VICTORY? I THINK NOT

The war in Ukraine hasn’t let up for a minute over the past two weeks. Christmas and New Year came and went as they always do. Zelensky delivered his beautifully crafted and heartfelt speech that was as poignant and moving as it needed to be. He is a master communicator.

Putin also delivered an extraordinary speech that couldn’t be more completely devoid of reality if he tried. Yet so clever are the speech writers and the psycho-linguistic experts who fashion these things to transmit their message, it sounded almost completely sane and normal.

Putin wasn’t just celebrating new year. It was the start of his 25th year in office. The Romanov dynasty came to power in 1613 and remained there for 304 years. Only two of its leaders, Emperor Peter-II The Great (43 years on the throne) and Empress Catherine-II The Great (34 years) lasted any length of time. She wasn’t even Russian, but German and got rid of her husband and took his place. Stalin lasted 29 years. That makes Putin the fourth longest lasting ruler of Russia since 1613. In a country notorious for its willingness to topple its leadership in palace coups, it’s quite an achievement.

Putin said he had remade Russia into something Russians could now be proud of. He wished he’d have invaded Ukraine sooner, and gotten it over with so they could all be a happy family again like they used to be. Not quite sure who he thinks thought that but there’s always someone. Nostalgia is a powerful drug if you spend too much time with it.

There’s a raft of new regulations that have come into force in Russia in the past few weeks. ‘Looking too gay’ is one of them. Anti-motherhood sentiments and propaganda is now banned. Urging women to accept, or at least be more tolerant to domestic abuse to prevent family break ups, a new campaign to encourage more births, has just been launched. A plan to reduce abortion from 12 weeks to 9 – making it almost impossible, is not far from coming into force. So while masculinity is being encouraged and women urged to pop out as many children as they can like a factory breeding program, because the reproduction rate has been seen even by the government as ‘disastrous’, there’s no intention of trying to stop men getting killed in the frontlines.

At the same time the government just issued another decree insisting that anyone in the country illegally has until April to pass a medical test, a language test, a basic understanding of the law test, and a Russian history test (based on current interpretations of history by the regime), to stay in the country legally. Or, and this is incredibly generous, they can sign a contract with the MoD to go to Ukraine and fight. This is a bit of a Kobyashi Maru situation. If you chose option A you end up in the army in Ukraine through a summons, and dead. If you choose option B, you end up, well in the army in Ukraine, dead.

This policy was deemed wise because Russia has 1.5 million unfilled job vacancies in industries that matter to the war effort. If they drive away all the ‘illegals’ who are driving taxis, working in low skilled jobs that make the rest of the world go around, from food manufacturing, to farming, truck drivers, street cleaners, shop workers, then that would make it even worse for every day Russians pretending nothing was going on outside of Moscow city limits. Who, honestly comes up with rules like this without realizing the consequences? Not only that but these people pay taxes the government needs. If they leave they won’t be paying them.

Russia it seems is bothered more with the needs of the state than of the people who live in it. As Russia enters the Year of the Veteran, let’s just look at what it’s achieved in the past year.

Russian Victories in 2024.

427,000 casualties in 2024 alone, almost as many as were lost in 2022 & 2023 combined.

Land captured: 4,218 square kilometers – an area about twice the size of the the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg in Europe, or the county of Somerset in the UK or 1.3 times the size of the state of Rhode Island in the US.

The attack on Kharkiv, much anticipated on two vectors rapidly got bogged down at Vovchansk and hasn’t gone anywhere since.

Even now, outside of Pokrovsk, Russian forces are only 50km from their starting positions in Donbas from 2022.

Crimea has been made an area so dangerous it’s almost impossible for Russia to operate there militarily. Every move they make is eventually spotted and dealt with.

Ukraine has achieved almost complete naval dominance in the Black Sea – this one is absolutely my favorite. Using just a fleet of naval drones they have driven Russian warships into hiding at Novorossiysk on the opposite coast and they rarely come out except to fire some long range cruise missiles just outside the harbor. Ukraine has seized almost all of the gas and oil rigs and stopped the Russians using them as radar and ESM stations. Russia’s primary anti-naval drone tactic has been to use helicopters, and last week we saw that go horribly wrong as an unmanned naval drone launched two missiles and visibly shot down an Mi-8. Russians admit another one was damaged and barely got home, and it’s now been admitted that an attack helicopter was also lost in the engagement. The monumental nature of this engagement in naval warfare and history terms can’t be underestimated.

Despite Russian efforts Ukraine has continued to export grain by sea – contributing hugely to its economy. Russia failed repeatedly to stop it despite massive and repeated missile and drone strikes.

Despite Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, people are still going to work, drones and missiles are still being built, this year Ukraine will be 100% domestic drone production without the need to import. The Bohdana’s still roll off the production lines, the army gets fed and supplied, the weapons reach the front. And its made everyone very aware that devolved power distribution systems may actually be better for the environment and security.

Barely a single Russian oil refinery is undamaged or unaffected by the war. If Ukraine hasn’t destroyed the vital and complex cracking towers, the distribution tanks, the pipeline pumps, the economics of running the refineries have proven so unprofitable many are loosing money hand over fist.

Russia just lost $5 billion a year in income as a 50 year old gas pipeline finally stops delivering gas to central Europe. Putin’s entire energy strategy, entrapping Europe, especially Germany into cheap gas has unraveled like a cheap shirt. Germany has paid for it dearly, its auto industry has been dependent on cheap gas for its competitiveness. Nord Stream 1&2 are now dead and gone. They are essentially flooded and likely unviable. Yet despite it all, Western Europe for the most part has managed to ween itself off of Russian gas, energy prices are minimal compared to the fortune Russia was making in the first year of the war. It actually found the west had a backbone and now the age of Russian energy power in Europe is pretty much dead. It’s a massive strategic defeat for Putin – he wrote extensively on energy as a weapon and its value as leverage. He was said to have obsessed over energy prices.

Russian interest rates are at 21% they should be at 23% but Putin blocked the move – political interference in key economics is a mistake, as he will find out.

Inflation officially is around 9.6% but it’s far worse than that at most levels that matter to real people – especially poorer people. Vegetable inflation is said to be 45%-75%, meat 30%, fish 35%. Diesel prices are at an all time high, petrol prices not much lower.

Infrastructure problems last winter saw three major dams collapse, and the government just sat there and let it happen. Let alone social heating failures, water freezing in apartment buildings, sewers erupting in the streets of Moscow. And that’s just what we know about.

The collapse of Syria and Assad – surely that has to be the icing on the cake of this past year’s Russian ‘victories’. Nothing humiliated the regime more, the loss of its ally, which it should be pointed out happened because his troops just didn’t want to fight for him anymore. He had nothing left to persuade them to keep going, they’d had enough. The problem with regimes that live by the sword is that unless you fight a never ending battle, when the quiet comes people re-evaluate their actions and their motivations. For many the idea of fighting again was simply too much, they’d had enough they just wanted something different. And they realized Russia was the cause of much of their suffering. If that isn’t ‘the writing on the wall’ for Putin’s regime I don’t know what is.

The Kursk salient. You know how fundamentally opposed to this attack I was at the start and I remain of the opinion that the reason it was launched was all wrong, in fact the principle officer who set it up has even said he wasn’t really sure what they were doing it for. The mixed messaging coming out of Kyiv at the time was plenty of reason to understand they didn’t know how to justify it but they needed to do something. However, despite the fact the Ukrainians made some dreadful mistakes and lost a lot of land very quickly, the Russians managed to destroy their own surprising effectiveness at a rate that’s hard to comprehend even for them.

Now the situation is totally different. Ukraine has created a tight defensive box, the North Koreans are involved and being killed in their thousands as Ukrainians drown them in fire and drones. I watched a video of a Russian nurse working at Belgorod hospital who said as many as 1,000 men were arriving there most days. “many of them had half a head, burnt off faces, no arms or legs, I don’t know how I can carry on doing this” she said almost crying. How about stop the war and leave Ukraine? But she has no power to stop it. But she will, tell her family and her friends and they theirs. And many more will see that video. Because that’s the reality of Putin’s war.

Never mind the technical aspects – which I found fascinating, because let’s face it how often has anyone ever dropped a MIRV’d warhead cluster from a ballistic missile in wartime? But it was the simple fact that other than demonstrate a capability we already know they have, and we have, for all the effect it had you may as well have dropped coconuts. Damage was minimal, it was a hugely underwhelming, a bit like the first Star Trek Movie, ‘is that it?’ There was more discussion on the definition of IRBM v. ICBM than what it actually did or could do. It was a stupid and flippant response to the use of ATACMS – and they must have realized it because it hasn’t happened again. It was a stunt. And if anything it demonstrated desperation and powerlessness, not resolve.

So there we are, some of Russia’s many ‘victories’ from 2024. It’s a story on increasing losses, in men, material and treasure. Increasing desperation, increasing despotism, and all for what? Land that’s mostly fields and woods. An area apparently smaller than the largest Chinese State Farm.

Victory Vladimir? I really think not.

The Analyst

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