- that gets a green light. In fact, we're talking with our Polish friends right now about what we might be able to do to back fill their needs if in fact they choose to provide these fighter jets to to the Ukrainians.
After many denials from the Polish government, The Polish Foreign Ministry issued the parameters of the deal on March 8.
The authorities of the Republic of Poland, after consultations between the President and the Government, are ready to deploy – immediately and free of charge – all their MiG-29 jets to the Ramstein Air Base and place them at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America
Poland does not want to be seen as escalating the war so they wanted the United States take responsibility for the transferring the MiGs. On March 10 Pentagon press secretary John Kirby poured cold water on the deal.
The intelligence community has assessed that the transfer of MiG-29s to Ukraine may be mistaken as escalatory and could result in significant Russian reaction that might increase the prospects of a military escalation with NATO.
Luckily for Ukraine, their air force remains intact. On March 11 CNN reported that the Ukrainian air force possesses approximately 56 fighter aircraft, representing 80% of Ukraine’s fixed-wing aircraft. One could argue Ukraine needs air defense systems far more than fighter aircraft, but we should use this time to evaluate the potential blowback of our helpful actions towards Ukraine.
Economic Warfare is Warfare
One should remain cognizant of actions that Russia considers escalatory. Western governments marketed economic sanctions as a means to both help Ukraine and keep their publics out of war. World War II showed us the opposite may occur.
President Franklin Roosevelt instituted an oil embargo and froze all Japanese assets in the U.S. in order to pressure Japan to withdraw from its conquests. Britain followed suit as well.
This was a disaster for the Japanese economy, as it lost three quarters of its overseas trade and nearly 90% of its oil imports. To the Japanese, this left them with one option: knock the United States out of the Pacific with one massive blow and secure the oil and other resources it needed by occupying South East Asia.
Russia crippled by economic sanctions may act in a similar fashion. For example, Russia could launch ransomware attacks to fill up the government coffers or launch an attack in the Arctic in order to gain control of its fossil fuel resources. How would The West respond to such provocations? Unfortunately, we may soon see how Western governments respond to direct Russian attacks.
Weapon Resupply Under Attack
As I previously reported, Western weapon shipments to Ukraine provided a game-changing upgrade to Ukraine’s military. Russia classified these shipments as legitimate military targets on March 12. On the following day, March 13, Russia conducted a ballistic missile strike at the Yaroriv military training center in Western Ukraine, killing 35 Ukrainians.
This base, located near the Polish border, may be the center of Western weapon shipments flowing into Ukraine. The Institute for the Study of War claimed Russia’s strike might have been focused on these shipments. Hopefully Russian public opinion would dissuade Putin from escalating his attacks, but I doubt that it will.
Informational Universe
On Thursday March 10, CIA Director Bill Burns made the following comments in his testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
In all the years I spent as a career diplomat, I saw too many instances in which we lost information wars with the Russians. This is one information war that I think Putin is losing
Each of us lives in our own informational universe bounded by the news sources we consume. Winning the information war entails winning over the hearts and minds of the Russian people, who live in a Russian informational universe. Unfortunately for Director Burns, the Russian people still love Putin. The Levada Center, an institution respected by Western media, has tracked Putin’s approval rating since the beginning of his reign. Putin not only remains popular, his popularity has increased from 63% approval in November 2021 to 71% approval in February 2022.
How can this be? I surmise that we underestimate the control that the Russian informational universe exerts onto the minds of Russian citizens. The maternity hospital fiasco provides great insight into this informational universe.
Maternity Hospital or Military Base?
Radio Free Europe reported that on March 9 Russian forces bombed a maternity hospital and wounded 17 people. President Zelenskiy posted on Twitter a walkthrough of a bombed out room.
Not everyone agrees with this assessment. Ukrainian Foreign Ministry Dmytro Kuleba claimed that Russian officials like Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, “Live in their own reality“. Kuleba said the following in an interview with CNBC
Unfortunately, I can confirm that the Russian leadership, including Minister Lavrov, live in their own reality. In our talks, behind closed doors and in the absence of the media, he told me looking in my eyes that the pictures of pregnant women being taken from under the rubble of the maternity house are fake, that they hit the maternity house as a military target because the Russian military was absolutely sure that it was under the control of Ukrainian army.
TASS, a Russian media outlet, featured an article describing Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s counter narrative.
On March 7, three days ago, at a meeting of the UN Security Council, facts were presented by our delegation that this maternity hospital had long been captured by the Azov battalion and other radicals, from where all women in childbirth, all nurses, in general, all service personnel were expelled. It was the base of the ultra-radical Azov battalion.
How does one strike a peace agreement when both sides live in completely different realities?
This concludes our second weekly recap