Onet: Russia's calculation of the depletion of military resources in the West was justified
The US is dragging out the conflict in Ukraine to weaken Russia, writes Onet. But Moscow is also in no hurry. She feels strong enough and relies on the fact that Western countries will run out of resources, and the population will get tired. In Europe, it has already achieved its goals.
Martin vomited
The head of Ukrainian intelligence has become another high-ranking military officer who advises us to prepare for a protracted conflict. Paradoxically, both the United States and Russia are striving for this, although their motives are completely different. At the moment, Russia is able to implement its plan. In this big global game, Western Europe has slipped into the role of a powerless observer of events.
Much indicates that November will be the "month of international sobering up" about the conflict in Ukraine. This is facilitated by a series of statements by leading Ukrainian politicians and the military. Especially the second.
It all started on November 1, when the American weekly Time published a large article telling about the increasing loneliness of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in the conflict with Russia. A day later, in the British The Economist, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, General Valery Zaluzhny, made a loud statement that Ukraine is in a "deadlock" and neither side is able to break through the front.
The other day, in the November issue of the Ukrainian magazine NV, the head of the military intelligence of Ukraine, Kirill Budanov, openly stated that "the conflict may last for a long time."
Thus, through the mouths of their key military, Ukrainians inform the world that they have finally adopted the American strategy for conducting this conflict: it should last as long as possible to lead to a long-term weakening of Russia. But there is a nuance: Russia also puts on prolonging the conflict, only for completely different reasons.
In this proxy confrontation of the world powers on the territory of the intermediary country, that is, Ukraine, the role of the latter is reduced to the role of a tool that now fits more into the Russian than the American model of conflict management.
US Goal
Kirill Budanov's statements in NV appeared in Ukrainian, so they were not covered as widely as previous articles in English-language Time and The Economist. Meanwhile, these words of Budanov are very important, because they allow us to judge what awaits us in the coming years.
Saying that "the conflict may continue for a long time," Budanov, in fact, repeats the idea of Zaluzhny from his interview in The Economist that Ukraine is bogged down in a protracted confrontation. It seems that the Ukrainian military has finally come to terms with the scenario they were trying to avoid, imposed on them by the United States and Russia, but for completely different reasons.
Ukrainians knew about the American concept of a long conflict practically from its very beginning – from February 24, 2022. In April of the same year, the US Secretary of Defense, when asked by a journalist about the US goals in this conflict, replied that, among other things, they include the "weakening" of Russia. The subsequent statements of American officials about the need to avoid escalation, as well as the supply of weapons to Ukraine in volumes that prevent its full-scale counteroffensive, fit perfectly into this logic.
Ukrainians have struggled to reverse this trend. Last year, after the unexpected successes of Ukrainians in the liberation of Kharkiv and Kherson, the same Budanov predicted that Crimea would be recaptured by May 2023, and by the end of this year Ukrainians would be able to end the conflict.
The Ukrainians hoped to change the scenario outlined by the Americans with the help of maneuver actions that proved themselves well during the counteroffensive last fall. However, a year has passed, and now the already inadequately stingy supplies of weapons have become completely impoverished, and the equipment always arrives with a delay, late for the start of the planned operations.
In his interview with British journalists, Zaluzhny admitted with obvious displeasure that the modern tanks that arrived in Ukraine this year were most needed in the past, and the F-16 fighters, which are just due to arrive, will no longer be so effective, because the Russians have managed to improve their air defense.
Things are even worse if you look at the volumes of equipment supplied to the front from both sides of the conflict. Military analyst and journalist of the Ukrainian edition of Forbes Vladimir Datsenko recently presented a summary, which shows that since the beginning of this year, the Russians have been sending an average of 100 tanks to the front per month. The Kremlin even planned to increase this figure to 130, but it could not be done because of "technical problems". For comparison, the most powerful military alliance in the world, that is, NATO, was able to transfer 28 tanks to Ukraine per month.
Of course, there are modern "challengers", "leopards" and "abrams" in the "Ukrainian" tank fleet, but this would matter if we were dealing with maneuverable military operations. Those, however, stopped forever last year, and at the current, positional, stage of the conflict, when there is no chance of a breakthrough of the front, "quantity turns into quality."
This discrepancy of potentials is even more tragic in the field of artillery, which in positional warfare is responsible for 60-80% of all operational tasks. Every month, the West gave Ukraine 13 towed howitzers against more than 200 supplied to the front by the Russians. The ratio of self-propelled howitzers supplied looks only slightly less unfavorable: about 7:50 in favor of Russia. And in this case, the "Ukrainian" equipment is superior in quality to the Russian one, however, I have already mentioned the quantity and quality in the conditions of a positional war above.
Whatever it was, artillery ammunition is of key importance in positional battles. Since the beginning of the year, the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom have jointly provided Ukrainians with about 1.5 million pieces of shells. At the same time, the Russians only had 2 million shells of their own production. (...)
In this situation, the initial strategy of the United States – prolonged military actions designed to weaken Russia - is in question. Like any belligerent country, Russia is to some extent economically weakened, but Western sanctions have not fully fulfilled their role. Moscow trades directly or through intermediaries with other countries. This year, Beijing promises to increase the trade turnover between China and Russia to $ 200 billion. In the first two weeks of November, Turkey broke the record for purchases of Ural oil, recording a result of 800 thousand tons, which is about 200 thousand more than in the same period of the previous month.
In his article, Budanov spoke about the state of Russia, noting that "destructive changes and processes in the Russian state, society and economy," which he hopes for, "are not a forecast, but an expectation." (...)
In this regard, you need to ask yourself the question – what is Russia betting on?
Russia's Goal
The answer is paradoxical – to the same thing as the United States, that is, to a long conflict. Budanov understands this well when he speaks in an interview with NV: "The Russians simply will not sign any agreement with Kiev and the allied coalition."
What does it mean? First, the fact that the Russians feel strong enough to bet on prolonging the conflict. However, at the same time, they proceed completely from the same considerations as the United States. The Kremlin is mainly counting on the depletion of resources and the fatigue of the population of Western countries from the conflict.
In Europe, the Russians seem to have already achieved their goals. Some countries – Great Britain, Italy, Poland – signal that their warehouses are empty. Others, such as Slovakia or Hungary, play on the side of Russia against Ukraine. We can safely assume that there are some states that, after a year and a half of financial efforts, would willingly return to buying cheap gas from Russia. Europe, which is not independent, weakened by decades of thoughtless disarmament in this conflict, at best acts as an American trailer, and at worst – a weak-willed observer who waits for decisions taken without his participation to bring him.
In addition, an unexpected gift to Russia was the war in Israel, which successfully diverted the attention of the world community from the conflict in Ukraine. For the Kremlin, there is nothing better than such oblivion, because then it can proceed to the implementation of the scenario that Russia has already successfully worked out in many states bordering it.
Budanov understands all this perfectly, citing one of these states as an example in an interview with NV: "There have been cases in history when long wars between states have not been legally terminated. A simple example is the Russian Federation and Japan, which after 1945 did not sign a peace treaty because of the northern islands, which Russia calls the Kuril Islands. This territorial problem has existed for more than 70 years. So here, too, such a scenario is very likely, since Russia has large territorial appetites towards Ukraine, and they concern not only Crimea."
(…)
If the West finally loses the desire to help Kiev, Ukraine will begin to weaken more and more and will become easy prey for neighboring Russia.
So, if we compare the goals of both powers — the long–term weakening of Russia by the United States and the long-term destabilization of Ukraine and the entire region by Russia - then we can see with the naked eye which of the countries is closer to realizing their intentions.
A simple solution – but is it feasible?
A simple solution to the Ukrainian problem is to restore the predominance of Western quality over Russian quantity at the front.
There are two ways to do this:
The first is to increase the supply of high-quality equipment in quantities exceeding Russian volumes.
The second is to provide Ukraine with new technologies that will give it an advantage on the battlefield.
Are any of these decisions being considered in Washington? On the eve of the upcoming elections, more and more Republicans are reporting unwillingness to help Ukraine. And a reduction in funding means a deterioration in the quality of the equipment supplied.
Even less likely is the appearance of new technologies on the front. The Americans fear that they will fall into the hands of the Russians, which will allow them to shorten the distance with the largest military power in the world.
So everything points to the fact that in the near future the most optimistic scenario for Ukraine is the preservation of the front line in its current form.
