PUTIN’S LAST GAMBLE?

The air raids on Kyiv are intensifying. They strike at night causing destruction, killing the innocent, then they strike in the day killing those trying to help the people injured from the first attack; the infamous ‘double tap’. Every one of these attacks is a war crime. Thousands of Russians are involved in making the weapons, selecting the targets and controlling/targeting them. Whoever issues the orders bears the greatest responsibility. One day, no matter how long it takes, like Mossad chasing the nazi war criminals, I suspect the Ukrainian intelligence services will find them and kill them. They will deserve everything that’s coming to them.

Many years ago, when I was just 20, I and a colleague walked past a dustbin, not knowing what was about to happen. We were perhaps 300 yards away, eating our lunch on a park bench. It was 20th July 1982. The bomb was timed to kill the passing soldiers and horses on Horseguards Parade. I’ve never seen anything more gruesome in my entire life. Never felt anything so violent or experienced the chaos and fear or others as I did that day. I discovered as many people do, that despite it I had the capacity to remain calm, to think, to act. Every time I see these atrocities in Ukraine, (or Gaza, or anywhere else), it causes a momentary flashback. I understand even as I, at that very moment feel nothing at all. Not a thing. It’s as if its happened so many times and be shown around the world as just another atrocity, that I’ve become numb to it.

Yet at the same time I am not. There was a video of a Russian soldier in his 30’s a couple of days ago, and the terror on his face as the drone approached and he knew it was all over was frankly shocking. Yes he was Russian, but fear like that is impossible to ignore.

My talent, for what its worth its the big picture, informed by the micro detail. In the harsh strategic reality of the war these air raids are a waste of Russian resources so profound that I’m staggered by their choices. This is not a new strategy, its been their principle long range strategy from the moment they started using Shaheeds. That they’re so obsessed with attacking civilians and civilian life at such immense cost is mystifying, and smacks against every lesson history has taught us, and continues to teach us. It’s painful and it’s hard to live with, but bombing like this achieves nothing in the end. People do not break, governments do not break, if anything both become even more determined to get through it. WW1 angered people when London was bombed first by Zeppelins and then by Gotha bombers, Dachsunds were kicked in the street. The same happened in WW2. The British still regards ‘the Blitz’ as one of the most terrifying things to happen and treat their resilience as war winning fact. In reality the losses were nothing compared to what the Allies would do to Tokyo, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Dresden, Berlin and Hamburg in a single night or day of operations.

The bombings in Cambodia and Vietnam did not win the war. Russia did not destroy the Syrians in Aleppo and Homs – the Syrians removed the regime and the Russians. What has Trump truly achieved with his war on Iran? Dead school girls and a fired up religious zealotry that despite the destruction has seen Iran close the straits, and any resumption of the war likely to be way worse for the US and its allies in the Gulf if they chose to resume. Bombing backfires unless it’s followed up by an effective ground operation.

Russia is estimated to have spent $46,000,000 in drones and missiles in the latest night/day raid. Ukraine says that it shot down 93% of those attacks. Thats a loss of $42,780,000 in destroyed drones and missiles at a cost to Ukraine of around $10,000,000 – the biggest expenses being Patriots. It cost probably around $2,000,000 to shoot down most of the drones. This is how much money Russia is putting into these attacks and getting next to nothing for its trouble except a handful of dead civilians? They think this will win the war? I know it’s a harsh thing to say but it’s the strategic reality. They are no more winning this aspect of the war than they are on the frontlines.

There is an even harsher view to take. Russia’s aim is to use the ballistic missiles knowing full well they will drain Ukraine’s Patriot stocks – we all know they are very thinly spread now, if they have any left at all. Replacements are few and far between, which is why the Russians are pressing the attacks. The most outrageously appalling result of this is its not so that they can use the missiles to aid winning the war in any meaningful way, but that they can use more to kill civilians and destroy schools and culturally valuable sites. It’s one of the most ludicrously bad strategic campaigns in connection and execution I have ever seen (until the war on Iran).

Belarus has been playing the border agitation game in the past few weeks. Much of that has been about the Russians using the country to increase heir ability to more accurately target Kyiv and the cities to its west. They use balloons as repeater stations to control various types of drone – including a new version of the loitering anti-vehicle drone with a range of 100km, These are designed to hunt anti-air systems. Russia is committed to what in my mind is an utterly bankrupt strategy. Like all of its bankrupt and bankrupting strategies, they have reached past the stage of being able to change course and its well into the realms of the sunk cost fallacy. They’re doing it, and thats that.

The billions of dollars they are spending on killing handfuls of civilians through the year are not going on men and material for the front lines. Thats the bottom line. And all the time they waste their time and effort on trying to break the unbreakable thinking it will drive Ukraine to surrender or a false peace, Ukraine is slowly but surely – possibly exponentially, in short order, breaking them in the place it actually matters. The sooner that happens the sooner the war will be over. With a Ukrainian victory and the Russians on the run.

The Analyst

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