Ukraine War: Analysis

In contrast to the traditional Russian military strategy of building up a huge military force and steamrolling all opposition, Putin is trying to win this war on the cheap.  Trying to take the international Kiev airport was the same sort of coup de main move that the Soviets used in Afghanistan in December 1978 in Kabul.  Doesn’t seem to be working yet.  The Ukrainians are saying that they have taken back the airport.  Even if this isn’t true, what do the Russians do next?  Kiev is a city of three million.  Yeah, lets have the Russian army go door to door through that urban center in a live action recreation of Stalingrad.  Encircle it?  The Russians simply do not have the forces to do so and conquer the rest of the Ukraine.  Plus the longer the war goes on the more organized Putin’s domestic opposition becomes.  This is not a popular war in Mother Russia, and Putin needs a quick victory.  The only way he is going to get it is if the Ukrainian civilian leadership folds quickly.  Hence this shock and awe move, that doesn’t seem to be working yet.  Stay tuned.

From Strategy Page:

Russia finally “invaded” Ukraine yesterday after recognizing the two Russian-created governments in the half of Donbas that Russia has been keeping Ukrainian forces out of since 2014. By declaring these two republics as legitimate, Russia justified sending in troops as peacekeepers and threatening to invade the rest of Ukraine if Ukrainian forces fired back against more attacks by the local and Russian forces in these two republics. Russia reinforced this threat by threatening to base over 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border.

As expected, not a lot of the nearly 200,000 Russian troops now near the Ukraine borders actually entered Ukraine. All, or most appeared to be volunteers, rather than the one-year conscripts that comprise half the strength of the armed forces. Few of the conscripts and even fewer of their parents are eager for the conscripts to be fighting neighbors.

Russian airborne forces managed to take an airport ten kilometers outside Kyiv. Efforts to use that airport to bring in additional troops were disrupted by the Ukrainian use of Stinger portable anti-aircraft missiles as well as rifle and machine-gun fire at low flying aircraft. The airport was quickly attacked by a Ukrainian army rapid reaction force organized and trained for retaking key locations seized by Russian airborne forces. While the area around the airport was soon surrounded by regular reservists and armed volunteers, the Rapid Reaction unit retook the airport before the Russians could use larger transport aircraft to bring in more troops. Russia appears to have underestimated the preparations Ukraine have made since 2014 to deal with this kind of invasion. In addition to 150 local defense units (of at least battalion size) arrangements were made to quickly arm, train and deploy volunteers, which includes all physically able males aged 16 to 60. The regular army obtained more portable anti-aircraft weapons and trained special units to deal with any Russians that seized key objectives. All those armed Ukrainians were more of an obstacle that the Russians expected. The invaders are using about a dozen main roads from the border to objectives inside Ukraine. Within hours all those roads were under fire from the armed locals. Even convoys with numerous armed escorts were fired on and the Russians did not have enough troops to clear the roads of armed hostiles. Some convoys were halted by roadblocks and at least one Russian reconnaissance platoon was captured. While the Russians control most Ukrainian airspace and coastal waters, land areas remain under Ukrainian control.

An amphibious assault on the major Black Sea port of Odessa failed and most ground advances appear to have stalled as well. One Russian column that did not encounter any resistance was the one into the Chernobyl radioactive zone. A large region around the Chernobyl power plant is still highly radioactive because of the 1986 nuclear meltdown of one of the reactors. This nuclear disaster, which the Soviets tried to keep quiet, was quickly exposed as major disasters and one of the reasons Ukrainians were so eager to leave the Soviet Union five years later. Most of the victims of the radioactivity were Ukrainian. The invading Russians replaced the Ukrainian security guards keeping people out of the 2,600 square kilometers (thousand square miles) radioactive exclusion zone near the Belarus border. After 1986 about 250,000 people were moved from the zone and since then only tourists were allowed in, under escort, for short periods. About 5,000 people guard the security zone and monitor the enormous concrete and steel structure now surrounding the still highly radioactive power plant uranium core. Those monitors spend fifteen days at a time in the zone and then two weeks outside it, with their radioactivity levels carefully monitored. Those monitor personnel appear to still be there, but now under Russian control. While Ukrainians comprised most of those killed by the melt down, about 70 percent of the initial radiation fell on what is now Belarus. For that reason, it seems unlikely the Russians would not arrange for an accident at the entombed nuclear core. Most Belarussians oppose Russia and their own dictator, which is currently kept in power by Russian forces. The main reason for taking control of the exclusion zone was that it is a key element of one of the shortest routes to Kyiv. So far Russian forces have not advanced much from the exclusion zone to the beleaguered Russian airborne troops trying to hold the airport.

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