The news at the weekend from Ukraine has been grim.
Cities have come under heavy shelling. Humanitarian corridors set up to allow the evacuation of civilians from besieged cities have failed, because they have come under heavy shelling. Efforts to set up more today have been stalled by the fact that Putin will only allow them to open into Russia and Belarus, not the west.
The second attempt at a mass evacuation from the strategic southern port city of Mariupol on Sunday failed, with the International Committee of the Red Cross saying about 200,000 people were trying to leave and warning of “devastating scenes of human suffering” in the city, which is running out of food and water. Odessa, another strategic southern city, is likely to come under heavy attack today. Kyiv is still holding on.
Macron is attempting to conduct negotiations with Putin, and has had phone calls, but it can’t be said he is getting anywhere. he has vowed to keep trying, however, and lines of communication remain open. France has usually has a good relationship with Russia: let’s hope he can at least try to trade on its old friendship. Israel is becoming involved in efforts to mediate between Ukraine and Russia amid Moscow’s war on Ukraine, now in its second week. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday, according to news reports. Reuters news agency, citing a Kremlin readout of the call, said both leaders discussed Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine during the conversation. Word of the call came one day after Bennett travelled to Moscow to meet with the Russian leader. Bennett is the first foreign leader to hold talks in person with Putin since the invasion of Ukraine began late last month. An Orthodox Jew, made the trip on the Jewish Sabbath, when travel is normally forbidden; however, rabbis in Israel said it was permissible to violate the Sabbath to save a life.
Meanwhile, in a televised address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked Israel for its support of Ukraine but did not mention Bennett’s visit to Russia. Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, said he spoke on Saturday with U.S. President Joe Biden and had done so with Bennett several times: it’s thought that he asked Israel to intervene.
Meanwhile the Guardian reports that:The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has assured Lithuania of Nato protection and American support as he began a lightning visit to the three Baltic states that are increasingly on edge as Russia presses ahead with its invasion of Ukraine. The former Soviet republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are all Nato members and Blinken is aiming to reassure them of their security in the event Russia chooses to expand its military operations.
“We are bolstering our shared defence so that we and our allies are prepared,” Blinken said on Monday, stressing that the US commitment to Nato’s mutual defence pact is “sacrosanct”. Blinken opened his Baltic tour in Vilnius, where Lithuanian support for Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion is palpable as signs of solidarity with Ukrainians are evident in many businesses and on public buildings and buses.
“Unfortunately, the worsening security situation in the Baltic region is of great concern for all of us and around the world,” the Lithuanian president, Gitanas Nauseda, told Blinken. “Russia’s reckless aggression against Ukraine once again proves that it is a long-term threat to European security, the security of our alliance.” Nauseda said a policy of deterrence was no longer enough and that “forward defence” was now needed. He predicted that “Putin will not stop in Ukraine if he will not be stopped. It is our collective duty as a nation to help all Ukrainians with all means available,” said Nauseda. “By saying all, I mean, indeed all means all, if we want to avoid the third world war. The choice is in our hands.”
Reuters reports that in a further show of support for Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba met on Ukraine’s border with Poland on Saturday to discuss Western efforts to support Ukraine and isolate Russia during the current war, now in its 10th day. Amid tight security, Blinken and Kuleba held talks in a tent on the border where refugees, mostly women and children, were also crossing with their belongings in rolling luggage and backpacks. The two men walked on both sides of a painted line that appeared to mark the end of Polish territory.
“The entire world stands with Ukraine, just as I am standing here in Ukraine with my friend, my colleague,” Blinken said. Kuleba added: “I hope the people of Ukraine will be able to see this as a clear manifestation that we have friends who literally stand by us.”The two discussed the provision of weapons to Ukraine and the campaign to isolate Russia internationally and damage its economy with sanctions, Kuleba said. Ukraine will win its war with Russia eventually, he said, but its international supporters need to provide more help to end the conflict sooner. Ukraine especially needs fighter jets and air defense systems, he said, adding that Stinger anti-aircraft weapons provided by Western nations were helping. Ukrainian forces downed three Russian aircraft on Saturday, he said.
“If they continue to provide us with necessary weapons, the price will be lower. This will save many lives,” he said. “We will defend every inch of Nato territory if it comes under attack,” he said. “No one should doubt our readiness, no one should doubt our resolve.”
And in another attempt to control the narrative, multiple cyber attacks on Ukraine’s internet provision are, according to Reuters, probably a Russian attempt at targeting Ukraine’s communication infrastructure to reduce access to reliable news sources.
Britain’s Ministry of Defence said on Monday.”Russia is probably targeting Ukraine’s communications infrastructure in order to reduce Ukrainian citizens’ access to reliable news and information,” a defence intelligence update posted on Twitter said. “Ukrainian internet access is also highly likely being disrupted as a result of collateral damage from Russian strikes on infrastructure.”
For those wanting a longer update on what we know and what we don’t please read this analysis from the Guardian:
“In conflict, where information is everything, what is striking about the war in not what is known but the very large areas of unknowns. And even as commentators have picked over and analysed everything that is known about the Russian military’s operations and performance in Ukraine in an effort to predict the trajectory of the conflict, it’s what is poorly understood that may yet be more significant still.
One issue that has come under the spotlight is the rate of losses of soldiers and equipment on the Russian side in the week and a half so far of fighting. In that period, images of dead and captured Russian soldiers and destroyed or abandoned equipment have become commonplace as it has become clear that Russian forces have lost everything from aircraft to main battle tanks and even whole convoys. But attrition is not a one-way street, and what is far less clear is the level of losses sustained by Ukrainian forces, with no equivalent social media avalanche from the Russian side parading this, and Ukraine understandably not wanting to advertise its setbacks.
While some images of equipment losses have appeared – most strikingly the Ukrainian navy’s flagship, which was scuttled in port over the weekend – observers have been left to guess what might have occurred through what is not visible and what is not happening. One case in point has been the Ukrainian air force and air defences, which were hit heavily in the opening days of the conflict. While Russia claimed to have neutralised Ukrainian air defences, it is clear some capacity survives, but not how much. This matters because attrition is not a symmetrical problem. Because it is more difficult to attack than defend a position, traditionally – and with other advantages such as technology set aside – military planners have thought that attacking forces need roughly a three-to-one advantage.
What that means in practical terms is that the Russian military planners drawing up the design of the invasion of Ukraine should have built into their planning losses of soldiers or equipment. Another issue that has seen a lot of attention is the question of Russian progress on their offensive timetable, much talked about in defence and intelligence briefings in western capitals. While it has been treated as a given that Putin thought Ukraine would fall quickly in the early days of the invasion, we don’t actually know what the Russian military assumptions were or continue to be or even whether those plans have changed.
In other words, when Russian forces do not seem to be advancing, does that mean they are “stalling” because of problems or are we seeing an operational pause? Or a combination of the two?
That prospect was raised on Saturday in an update by Frederick Kagan and his colleagues at the Institute for the Study of War thinktank when they suggested Russian forces in Ukraine “may have entered a possibly brief operational pause on 5 March as they prepare to resume operations against Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and possibly Odessa in the next 24-48 hours”.
One intelligence assumption from before the invasion – that Moscow would be content with a limited campaign in Donbas and Crimea – turned out to be wrong, as Russia has attacked more widely, not least in its attempt to take the capital, Kyiv, and depose the government of Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Then there is the issue of how meaningfully Russia is in charge in the areas it is claiming. While maps widely published in the media and elsewhere have shown large areas now under Russian military control, the reality is that these maps in large parts of the country are an exercise in simply colouring in between the roads controlled by Russian forces.
Then there is the biggest unknown of all. One of the key concepts in understanding conflicts and their potential outcomes is where states stand on the spectrum from fragility to resilience, an issue that takes in everything from social cohesion in conflict to the ability to sustain a protracted war effort, particularly national mobilisation for a war effort.”
The Guardian makes a good point here. Note particularly the point about the maps we see being an exercise in colouring in. You don’t “control” an area, if you just have have tanks on the roads: you only control it if you can be sure that when you move on, nothing is going to sneak up behind you and cut you off.
As for the UK? The UK is still talking about sanctioning Russians rather than doing it, and has not yet opened its borders to refugees – unless they have a visa, of course.