Timothy Ash: What happens if Putin fails to win the battle for Donbass? (Photo: REUTERS)
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Russia will seek to focus its forces on the battle for Donbass, which may well prove to be the decisive battle in this conflict
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It feels like Putin returns to Plan B or C, which narrows his ambitions for Ukraine from taking over the entire country to taking over the Donbass and providing a land bridge to the Crimea – hence the importance of Mariupol, which provides it.
This is occurred after huge military defeats in the battle of Kyiv and in the battle of the Snake Island. The latter, by the way, witnessed a completely the incredible spectacle of the death of the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet «Moscow ». As one tweeter put it, the Russian navy has lost its flagship due to the country having virtually no navy. It reminds me a bit of the Cod Wars – actually worse – it reminds me of the episode when Iceland defeated the Royal Navy in the 1970s, even though they never actually sank a British ship.
Russia still hasn’t actually taken all of Mariupol, as Russian troops haven’t yet taken the metallurgical plant «Azovstal, where Ukrainian servicemen are still hiding. It looks like the Russian side decided for now just spin around «Azovstal” and “sell” this is like capturing all of Mariupol and then besieging/bombing the remaining Ukrainian forces from Azovstal.
Now Russia will seek to focus its forces on the battle for Donbass, which may well prove to be the decisive battle in this conflict, or at least one of them – the battle for Kyiv likely played a major role in ensuring that Putin could not take over all of Ukraine. The battle for Donbass will likely determine whether Russia can capture and hold significant additional elements of Ukrainian territory.
Seem to be, Putin is aiming to secure victory in the battle for Donbass in time for the May 9 parade in Moscow.
First the most important – the big question is whether Russian troops will be able to win in Donbas by May 9.
So far, in terms of tactics, equipment, morale and combat effectiveness of the troops, Russia is largely behind, and the Ukrainians are equally, if not more, superior to the enemy. However, in the Donbas, Russia can concentrate a much larger mass of forces and benefit from shorter supply routes. But it is up against the best of the Ukrainian military, perhaps as many as 40,000 defenders in well-prepared defensive positions.
And what will happen if Putin loses again in the Donbass?
And now the West is really increasing the supply of arms. As for the latter, the Rubicon has been crossed in terms of the West’s willingness to provide Ukraine with heavy weapons – S300, artillery, tanks, armored personnel carriers, air defense systems and, probably, even the MiG-29. They are now on their way to Ukraine — although the question is whether they can get to the Donbas theater in time to make a difference. Russia will most likely try to deploy overwhelming firepower against Ukrainian forces in Donbas – heavy artillery and rocket attacks on their positions, and then a large-scale frontal offensive is likely to follow to break through their positions. Can they succeed? Will the Ukrainian forces now find themselves in pincers in the Donbass? Time will tell. But recent experience suggests that Ukrainian troops are not such easy prey – just look at Azovstal.
Secondly, let’s just imagine that Putin now gets what he wants and wins the battle for Donbass, thus securing most of the Donbass for himself, as well as his land corridor to Crimea. He can «sell” is like some kind of victory. He will claim to have liberated a pro-Russian (although this is not true if recent opinion polls are to be believed, but this is the narrative that Moscow is promoting) the population of Donbass has secured supply routes to Crimea and, by capturing most of Ukrainian ports, it will cause economic damage to Ukraine.
I assume that if he quickly wins in the Donbass (though not a fact), he could use the threat of further military offensive, say, to return to Kyiv from the south, to force Ukraine to make concessions, and then try to impose a peace treaty on the Zelensky government. But even then, I don’t see the above as a big win, because even if Ukraine loses the battle for Donbass, it will still have significant forces left to organize a vigorous defense in a possible second battle for Kyiv. And, most likely, after any battle in the Donbass, Russian forces will again be significantly undermined.
And, ultimately, any such peace agreement, concluded after the battle for Donbass is unlikely to bring many real victories to Putin, and it is emphasized here:
a) He could capture most of the Donbass, but most of the population will leave and not likely to return, while it will devastate its economy and the cost of rebuilding will be huge, and Russia will probably be under sanctions for years. In the future, Russia will not be in a position to finance such a reconstruction.
b) It is difficult to imagine that Ukraine would voluntarily accept any peace agreement, which would leave the Donbass and the land corridor in Russian hands. Most likely, it will be more like a temporary ceasefire, similar to Minsk-1 and Minsk-2. And given that any Russian successes will only be secured by violating Ukrainian sovereignty, international law, and after committing large-scale war crimes, even genocide against Ukraine, I don’t think that Western sanctions will be easily lifted. Indeed, almost everything in this respect will remain unchanged.
Meanwhile, Russia has established itself as an enemy of the West, even a threat to the West, and an absolutely unreliable partner in trade, especially in energy and raw materials. So whatever the outcome of this war, the West will continue to diversify trade and move away from relations with Russia, especially in the energy sector. Thus, the Russian economy will remain under sanctions, and trade relations with the West and flows from there will wither. The Russian economy will be in stagnation, and resources for the reconstruction of Donbass and everything else will be limited. Russia will be in economic decline in the coming decades.
c) It is tempting to view the Russian-Ukrainian war in the light of the Korean War — and indeed, any peace agreement reached, under which Russia would seize large chunks of Ukrainian territory, would leave the feeling of a divided country. Instead of North and South Korea there will be West and East of Ukraine. The West will be massively funded and armed by the West, while the East will be a proxy Russian state. Western or Free Ukraine could be a huge success due to the dynamism unleashed/observed by the war, probably in terms of EU accession and massive Western funding. Ukraine can become South Korea or the State of Israel. But the government in Kyiv will receive massive Western support as a bulwark against future Russian expansion. This means that it will get the best conventional military equipment to be able to defend itself and the West, in fact, Ukraine will become the new front line for the West in the battle with Russia. However, unlike the war in Korea, Russia will find itself in the position of North Korea – under sanctions and in the role of an international pariah. I see a good future for the rest of Ukraine, which remains under the control of the Zelenskiy administration in Kyiv. But for the territory under Russian control, and indeed for Russia itself, the prospects for many generations to come are bleak.
d) Moscow presented arguments in favor of war as a pretext for the demilitarization of Ukraine, but the end result is likely to be a battle-hardened and confident Ukraine that knows it can beat the Russian military in a fair fight if it gets the right equipment. And the result of this war will be that Ukraine will indeed receive decent equipment for self-defense. Thus, the Russian intervention achieved what it sought to avoid—a militarized and successful Ukraine capable of defending itself against Russian aggression. Whether Ukraine becomes a member of NATO or has the prospect of membership in NATO does not matter. It will be a NATO ally and will really be able to defend itself against Russia.
e) It now seems almost inevitable that Sweden and Finland will join NATO., and that NATO will continue to deploy troops to the east to defend against the Russian threat. NATO will greatly increase defense spending, and Russia will be forced into a new arms race with the West, which it simply can never win. Just as the arms expansion of Reagan and Thatcher in the early 1980s ultimately bankrupted the USSR, the same fate awaits Putin’s Russia. And Putin’s intervention in Ukraine is likely to be akin to the Soviet Union’s failed military intervention in Afghanistan in the late 1970s—again draining Moscow’s economic resources with little to no benefit to itself.
f) PRussian military equipment performed so poorly in this war – and who wants to buy it? I think that countries such as Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, China and India, which used to line up for Russian military equipment, will now change their minds. So it will be a disaster for the Russian arms industry, exports and, again, the economy.
g) And in this regard, China will undoubtedly now doubt the real value of a strategic relationship with Russia – Putin now seems more like a burden in China’s relations with the West than an asset. Indeed, look, it looks like the Pakistani military got rid of Imran Khan quickly when he made the strategic mistake of showing up in Moscow on February 24 and getting too close to Putin. Putin is now an international pariah.
No, no, I see a path to a potential peace deal here, but that still requires Russia to win the battle for Donbass, which is not a given. This war could drag on for a very long time – and, remarkably, the peace talks seem to be going nowhere. The West is simply set on Putin losing, which means continuing to arm/finance Ukraine.
I guess the question still needs to be asked what happens if Putin fails to win the battle for the Donbass, since all of the above assumes that he will win and then a peace/ceasefire agreement will eventually be imposed. And what will happen if Putin loses again in the Donbass? Will it then seek to escalate with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons? I think Lavrov summed it up this week by saying that Russia does not intend to use unconventional military options YET. WHILE in this case is the key word. But if Putin fails to win quickly in Donbas, I think he will resort to nuclear weapons on the battlefield and/or bombing Western arms convoys bound for Ukraine.
Translation HB
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