The Naked and The Words-The War, point of situation

Thanks to Stéphane Cardon for the translation

First some news from the front. After the capture of Lyman and the new blow to the Russian forces, the Ukrainian forces of the Eastern Command continued their advance in the strip of 25-30 km between the Oskil and Krasna rivers, both centered north-south. On October 2nd, the Ukrainian brigade crossed the Oskil at Kupyansk and advanced rapidly east and southeast towards Svatove. In conjunction with the attack coming from the south and in particular from Lyman on the three axes between the two rivers, this new breakthrough compelled the Russian forces to fall back from their position in Borova, on the Oskil, before being surrounded. The Russian units are trying to build back a front along the Krasna. They hope to make it a solid line of defense, using the urban chain that runs along it. It is not sure that they will succeed, the Ukrainian units trying to advance faster than the defense is organizing. Ukrainian forces have already established a foothold, it seems, in the small towns of Chervonopopivka and Pishchane on the P66 highway that connects Svatove to Kreminna, 30 km east of Lyman. The town of Kreminna (20,000 inhabitants pre-war) is held by the forces of the Russian 20th Army which fell back from the Lyman Pocket.

Even though the attrition of the units engaged since a month and the logistic elongation, which we will note that it also feeds lots of catches to the enemy,  the ukrainian forces necessarily have the interest to maintain a pressure by the maneuver on the russian forces that struggles to reestablish. The Ukrainian effort will probably be carried on the capture of Kremmina and mostly on Rubizhne (56.000 inhabitants), which was already the subject to intense fighting from mars to may. The capture of Rubizhne will open the door, on one part to the reconquest of Lysychansk and Severodonetsk which could be approached by the north and by the seizure on the north-east city of Starobilsk, the communication node of all of the Luhansk province. The Ukrainian forces will then be at the heart of the annexed provinces by the same Russia that said that it will protect them at all cost.

Hence, after weeks of pressure, the Ukrainian forces of the South command has done in turn a very significant push on the north part of the Russian bridgehead  in Kherson, along the Dniepr River. The Russians have acknowledged the capture of Zolota Balka by the Ukrainians, like always, by the so-called cost of “horrible losses” which would result in a Pyrrhic victory. Although the Ukrainians have chased further south down the road TO403 and even reached Dudchany, which represents the first real breach in this strongly fortified zone. Having gone to the same parallel as the bridgehead West of Davydiv Brid, the Ukrainians seem to have forced the Russians of the northern sector to retreat. They now threaten the center sector and maybe even the first crossing point of the Dniepr at Nova Kakhovka. On the other fronts of the area, the south zone of the bridgehead isn’t moving, the Ukrainians may-be using the balance of the forces from one point to another, which would be rational, while the artillery prohibition campaign and harassing continues in order to isolate the Russians.

In summary, strong by their number and their tactical superiority, the Ukrainians are advancing pretty much everywhere they attack, by conserving the initiative in face of a Russian commandment which doesn’t seem to work rationally. We find ourselves clearly in a gap on the decision making speed, according to the famous loop OODA (Observe-Orient-Decide-Act) of John Boyd although perfectly described by Marc Bloch in “L’étrange Défaite”. Things seem to be going too fast for the Russians. We can feel the centralisation until the higher level or at least the burden to not anger the ones in a higher level of command. An insisting rumor pretends that the forces of Lyman did not receive the order to retreat on the 30th of September, in order to not ruin the “Annexation celebration” , which had severe and often mortal consequences for a large number of Russian soldiers. Although we do not understand either the stubbornness to multiply the attacks on Bakhmut like a fly against a window. If the capture of this city did have a value in July by opening the way to Kramatorsk, nowadays it doesn’t have one anymore, the only explanation would be to offer a victory.

In the meantime, the Russians are concentrating on this objective some forces which still have some strength left and which would undoubtedly be more useful elsewhere. Holding the Kherson bridgehead at all costs cannot be explained militarily either. While the Russian forces are overall outnumbered and struggling in many sectors, the choice to place one-sixth of the total forces (some suggest an even larger proportion) and among the best in a small bridgehead in risk to be isolated is extremely dangerous. The position is paradoxically solid but also fragile, as it can explode under pressure. If it happens, it could be a decisive disaster for the fate of the Russian expeditionary force in Ukraine, and it’s only to keep the city of Kherson, and to keep the possibility of one day attacking Odessa.

The situation could only improve for the Russians through a profound transformation of their military tool. This couldn’t come from a general movement from below like the French army before the Battle of the Marne from August to September 1914 or from above by the energy of a general de Lattre arriving in Indochina. The first possibility is not in the Russian military DNA, the second can’t happen when you don’t want to see an imperator and potential rival emerge. So the transformation came from Vladimir Putin who, reluctantly, decided to mobilize the resources of the nation in the war effort and in consequence brang this war into the whole Russian society.

Let us remember this anomaly that Putin wanted a major war, of high intensity to use the current word,meaning a conflict essential in its stakes – here the life or death of nations – and significant in the magnitude of the material used and the violence deployed, committed without even declaring it and without mobilizing the nation. Vladimir Putin's Russia has become like the empires described by Ibn Khaldun. A pacified general population in the sense of demilitarized and passive, only used to work and provide wealth to an asabiya, resulting from the “social organization”, the Siloviki, and an army recruited in peripheral, geographical and social Russia.

This model of society, moreover sufficiently corrupt not to ensure its proper functioning, failed to defeat an equally corrupt Ukrainian society, but which mobilized itself entirely and benefited from the help of western democracies. Ukraine has succeeded in a patriotic mass uprising unlike Russian power.

To fight, meaning to kill and eventually to be killed, is not at all natural. To take these risks, you need three things: good reasons to do it, confidence in your ability to do it and finally the feeling that it is worthwhile. Despite the losses, Ukraine has succeeded, after several months of mobilization, training and victories, in bringing together these ingredients for several hundred thousand men and women. Facing this, the Russian expeditionary force in Ukraine does not have much chance, limited in its capacity to replace the enormous losses, with the motivation often above all linked to the "esprit de corps" of regiments and brigades in increasing breaking down and now rather accumulating failures.

Vladimir Putin tried to change the odds by raising a first Pandora's box, the appeal to the nation, while threatening to raise a second, the use of nuclear power. This is the primary reason for this rush to annex the conquered territories, a long-standing project but which was envisaged in a position of strength and not on the back foot. The kremlin hoped that the extension of the Russian border would give a good reason to fight for all those who are now sent there authoritatively. And it comes with an offer of discussion on the mode "what's mine is mine, the rest is negotiable", and terrible threats, it is also supposed to be good reasons for the Ukrainians to stop to fight and for the westerners to stop to help. This annexation had no chance of being recognized by anyone, and especially not by the Ukrainians. But the main goal was that Russians recognized it and that Western sympathizers use it to bring more fear, in order to push Ukraine to accept defeat in the name of peace.

So this is how the Kremlin hopes to reverse the situation with a "levée en masse" about which we are wary, and rightly so in view of the massive and here again unprecedented leak that it causes. Whatever, nobody dared to plan the organization of a mobilization behind the back of the Tsar when he had said that it would never take place. Here, then, in the most complete bardak, are hundreds of thousands of men sent in bulk to the sorting centers by the regional governors to respect the numbers requested, as when Stalin gave quotas for deportees. Arriving at the sorting center, we see those who can really serve or who don’t have the means to pay a bribe. Those who cannot get through will then discover that the equipment depots are largely empty, due to lack of organization or lack of anticipation except that of the increase in the bank account of some. We are always looking, among others, for hundreds of thousands of winter outfits that have probably been paid for, but never made.

We find another Stalinian touch in the law on the hardening of sanctions for the refractories and even nowadays for the prisoners, whom just learned that they will go to a Russian jail as soon as the Ukrainians release them, that adds to the more modern element like the “stop-loss” which transforms the time-limited contracts of the soldiers that went to war with a voluntary contract in order to serve some time in ukraine, into a open-ended contract.

By a lot there except for the duty to protect the “Motherland” which gives good reasons to fight, and even less confidence in its capacities, weakness, its inexistant means, and its unknown friends. As of victories, the Motherland doesn’t risk to show up with a bunch of bulk soldiers in front of a Ukrainian army which has become the best in Europe with the help of the occident (many recent examples show that even that is not enough) and its internal energy. If the 200.000 mobilized soldiers announced by the minister Choïgu are sent right now by little packs directly in the units of combat on the frontlines, and the units that do not have enough people to be elsewhere, they will not reinforce them but will rather hinder them. Those frail recruits without any particular skills will be dead weight, figuratively at first before they will really be soon, and will be even faster than the other ones.

No revolts or mutineries are expected to happen immediately. In Russia, the best case scenario is that you kneel before the Tsar and beg for him to correct the errors of the boyar, where we take refuge in an extreme passivity. It really needs a lot of accumulated suffering in order to see a battleship Potemkine, or the hungry workers in Pétrograd in February 1917, or even the mothers that ask where their sent sons were sent to the furnace in Afghanistan or in Chechnya are. Oftentimes the sufferings alone do not suffice, they need to be followed by disasters.  Even though they do spark shakes in the political world, no direct seizure of power happens, shakings end up replacing the current defaulting regime by another one, more liberal like in february 1917 or in 1991  or more harder like the bolsheviks taking power in november 1917 or Putin succeeding to Eltsine on the turn of year 2000s.

Therefore, we are prompted to see disasters and horrors in Ukraine before we can put our hands on the second Pandora’s box, the one we only open in last resort. Every month, a Russian  leader recalls the fact that the famous box exists and the next day another one recalls the fact that nobody will touch it except if there is an existential threat for Russia. It’s a game, and a dangerous one at that, in which we played practically every four or five years during the Cold War and that we had forgotten since 1989 except in the Indian sub-continent. Never had everybody dared to play with this game until the end.  Nobody had wanted to link their name to the first use of a nuclear bomb after that it became taboo since it’s use in Japan. Until nowadays, Russia had always respected that game : the nuclear weapon’s only use is to stirr fear into the enemy and we take care to avoid any military aggression which would provoke an escalation and will up the probability of its use.  In the frame of a confrontation, everything else is conceivable, including the sabotage of the gazoducs, nevertheless we do not fight armed in front of each other, at least at a big scale.

Two elements have changed since the 30th of September. The first is the most disturbing passage from Vladimir Putin's surrealist speech on September 30, to recall precisely the example of the American atomic strikes on Japan, but not to emphasize that this marked an end with the creation of a taboo, but on the contrary to explain that this constituted a precedent which could justify all the others. It is a subtle change of tone compared to a finally very common discourse. The second, more obvious and probably too much, is the displacement of the Russian border, which would give the right for Russian to make anything they want for the defense of the Motherland. It is a bit like if France had invaded Belgium, annexed Wallonia on the pretext that French is spoken there, and declared that the use of nuclear weapons to defend this new France would not be ruled out.

These two elements and the effect of many of the various statements, from Medvedev to Kadyrov, make the matter more serious if not more likely. There is still a long way before the nuclear card is the only one to play. The partial mobilization, which will no doubt be followed by others, should be seen as a pot draw of new cards, and there are still plenty of hopes on the Russian side to get the weakening of aid to Ukraine by the decadent West. There are also strong doubts about the credibility of a terrible punishment for crossing a border that one does not even know.

We have made it more clear as a red line. We do not see either to which state of what is in the end a snacking of the new Motherland we will start to use a nuclear weapon, no matter the power since the only thing that counts is the label “nuclear”. Will the Russians accept to become a pariah state of all the international community, including China because Melitopol was recaptured by the Ukrainians ? Will they accept the suffering from disastrous conventional strikes on their forces, on their base in Sébastopol, on the Kerch bridge, and so on, because it is inconceivable to accept the trivialisation of nuclear use ? We cannot eternally multiply strategic errors.

In 1983, the britannic general John Hackett described the third world war in a book of the same name. In order to get out of the dead-end in which his attack on the Federal republic  of Germany was, where the Soviets destroyed Birmingham with a nuclear strike. Minsk was destroyed immediately in response. The fear of the apocalypse sufficiently shaked the Soviet Union enough to provoke its burst and collapse. The revolt then started in Ukraine.