March 13 Reflections
Regardless of the Source, Maps Portray a Static Conflict. Diplomatic Options Seem to be off the table for now
Diplomatic and General Overview
The last few days have represented not the “beginning of the end” but the “end of the beginning”. Despite continued efforts to promote mediation, it is now clear that neither side is prepared to make serious concessions until they have seen what developments on the battlefield and internationally will bring. It is equally clear what the limits of international involvement will and will not be. What is left then is to see what happens.
While there has continued to be discussions of locations for further talks, including Putin’s support of a the proposal of Israeli Prime Naftali Bennett to host talks in Jerusalem, it is unclear what they would be about. While Ukrainian claims that Bennett advised Zelenksy to “surrender” to Russian demands have alienated the Israeli leader, they also indicate that Ukraine views the only “compromise” terms which might be acceptable to Vladimir Putin, namely recognition of the Crimea and a public pledge, enforceable or not, of neutrality, as non-starters. As Putin could hardly survive anything less, this is all but a termination of the diplomatic track by Kyiv for the time being.
For his part, Putin also seems to have lost interest in the diplomatic options available. I studiously avoided taking a side between those who felt Russian proposals earlier this week were a serious effort to find a solution acceptable to both sides which would avoid a wider war, or those who suggested they were a feint to buy time, influence world opinion, and sound out Ukrainian determination. Most likely, they were elements of both. I suspect Putin himself had not decided whether or not he would have taken “a deal” on Peskov’s propose terms even had one been on offer, and the exploration was real, albeit even if Ukraine had accepted the proposals as a basis for negotiation they may not have led to anything. It is just as probably that Putin and his inner circle would have seen Kyiv’s willingness to discuss conceding the Crimea and Donbass as indication that the Ukrainian military position was far worse than they believed, and broken off talks in order to go for a military victory. Those in the West who say “Kyiv should have taken the terms” are delusional. There is no guarantee they were real, and in any case, they were, as I noted last week, far from concrete.
Nonetheless, Putin’s tone in phone calls with French President Macron, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz indicates that he is no longer interested in this track until he can see what will happen on the ground. In the past, Putin has urged his European interlocutors to pressure Zelensky to accept his terms. That request appears to have been absent this time around.
I believe that optimistic comments by both the Russian and Ukrainian negotiators that progress is being made and there might even be an agreement within the next few days, must be read in the context of preceding 24hrs. These comments are from underlings. Underlings, it must be noted, who are far less well-known than either those who led the delegations at the Belarussian talks, or the talks between Foriegn Ministers in Turkey.
These optimistic comments by underlings occurred the day after both Putin and Zelensky, neither of whom have spoken to one another since before the war began, both personally all but ruled out negotiations. My suspicion is that what occurred on the parts of both Presidents was the classic definition of a political gaffe; when a politician accidentally says out loud what they really believe.
Both Zelensky and Putin were expressing their honest views and frustrations, and both did so when they should not have. In so doing, they created a major public relations problem for their underlings, who were immediately tasked with rowing back the remarks as both Russia and the Ukraine benefit from the perception that they are honestly seeking a negotiated solution. Hence todays comments are not the sign of genuine progress, but rather of genuine cooperation between the respective flunkies who have a common interest in countering the perception created by their bosses that the whole thing is a charade. It is significant that while both the Ukrainian and Russian negotiators were quick to claim extensive progress, they were unable to specify what any of this progress entailed, with the implication being that the “basis for an agreement” they promised in three days would be when they would unveil the pretend progress. I could be wrong, and a I pray that I am, but this was a very weird announcement, both in terms of timing and who made it. You would assume someone connected with either government would have made it, such as the Foriegn Minister, or Presidential spokesman.
Ironically, Western actions have reduced the value of a negotiated settlement to the Kremlin, though not in the way hawkish critics believe. They largely argue that the refusal to impose a No Fly Zone or even to allow the transfer of obsolete Mig-29s to Kyiv has caused Putin to discount the risks of Western intervention. I do not believe he ever rated them highly, and to the extent he does, the issue of arming Ukraine with anti-tank and anti-air weapons, along with foreign volunteers is provocative enough. What it has done, however, is underlined the limits of Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky’s political influence in Western capitals. As I argued two weeks ago, a large part of the appeal of the “Zelensky Option” was that Kremlin might believe that Zelensky, unlike any alternative Pro-Russian authority in Kyiv, might be able not just to sign over the Crimea and Donbass, but persuade the USA and EU to recognize it, consequently ending sanctions. As a large part of the reason why the status quo was untenable from a Russian point of view was the status of the Crimea, a potential trigger for WWIII under Article 5 if Ukraine joined NATO, and a justification for indefinite sanctions on the entire Russian elite, it is hard to imagine any settlement being acceptable to Putin which did not result in recognition of the Crimea. If Zelensky is now being ignored on his request for planes, how likely is it that he would be able to sell Westerners who are rapidly “cancelling” Tchaikovsky to drop sanctions on a Russia ruled by Vladimir Putin? And if the West will keep sanctions in place and refuse to recognize the Crimea as Russian no matter what Zelensky signs, then what is the point of signing anything with him?
In the meantime, Russia has begun aggressively hitting targets in Western Ukraine which are key to foreign aid, both in terms of volunteers and supplies. On March 1st, I suggested that Putin’s nuclear saber rattling was a neccisary effort to try and close the Western border. If he failed to do that, it would be prohibitively costly for Russian air and mechanized forces to operate that far from their bases. The Lviv area is filled with Westerners, and it is quite plausible Americans and Europeans were killed in the strikes today. Along with the death of a NYT journalist this is an additional sign that the Kremlin believes they need to raise the stakes before serious talks are possible.
The prospect of foreign volunteers on both sides strikes me as of more value as PR than in a military sense. Reports that Russia intends to recruit Syrians or even forces from the Central African Republic need to be understood in the context of how expensive such moves would be. Those troops would need to be hired, flown, and deployed and anyone going through that much trouble is not coming to be mere cannon fodder. Foriegn volunteers have historically been very effective at terrorizing civilians but much less willing to launch dangerous assaults. Even less to perform complicated infantry support roles in combined arms operations across language barriers. Russia needs high quality motivated infantry, and the infantry they are speculated to be hiring is neither. It would mostly be useful, useful is very tenuous in this context, for rear area control and protection of supply lines, but I would be wary of how easily Syrian or African troops could tell Russian-speaking Russian and Ukrainians apart.
As for Western volunteers, there is some evidence that even veterans of Western combat operations in the Middle East are of dubious value when operating without air and artillery superiority. These reports from Nolan Peterson do not inspire confidence.
The danger with the volunteers on both sides will not be getting them into the country or even what they do there, but getting them out. It is quite possible that the Western volunteers will end up creating a headache for London and Washington if they come under political pressure to help “evacuate” their nationals, especially if they are of the “heroic veteran” variety. Moscow likely will not even bother with round trip flights.
Expectations Management
When I first collected my thoughts here almost two weeks ago, one of my observations was that the following few days were going to be dominated by a narrative of Ukrainian setbacks. This was not, as I noted, because the course of the war was about to shift. Rather, it was because the gap between expectations raised by a skewed impression of Ukrainian successes on the tactical level created by social media, the overall strategic picture on the ground, meant that when the Russians continued to advance at all it would come as a shock. It really should not have.
Last weekend, I predicted the opposite. All indications were that the Russian Army was preparing for an “operational pause” of 72-96hrs. Rightly or wrongly, there was a perception on the Russian side that such a pause was needed to sort out logistical problems, and equally importantly, that it would succeed in doing so. This also made it highly likely that Moscow would float various offers for cease-fires, not because they were near collapse, but rather because they felt any delay would be to their military benefit.
It was easy to read too much into these “slow news” days. Having warned of the risks of doing so, I partially fell victim myself, ignoring the insistence of my own sources in favor of making logical deductions about the situation facing the Russian convoy to the northwest of Kyiv. While suggestions that it has successfully reached its intended destination, and is now deploying for an imminent assault on Kyiv within the next few days are premature, and an overreaction to the column managing to do anything at all, the vehicles involved clearly remained in working order. Sufficently so they were able to disperse.
For this reason it is imperative not to read too much into the overall strategic situation. We quite simply do not know. Nor, to be entirely honest, do the Russian or Ukrainian General Staffs. They each likely have some idea of what they are trying to do, but not whether it will work, or which of their projects will work where. I would recommend embracing either of the narratives built around what I will call the two maps.
A Tale of Two Maps
The first narrative, identifiable generally by its proponents sharing the above map provided by Russian State Media, is one in which the Russian forces retain overwhelming strength, they are proceeding to envelop the vast bulk of the Ukrainian Army in the east in an encirclement in line with Soviet conceptions of “Deep Battle” and that Western cheerleaders high on the “hopium” of Ukrainian propaganda will be shocked when the collapse comes. There are a couple problems with this, first and foremost that the maps in question have been showing the same thing for some time. Compare
Notice the problem? According to Russian state media’s own maps, the Russians controlled about the same, and in some cases less territory on March 9th than they did on March 4th. When following official briefings of a military situation, this is always one of the first signs something is off. If subsequent briefings retcon previous narratives and announce the impending capture of locations they either captured or were about to capture days ago. In fairness, these are far from the worst maps produced by Russian state tv. Channel one claimed that the Ukrainian army in the East was fully surrounded almost a week ago.
On a wider-level, this highlights a problem that almost all mappers have with a frontline that is not moving in the way armchair analysts expect it to. Here are maps respectively from the Institute for the Study of War and War Mapper.
While the maps all differ in their starting point in terms of what territory they claim the Russians control, the one thing there seems to be general agreement on is that little has changed in terms of territorial control over the last week to ten days. This, on its own should instill caution in those who make sweeping generalizations that because they once played a computer game or looked at a map they know the Russians are about to complete a sweeping encirclement. They could suddenly begin moving fast, I guess, but they have not been carrying out any sort of sweeping encirclement the past ten days. Or if they have it has largely stalled. Something evidently even on the best Russian-produced maps, by which I mean from this excellent Russian military account which I strongly recommend anyone interested follows.
While the areas indicating axis of advance imply a Russian offensive on the verge of encircling the Ukrainian forces in the East, with a joining of the northern and southern thrusts imminent, when examined side-by-side the two lines of advance have barely moved in six days. That is not World War I Deep Battle or Blitzkrieg. It is World War I high command fantasies. There is little evidence that once a mechanized force has deployed for siege operations with heavy artillery, which is what the Russians have done, that those units can rapidly advance anywhere. Which is one reason the territorial advances the Russians have made over the last ten days have largely been by recon units against local Ukrainian defenders. Whether the temporary presence of a Russian recon unit which withdrew after an exchange of fire constitutes a “contested area of Russian advance” or not determines which of these maps you believe better captures the picture.
This has not stopped sweeping declarations, not just about the encirclement of Ukrainian forces in the East, but also about a potential encirclement of Kyiv, especially since the large Russian convoy began to disperse. A quick look at the more accurate maps of the local area indicates that while the Russians may well attempt an assault(though I doubt it do to the apparent lack of reliable infantry which has deterred assaults on fortified positions elsewhere) or more likely a bombardment, they are far from surrounding the city. Furthermore, the locations where Russian forces have been “spotted” close to Kyiv are areas they first reached over a week ago. That is not to say nothing is happening, but nothing has happened recently to justify claiming the Russians have, or are close to, “surrounding” Kyiv.
Are Ukrainian forces in the East in danger? Absolutely. I said so myself two weeks ago. But with the speed that the Russian forces are advancing, and the thinness of the recon forces which make up the vast majority of Russian penetrations beyond the territory they seized in the first week, means that is a long rather than short-term danger. In the long-run, the Ukrainians, who are excelling in defending fixed positions, need to plan for a situation in which that becomes untenable. In the short-run, however, the Russians do not seem poised to carry out an encirclement with lightning advances, but rather slowly grind their way forward such that resupply becomes more hazardous for the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians might be cut off if they wait long enough, but they do not seem to be in danger of rapid destruction.
The same is true of Kharkiv and Kyiv. They are subject to bombardment and likely to face further attacks, but for whatever reason(logistics and the risk to supply lines of dedicating extensive forces to blockades?) the Russians are generally not going for surrounding Ukrainian strongpoints.
I just want to say that, in spite of our differing world views, I appreciate your good faith response to my comments. You definitely know a lot more than I do with regard to certain aspects of the conflict, and I appreciate your sharing your knowledge and willingness to engage.
It seems like Russia is conquering territory with goal of staying permanently. Thus, they are slowly and methodically taking territory in the Russian speaking oblasts.