Further to last week's post, Trump and Putin: making up war aims on the fly, I had intended to offer my own suggestions for an "Absolute Victory26" framing within which Putin can declare successful completion of his inane war, and call everyone back home for tea, medals, and of course a proper Victory Parade with real tanks, as opposed to the demeaning Dad's Army spectacle they are reduced to this year.
In the meantime, something much better than my own poor efforts has emerged: a professional Kremlin strategy document [1] entitled "After Victory" on how to allow L'il Volodya his glorious day on the parade rostrum any time he cares to call it quits. What, in bullet-points, are the declarations Russia will make that, they'll claim, add up to absolute victory? It's referred to in the doc as "The Image of Victory" which pretty much captures what these PR men are up to. And it meets my test of "essentially in the bag already", i.e. could be delivered tomorrow, if desired.
I'll summarise here the proposed approach, which is quite evidently the work of some genuinely strategic thinkers:
- 'De-Nazification' has been achieved by the deaths of so many Ukrainian soldiers [2]
- Putin has thwarted the West's plans to expand and prolong the conflict
- Victory has been achieved over a much stronger opponent than Ukraine - the "collective West"
- No longer will the West provocatively test Russia's strength
- The EU has been dealt a major economic blow
- There are territorial conquests; seizure of natural resources; a land route to the Crimea and the coast of the Sea of Azov (new holiday resorts!); and the acquisition of millions of new Russian-speaking fellow citizens
- A 'humanitarian catastrophe' was prevented in the Donbas: Russia has protected its own
- The Russian army is now 'the most combat-ready in the whole world' and has withstood confrontation with '50 countries'
- Thanks to sanctions, Russian industry has developed new capabilities and markets
- All this without general mobilisation!
Plus some conditional stuff relating to what a deal with the west might look like in terms of a final territorial settlement and sanctions lifted. [3]
It wouldn't be hard to dispute and/or mock some of these if taken at face value - not quite the capture of Kyiv, or the expulsion of Zelensky, or, errrr, unconditional surrender, eh? And this from the heirs of the conquerors of the Wehrmacht at Berlin '45 ...
But that's not the point. In its own right this is serious stuff: I can only applaud the competence of these strategising Kremlin PR-merchants. They should be offering their services to Trump. For a fat fee. A 'Deal', wouldn't you think?
ND
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[1] One always needs to ask "are we be played here?" - of course - but this one doesn't have that feel to it at all. There might be one subtlety: the doc is a signal to the West: "see, we have an off-ramp - so let's get round that table and we'll find a way to call it quits". Maybe.
[2] Recall that de-Nazification of the whole body politic was one of only two stated war aims at the outset: so, silent here on regime change, of course. The other was, ahem, de-militarisation of Ukraine ...
[3] They assume Russia gets Donbas + existing gains in the south (parts of Kherson & Zaporizhia), but relinquishes gains in the north (around Kharkiv and Sumy): and that US sanctions are lifted but not EU
14 comments:
The "Russia has the bestest, readiest, and most combat hardened military evah" is currently being pushed by Russian trolls and bots, this must be why.
CH
Russia couldn't crush the Ukes and the US can scarcely ding Iran. Mr Xi must be content.
@dearieme - probably not, both are evidence that military might alone is no guarantee of victory anymore.
That isn't going to be a comfort to someone wanting to invade Taiwan.
CH
That's largely because "military might" is defined largely in terms of obsolete weapons - surface ships, piloted aircraft, tanks, infantry in armoured vehicles, and so on.
In Iran's case the key weapons turn out to be missiles, drones, and bunkers i.e. holes in the ground.
Admittedly I'm an amateur but I'm not really surprised by the US - for instance - owning all the wrong weapons. What has surprised me is the paltry stock of munitions it's been holding, and the hopelessly clumsy ways it uses to resupply.
For instance I have read about some ship-borne missiles where the launching tubes cannot be reloaded at sea: the destroyer has to sail off to a friendly port to replenish. Good God!
And another thing. If Putin does end up with internationally recognised ownership of (i) the Crimea, (ii) the Donbas, and (ii) a substantial land corridor to the Crimea, then that would be a victory, wouldn't it? Albeit extracted at absurdly high cost.
I think I'll stop calling it the Ukraine War and instead call it the "War of mutual Slav genocide".
@dearieme - right tool for the right job, if you wish to project power they're still vital - so long as they're up to the job, like the LCS vessels aren't.
Drones aren't really in a spot to replace all that at the moment, they are in a spot to make any invaders lives a misery though. A few more years, I expect that'll change though.
As for Western military procurement, that could be argued as a mechanism for feathering nests, with any use for national defence being something of an incidental.
CH
CH - @ As for Western military procurement, that could be argued as a mechanism for feathering nests, with any use for national defence being something of an incidental
Ironically, it's significantly worse in Russia: outright wholesale embezzlement of entire defence budgets. Notorious cases in point:
- virtually all of the allocation for short-range radios, leaving front line soldiers relying on their own 'phones using the Ukrainian mobile network (with predictable consequences)
- virtually all of the allocation for border-defence infrastructure north of Ukraine, allowing that astonishing 6-month Ukr foray into Russia itself
- a large part of the 'Rubicon' budget for centralised drone development
- a large part of the budget for a brand-new, supposedly impregnable & state-of-the-art ammunition storage depot, which disappeared in a mushroom cloud after a single Ukr drone raid
etc etc
I don’t think any navy can replenish missiles at sea.
They are crane loaded. And they need to be very, very precise and have a very steady platform. Not something for the sea.
Replenishment at sea is a very big deal for the USN. It is a major priority and they have had some success. But it’s recent. 2022 or so.
@ND - I think every culture has its form of graft, you could probably come up with a classification system of how civilised a culture is based on how it's codified.
Regardless, they bring us to the same unpleasant destination, as Russia has spent the last few years discovering, and the US bases in the ME have been finding out.
CH
OT - never realised how extroverted Labour councillors are, nearly every one of them on telly today has been described as outgoing...
Sir Cur must be feeling a little hang-dog.
To be fair the EU (and UK) has indeed suffered a major economic blow, Germany most of all, because it has much further to fall than the UK. But the blow was dealt by the US and Europe itself, perhaps while the balance of its mind was disturbed.
BQ - I see Iron Duke has been stripped of weaponry and radars, leaving the RN with just five frigates...
To be fair we did hang on to the Ukrainian SS prisoners after WW2 , in case they were needed on "our side", while returning liberated Russian ones to Stalin's tender mercies. I do think on VE day that ND might recall that Russian resistance broke Germany.
Incidentally anyone remember Dragonfire, our super laser anti drone weapon? I read that China (yes, Iran's ally) are selling a laser anti drone system to the Gulf States!
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