Vladimir Putin has cancelled his traditional marathon press conference for the first time in 10 years as he secretively plans the next moves in the war that he knows could end his 20-year rule.
He may shrink from the limelight, but in Kyiv Volodymyr Zelensky knows that he must stay in it with no let-up if he is to keep up the momentum in the battle for his country’s survival.
Putin needs a significant pause in operations to replenish his forces, munitions, and recalibrate tactics and techniques, and operational concepts. Ukraine’s leading commanders have shown greater agility and ability to innovate – often with small resources – than their Russian counterparts. The team of commanders and planners led by Valery Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief, and Oleksandr Syrskyi, architect of the summer offensive, seem smarter and more cunning than their opponents, and many of the allies advising them.
They are in desperate need of resupplies of arms and ammunition as much as the Russians. They also need more support from the West, not only with quality systems like HIMARS and M777 howitzers, but with quantities of standard battlefield kit.
The EU has just overcome Hungary’s objections to release its €18 billion support package, and on Monday the US pledged a further $275 million in emergency military aid. But Washington still refused Zelensky’s request for the tried and tested Patriot antimissile defence system for Ukraine’s cities. Team Biden, apparently, is still reluctant to provide weapons that can strike effectively into Russia.
The Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, was challenged on similar grounds this week by former prime minister Boris Johnson – who suggested long-range weapons should be supplied to strike at the launch sites in Russia of the drones and missiles depriving millions of Ukrainians of power, heat and water. Mr Wallace did not appear to rule out supplying longer-range ATACMS missiles at a future date.
That date is surely now as Putin is setting out to widen the war, producing further instability across the region from central Asia to northern Europe and the Black Sea. He is trying to rally allies from the borders of China, to the Black Sea, Syria, Iran and old clients and friends in North Africa such as Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia. Russia is working a brilliant game of bluff to break sanctions to bring in desperately needed hi-tech American microchips via Turkey, and to export oil and grain through a system of ghost ships via the Black Sea and Iran.
Putin sees Ukraine as a tool of Nato and the West, so he is on a mission to widen the war. By next spring he will have committed more than half a million Russians to the war effort. The allies in the West have to take a leaf out of the Ukrainian commanders’ book and adapt, innovate and adjust. This is the first war in which digital warfare, electromagnetic and cyber weaponry are key components. Allies like Britain will need to evolve new defence methods, doctrines and cultures based on the Ukraine experience of 2022, and quickly. At his annual state of UK defence speech last night, Admiral Radakin spoke of the need to innovate and improvise to meet the need to sustain Ukraine, as has the Army chief General Sanders. One must hope that the Sunak government takes heed and acts.
Ukraine now faces stark choices, including seeing millions more of the civilian population become refugees, temporarily, as the Russian attack on infrastructure brings more blackouts. Russians commanders appear to be changing their approach to ground operations. In the fighting around Bakhmut, commanders seem to be experimenting with new tactics of massed assault. The casualty rates , and expenditure of ammunition, is on a scale not seen since the First and Second World Wars in Europe.
The Ukrainians are likely to continue to match firepower with ingenuity. They have started striking at barracks and storage dumps in Melitopol, the hub and link for Russian forces occupying Donbas in the east and those in the west, just recently pulled back from Kherson.
This means an attack on bases and installations in Crimea cannot be ruled out. The Ukrainians have carried out a series of surprise attacks by standoff missiles and sabotage on air bases, and by aqua drones on the naval base at Sevastopol.
It has been suggested by some that Crimea was off limits because its seizure was so popular with Russian public opinion in 2014; and could be a bargaining point in negotiations.
There are no serious peace talks in sight, despite the odd mutterings of Joe Biden and his senior commander, General Milley. Zelensky and Putin don’t want to speak to each other; and no one can speak on their behalf.
The compelling reason why the West, including the UK, have to up their game in military support and diplomacy is this - Putin has staked his survival on the destruction of Ukraine. He is now prepared to wreck the country totally, however long it takes. That is a problem for all of Ukraine’s friends and neighbours – all of us who believe in the values of the Western alliances and the UN Charter.
